1989/1991 to 9/11/01 was genuine aimlessness and downsizing, missing the boat on a bunch of important developments, etc.
9/11 to Iraq War was massive IC expansion and trying to assign "counter terrorism" to any budget line item.
Iraq from ~April 2004 to ~2011 was the massive retasking toward occupation and LIC. That sort of continued until 2014 in Afghanistan as well. This was also when CIA went from an intelligence agency to a global strike agency, and when JSOC became the second most powerful military in the world (after the US-except-JSOC).
2013/2014 was when they realized that they'd basically cannibalized/neglected the entire conventional military and couldn't fight real wars anymore and then did the "pivot to Asia" under Obama, which has continued under Trump. There are still some serious problems (like Pacific Fleet being...substandard, despite being critical).
They're now basically not planning to occupy anyone ever again, given how badly Iraq/Afghanistan have gone (and would love to get out of Afghanistan to the degree possible); the purpose of the military is now fighting near-peer adversaries (China, to some extent Russia) while continuing to make contractors rich and get congressmen re-elected.
>They're now basically not planning to occupy anyone ever again,
>the purpose of the military is now fighting near-peer adversaries (China, to some extent Russia)
I agree with you here, but this seems like a massive contradiction. I don't understand how one would win against a near-peer adversary without occupying something, e.g. Taiwan or Hong Kong or parts of Eastern Europe.
Presumably Taiwan or Hong Kong would invite us in if there was a serious threat from China.
I think the problem with occupying countries is when the people in the country don't want us there. Occupying companies that want you there isn't really an occupation.
I think you're mostly right, but it depends - and presumably Eastern Europe would want us there too in the event of a Russian invasion.
The problem when they "want you" is that your occupying Army now has to do things like government administration and nominal policing, something the United States military hasn't done, at least convincingly well, since WWII (one could make an argument this started going well at the end of the Iraq war but I would heartily disagree). It's just a different type of occupation.
It would be "maintain forward bases during a dynamic conflict with or without the support of the local government", not "try to turn Afghanistan into an 18th century state for the first time, or fix Iraq".
Could be. New military hardware tends to lag strategy by 5-10 years, and most of my examples first shipped in the late 00s. If we changed strategies in 2015, I'd see it around 2020-2025.
It'll be interesting to see if this new strategic priority is actually accurate in the near future.
The new strategy is mostly "not doing the other new strategy" and retaining our nominal 1960s-2000s focus. Doing things like keeping brigade combat teams at strength with armor/strategic logistics, etc. Upgrading existing Abrams/Bradley/etc. vehicles vs. switching everyone to MRAPs and Strykers, etc.
I hope this kind of conflict never happens; US v near-peer basically is vanishingly small distance from full-on nuclear WW3 total war, and even a conventional conflict at that scale (or a more limited scope but still all-out within that space) will be incredibly destructive to even the winners.
The wars we're more likely to see are second/third tier powers fighting as well as cyber. However, the lower probability but high severity events need to be mitigated, which is why we need the triad, a substantial navy, ability to rapidly deploy at divisional strength, prepositioned WRM, etc.
1989/1991 to 9/11/01 was genuine aimlessness and downsizing, missing the boat on a bunch of important developments, etc.
9/11 to Iraq War was massive IC expansion and trying to assign "counter terrorism" to any budget line item.
Iraq from ~April 2004 to ~2011 was the massive retasking toward occupation and LIC. That sort of continued until 2014 in Afghanistan as well. This was also when CIA went from an intelligence agency to a global strike agency, and when JSOC became the second most powerful military in the world (after the US-except-JSOC).
2013/2014 was when they realized that they'd basically cannibalized/neglected the entire conventional military and couldn't fight real wars anymore and then did the "pivot to Asia" under Obama, which has continued under Trump. There are still some serious problems (like Pacific Fleet being...substandard, despite being critical).
They're now basically not planning to occupy anyone ever again, given how badly Iraq/Afghanistan have gone (and would love to get out of Afghanistan to the degree possible); the purpose of the military is now fighting near-peer adversaries (China, to some extent Russia) while continuing to make contractors rich and get congressmen re-elected.