Los Angeles Times September 11, 2012 Pg. 13 Shrinking defense budgets in the West are a warning sign for the U.S. When it comes to "hard power," the West is in steep decline. Virtually every nation in Europe is cutting its defense budget. Japan refuses to spend more than 1% of its gross domestic product …
The Air Up There How Sec. Michael Donley sees sequestration and the future of aerial warfare. By John Reed
DeM Banter: anything new here? ForeignPolicy.com September 12, 2012 FP National Security Foreign Policy sat down on Sept. 12 with Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, who took office four years ago after his predecessor, Michael Wynne, was fired over the service's mishandling of nuclear weapons. Donley took over an Air Force that then-Defense Secretary Robert …
ROTC Returns To Harvard By Jennifer Levitz
DeM Banter: USAF PA just might be missing the show... Wall Street Journal September 11, 2012 Pg. 3 Armed Services Training Is Back After Exiting Some Schools Over Vietnam War BOSTON—At colleges and universities across the country, Reserve Officers' Training Corps battalions often are seen doing drills on campus. But there was nothing routine about …
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U.S. Attack On Iran Would Take Hundreds Of Planes, Ships, And Missiles By Noah Shachtman
Danger Room (Wired.com) September 7, 2012 Should the U.S. actually take Benjamin Netanyahu's advice and attack Iran, don't expect a few sorties flown by a couple of fighter jocks. Setting back Iran's nuclear efforts will need to be an all-out effort, with squadrons of bombers and fighter jets, teams of commandos, rings of interceptor missiles …
How Resilient Is Post-9/11 America? By Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt
DeM Banter: There is so much more going on here...Schmitt starts off and it looks like we are going somewhere and we stop. So... I can only imagine this is to push or tease their new book, “Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.” If not...I am stuck thinking... and... why... …
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Geography Strikes Back by Robert D. Kaplan
DeM Banter: how soon we forget or think we have stepped beyond history...only to be yanked right back into it... Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. Winston Churchill Wall Street Journal September 8, 2012 Pg. C1 The Saturday Essay To understand today's global conflicts, forget economics and technology and …
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This Week At War: The Pentagon Doesn’t Have The Right Stuff By Robert Haddick
DeM Banter: Hence the reason strategy is so important...especially strategy during time of financial reductions and strain... What do we, as a nation, expect our military to do? We might should fund that... FP National Security (ForeignPolicy.com) September 6, 2012 Small Wars The Navy can't 'contain' Iran -- even if we wanted it to. Gen. …
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American Character Is at Stake by Nicholas Eberstadt
online.wsj.com / view original DeM Banter: Wow... nice article and very apolitical...facts are facts, no spin (please correct me if I am wrong). I used to encourage folks in the 100th to watch the History Channel 13 part series, the Story of Us...great series on how America became America...entitlements were not part of it. We …
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This Week At War: Shipping Out By Robert Haddick
SmallWarsJournal.com September 1, 2012 In my Foreign Policy column, I explain why missiles, technology, and budget problems are now conspiring against aircraft carriers. For decades, aircraft carriers have been the tool-of-choice for crisis response. Policymakers in Washington and four-star commanders in the field invariably have turned to carriers when they needed to signal U.S. intentions, …
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At Military’s ‘Turning Point,’ Panetta Avoids Bold Moves By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post September 4, 2012 Pg. 1 Instead of pushing changes, defense chief emphasizes consensus For most of the past year, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has stressed that the vast military complex over which he presides is at a "strategic turning point." A decade of grinding guerrilla war is drawing to a close. Defense …
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