War without Responsibility

In practical terms, the mission will still be to destroy enemies.

Even if U.S. military spending is actually cut by close to a trillion dollars over the next 10 years in accordance with the latest Washington plans, the nation will nonetheless remain the greatest military power in the world, and that by a huge margin. And whether the decrease will actually take place is far from certain at this point.

Lobbyists for the military-industrial complex are already lining up in their starting blocks, ready for the race to influence both parties — and in an election year, their candidates as well — by any and all means possible. The threat of job losses in areas that have been dependent almost exclusively on an expanding military budget over the past 10 years will be significant.

But a restructuring of current military strategy appears to be a done deal. A major push to reorient existing forces from the prevailing Cold War strategies to better counter newly developing threats had been in the planning phase since the turn of the century.

Those plans had already foreseen reductions in several sensitive areas. 9/11 gave the military an opportunity to take on new missions without abandoning any of the old. It could simply expand.

The economic crisis increased the pressure for reforms. Now, in the wake of the Iraq and Afghan wars, strategies had to be revised: unmanned drone attacks rather than more boots on the ground and airstrikes rather than counter-insurgencies.

In practical terms, that means destroying the enemy without any responsibility for the aftermath. Fewer soldiers are needed for that strategy. But when it comes to the U.S. desire and ability to intervene militarily anywhere in the world it chooses to do so, nothing at all has changed.