The U.S. Military Is a Helicopter Parent
January 13, 2022
Written by: Staff
An Oct. 3, 2021, Foreign Policy article by Bret Devereaux argued the United States should change the way it builds partnered militaries and create them as “auxiliaries” along the lines of imperial Rome. Devereaux is a capable historian of ancient Rome, but the techniques of around 2,000 years ago no longer work. In fact, the United States has an unfortunate tendency to follow the Roman model when building host nation security forces, albeit unconsciously—with disappointing results.
In its most vital and heavily resourced overseas endeavors, the United States creates partner forces as appendages of its own military and intelligence services rather than as independent and capable structures able to stand on their own. Like the proverbial “helicopter parent”—and indeed, sometimes literally by using helicopters—the United States often sees situations as too important not to do the hard things itself and doesn’t allow its partners the opportunity to learn from failure. That produces partners that find themselves unable to stand on their own when the United States eventually pulls out. Instead, they become dependent on Washington—whether it’s for air support, logistics, communications, or other critical enablers—and incapable of achieving the autonomy they will inevitably need in the long run.
After Afghanistan and Iraq, the mood in the United States is strongly against nation building elsewhere. But this attitude is cyclical and likely to change in the future given the scale of the United States’ global commitments and increasing temperature of its competition with China and Russia. There will be another time when strategic countries need strengthening—whether because they were the source of another damaging terrorist attack or to help them stand as important bulwarks against competitors.
https://frontpage.seattlerepublican.com/the-u-s-military-is-a-helicopter-parent/
