Uncle Sam Becomes Slimmer, But Not Weaker

The U.S. government plans to reduce its number of soldiers. This fact is not a sign of an American weakness; Washington has simply learned its lessons from the latest wars.

One must go all the way back to the year 1940 to understand to what extent Washington is decreasing its armed forces. The U.S. is going to reduce the Army to approximately 440,000 individuals within the next three years, thus achieving a level similar to that of the time right before America entered World War II. This action is a consequence of America’s financial problems.

A while ago, the government had already announced the reduction of the defense budget by $500 billion over the next 10 years. Now it’s obvious how they want to achieve that.

However, this does not yet signal the beginning of the end of America as a superpower — despite the efforts of the Republicans and their supporting journalists to paint the gloomiest picture of the situation. Rather, the White House uses these spending caps to wisely adapt defense efforts to recent lessons learned without losing sight of future methods of warfare.

Faster and Shorter Missions

After the long and bloody missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington finally came to the conclusion that wars, which merely aim to subordinate the enemy to one’s own beliefs and rules, are expensive and require a lot of man power. Faster and shorter missions are not just more effective and more successful, but also cheaper.

The conclusion seems to be an obvious one: The Pentagon will get rid of its huge and stiff army and instead focus on mobility. Not a single one of its eleven aircraft carriers is supposed to be scrapped. As a comparison, Russia owns three [aircraft carriers] and China has one — which is not even ready for combat.

In addition, Washington is continuing to expand its cybersecurity forces and is relying on the new RQ-4 Global Hawk drones, which can reach any point in the world in next to no time. Retreating inwards, or even isolationism, looks completely different. Uncle Sam might become slimmer, but not weaker.