All The Things The GOP Candidates Got Wrong On The Military
Tyler Rogoway
Filed to: Election 2016
8/07/15 12:30am
All The Things The GOP Candidates Got Wrong On The Military
The first Republican debate was a lively one. Topics spanned the gauntlet of domestic issues with a few foreign policy and defense topics sprinkled in – mainstays of the Republican platform. So what did these 10 hopefuls have to say? A mix of hollow statements, generalities and a host of blatant inaccuracies.
It’s not easy getting substance out of any candidate for President when the debate stage is as stuffed as it was on Thursday night in Cleveland. Having just 90 seconds to get your boilerplate platform out there and then actually addressing complex issues is nearly impossible. As such, we’ll take a look what the candidates said and – more importantly – didn’t say when it comes to defense and foreign policy.
The fact of the matter is that only a handful of the candidates were actually asked foreign policy questions. One of the most heated exchanges came between Governor Chris Christie and Rand Paul, who are not known to have much love when it comes to how they would treat the NSA’s bulk surveillance programs.
Rand Paul demanded that personal freedoms are protected and warrants are garnered by the government when spying on U.S. citizens, while Christie accused Paul of not knowing what it’s like fighting terrorism directly, as he supposedly did as an the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. The whole blowout ended in a crack about Christie hugging Obama during Hurricane Sandy. It was the most fiery exchange of the night and probably didn’t help either candidates bid for the White House. Not that the rest of the field did much better.
One area where there was little difference between the candidates – aside from their level of hyperbole – was their outright disapproval of recent cuts to America’s military force structure, as well as their seemingly unified hatred for the Iranian nuclear deal.
Mike Huckabee talked about a metaphorical gun to our head and Jeb Bush talked about the American blood on the Mullah’s hands, but Rand Paul did mention a caveat to his lack of support for the deal that went outside the normal partisan bluster. He thinks talking with our enemies is a good thing, and referenced Reagan’s engagement with the Soviet Union as an example:
Paul- “I oppose the Iranian deal, and will vote against it. I don’t think that the president negotiated from a position of strength, but I don’t immediately discount negotiations.
I’m a Reagan conservative. Reagan did negotiate with the Soviets. But you have to negotiate from a position of strength, and I think President Obama gave away too much, too early.
If there’s going to be a negotiation, you’re going to have to believe somehow that the Iranians are going to comply. I asked this question to John Kerry, I said “do you believe they’re trustworthy?” and he said “No.”
And I said, “well, how are we gonna get them to comply?” I would have never released the sanctions before there was consistent evidence of compliance.”
Nobody actually articulated an alternative to the deal aside from that they would have negotiated much harder with Tehran, increasing sanctions not easing them, or seemingly not negotiated at all. American captives currently in Iranian custody were brought up in relation to the talks, as well as a highlight to just how little we got in return for the deal. In all, the mood vis-a-vis Iran was very dark, although a military operation to destroy Iran’s ability to ever build a nuclear bomb was not discussed.
All The Things The GOP Candidates Got Wrong On The Military
America’s declining military force structure did pop up on several occasions.
To wit, here’s Dr. Ben Carson stated:
Carson- “Well, what we have to stop and think about is that we have weakened ourselves militarily to such an extent that if affects all of our military policies. Our Navy is at its smallest size since 1917; our Air Force, since 1940. In recent testimony, the commandant of the Marine Corps said half of the non-deployed units were not ready and you know, the sequester is cutting the heart out of our personnel. Our generals are retiring because they don’t want to be part of this, and at the same time, our enemies are increasing.
Our — our friends can’t trust us anymore. You know, Ukraine was a nuclear-armed state. They gave away their nuclear arms with the understanding that we would protect them. We won’t even give them offensive weapons.
You know, we turned our back on Israel, our ally. You know, and a situation like that, of course Obama’s not going to be able to do anything. I would shore up our military first, because if you don’t get the military right, nothing else is going to work.”
Carson’s claims about the size of the Navy, Air Force and the readiness of our forces may be true, sequestration had a very deep, albeit temporary impact on readiness especially. This came on top of drastic declines in equipment inventories across the services that started after the Cold War, and then happened again in the later part of the last decade, and then again in recent years. Still, comparing the size of our Navy, or even the Air Force (aka the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1940) is a amateurish way of handicapping America’s naval or air combat capabilities.
Today, a single F-16 can hit four 2,000-pound bomb class large scale-targets with almost perfect certainty of destruction on a single mission. The same target set would have taken four strike packages with dozens of aircraft each to achieve before the advent of guided “smart” air-to-ground weaponry, and even then there would be a low probability that that a single target would actually been destroyed on the first try. During WWII it would have taken throngs of bomber formations multiple tries to hit those same four targets. In essence, although our aircraft inventory has gone down numerically, our ability to strike a certain amount of targets in a certain amount of time has increased exponentially with precision guided munitions and modern targeting capabilities. As such, comparing the size on an air force by simple
“then and now” metrics does not adequately reflect its capability.
The naval side of this occasion is no different. In 1917 naval warfare was about ship-to-ship within line of sight combat and shelling shore targets. Today, a single Arleigh Burke Class destroyer sports 96 vertical launch tubes capable of carrying a wide variety of anti-air as well as anti-submarine weaponry and Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. It also carries a pair of multi-role MH-60R helicopters, a 5-inch deck gun and other smaller armaments. In other words, using the simple number of ships to compare our naval capabilities then and now is an absurd metric. What is more valid is the force structure, as in the types of ships you have and their capabilities, balanced against their readiness levels and their number in inventory. So yes, while quantity has a quality all of its own, when it comes to modern naval combat, you balance capabilities for production numbers based on a finite budget.
Simply put, comparing our air force to the one we had in 1940 and or our Navy to the one we have in 1917 on numbers of airframes or hulls alone in order to rationalize the need to increase those inventories is highly misleading.
As far as Carson’s statement that Ukraine gave up their arms as part of an agreement that we would defend them if their borders were threatened, he is referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. This agreement is much more murky than a clear pledge or treaty stating that we would defend Ukraine’s borders against external attack. Furthermore, since Russia was once a partner in it this agreement, and seeing that the new government in Kiev came to power through revolution, it makes its validity even more questionable. As such, the decision to provide Ukraine’s military with conventional arms, such as advanced anti-tank missiles, is largely a political one, and it is a decision that some see as a sure way to escalate the the already highly volatile situation. Meanwhile, others see arming Ukraine as backing an ally up. Either way, the decision is not driven by a formal treaty or international agreement.
Carson was also asked about Obama’s signing of a law that banned waterboarding and about America’s need to fight “politically correct wars.” This was his response:
Carson- “You know, what we do in order to get the information that we need is our business, and I wouldn’t necessarily be broadcasting what we’re going to do. We’ve gotten into this — this mindset of fighting politically correct wars. There is no such thing as a politically correct war.
The left, of course, will say Carson doesn’t believe in the Geneva Convention, Carson doesn’t believe in fighting stupid wars. And — and what we have to remember is we want to utilize the tremendous intellect that we have in the military to win wars.
And I’ve talked to a lot of the generals, a lot of our advanced people. And believe me, if we gave them the mission, which is what the commander-in-chief does, they would be able to carry it out.
And if we don’t tie their hands behind their back, they will do it…
The use of torture, including waterboarding, for interrogations of prisoners at the hands of U.S. counter-terror agents remains a hot topic today, even though it remains unclear if any information was ever gained from these tactics that garnered actionable intelligence. We do know that these techniques have provided our enemies with an incredible recruitment tool and is a central theme whenever American hypocrisy comes up in conversation in relation to the Global War on Terror.
As for tying the Generals hands behind their back, this too is a controversial issue. If civilian leadership just gave the military a blank check, nuclear Armageddon would have occurred long ago. At the same time, when you look at Vietnam and even the bombing campaign on ISIS today, it is clear that too much political interference can greatly handicap the military’s ability to realize any true goals on the battlefield. As such, there may not be any reason to risk American lives and treasure in the first place.
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