America's military struggles with readiness to face global adversaries, The Heritage Foundation's Index of U.S. Military Strength details.
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Our government isn’t serious about defending the United States and its interests. In fact, it has fallen woefully short in carrying out this sacred obligation. I know this sounds harsh, but as we’ll see, the government’s own numbers prove the point.
That
our military is weak is not an indictment of the men and women who have volunteered to serve. It is an indictment of a system largely defined by the government and those elected to high office.
That includes senior military officers whose primary obligation should be to ensure that our men and women have what they need to win in war—which is, after all, the primary purpose of our military.
Yes, many people will say the purpose of a strong military is to deter war, but deterrence derives from the belief of the enemy that they would be defeated in battle. So if our military is at great risk of not being able to win … well, it doesn’t have much deterrent value.
Our potential enemies can see this; the American public, not so much.
At present, the U.S. military is
roughly half the size it needs to be. Moreover, most of its primary equipment (planes, ships, tanks, etc.) is 30 to 40 years old. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardsmen are training only a fraction of what they should to be competent in battle.
Yet senior leaders in the Pentagon, White House spokespersons, and even members of Congress who have access to the facts (and should know better) continue to say that we have the best military in the world, as if saying so makes it so. It does not.
Let’s look at the numbers, using references from near the end of the Cold War, when the U.S. last confronted a major competitor on a global stage. Recall that until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the U.S. maintained forces able to compete with the Soviets in many regions at once, primarily in Europe (in land and air) but also across the seas where naval power was essential.
Back then, Washington had to focus only on one capital and the ambitions of one authoritarian regime. Regardless of where military actions occurred, the signals reverberated to Moscow.
Today, the U.S. must account for regimes in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and
Pyongyang, and a host of smaller powers and terrorist regimes that challenge U.S. interests. They have different objectives and possess different cultures, values, and networks.
