Unpreparedness is a Choice
by Shawn P. Creamer
03.05.2025 at 06:00am
Unpreparedness is a Choice Image
The 2020s are markedly more volatile than at any time since the end of the Cold War, resembling more and more the combustible geopolitical world of the latter 1930s. Great Power rivalries and power politics are intensifying, with rank-and-file powers beginning to align into what appears to be the foundations of opposing war coalitions. While a Great Power war between the free world powers associated with and formally apart of the U.S. alliance system and the authoritarians is not inevitable, the winds of war are blowing in increasing intensity. Leon Trotsky’s amorphism continues to hold true, that we “may not be interested in war, but war is interested” in us. The risk of a general war breaking out with the United States and other core defenders of the free world on one side and the autocrats on the opposing side is growing. Failing to adequately prepare for a protracted, multi-theater general war is a choice.
A State of Unpreparedness
The United States should be very concerned about the present state and trajectory of the correlation of forces and means between America and its allies, and the opposing confederation of authoritarian powers, including the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, etc. Over the last several decades the relative strength of the free world has been expended, eroded, or allowed to atrophy, resulting in ever thinner margins of strength and increasing areas of vulnerability, particularly if faced with a protracted general war. Achieving a to be developed wartime theory of victory will be very costly today, but the outcome of such a war five years hence would be in doubt based on current trends of America and its allies making slow incremental progress to improve their war preparedness, as if hoping the authoritarian threat will pass, while the authoritarian powers are aggressively pursuing rearmament programs that has already shifted the balance of power in key strategic locations such as the first island chain in the Indo-Pacific. One may dispute this assertion, but the United States needs to move beyond the misplaced belief that our American (and Western) exceptionalism will see us through and soberly face the facts as they are. The United States and its allies are unprepared for a multi-theater general war and our adversaries now have both a starter’s advantage and are better positioned for a grinding, protracted multi-theater general war that goes beyond one year.
In a multi-theater general war, victory ultimately hinges on the ability to maintain superior logistics and sustain the political will of the nation. While the United States is presently unique in its ability to project power globally, it projects this power under benign, relatively uncontested circumstances. The Homeland is no longer a sanctuary; America’s adversaries now possess an enormous suite of advanced capabilities to kinetically and non-kinetically attack civil and military targets within the continental United States, disrupting mobilization and force deployments, the transportation and banking systems, critical infrastructure, and adding friction across the entirety of the economic supply chain. Moreover, significant power projection capabilities currently in service and necessary to fighting a multi-theater general war, including Roll-On/Roll-Off shipping, Fleet Replenishment Oilers, Expeditionary Transport Docks, Army Watercraft, Amphibious Assault shipping, the Ready Reserve Force, the National Defense Reserve Fleet, etc., are aging out and rusting out at an ever-alarming rate with no coherent buy-back or replacement strategy in place. Absent a robust and resilient logistics and power projection capability we risk finding ourselves in a similar strategic position of the Japanese in the last great Pacific war, with forces withering on the vine across multiple theaters for want of basic logistics because the nation proved ill-suited to fight a protracted war.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/05/unpreparedness-is-a-choice/
