Former Secretaries of State Say Global Crises Demand Budget Certainty for U.S. Military

[jakeXT]

ARLINGTON, Va. —With world facing its most diverse and complex array of crises since the end of the World War II, it is crucial that the United States maintains a strong military driven by strategy instead of fiscal concerns, three former secretaries of state told the Senate Armed Services Committee Jan. 29.

“American military power plays an essential role in upholding a favorable international balance, restraining destabilizing rivalries, and providing a shield for economic growth and international trade to flourish,” said Henry Kissinger, secretary of state during the Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford administrations.

He said that current cutbacks, caused by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequestration, have made the military inadequate to deal with all the challenges in the world today.

“Serious attention must be given to the lagging modernization of our strategic forces,” Kissinger said.

http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stories/20150129-hearing.html

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. Kissinger is a war criminal, throw his ass in prison for the rest of his putrid life.

[onecaliberal]

2. Of course that is coming from a war criminal. Cut the fucking military budget already.

[jwirr]

3. First of all I think it was the Rs that gave us the sequestration problem. Then all those things we

are supposed to use the military for sound to me like more empire.

Favorable international balance? Favorable for whom?

Restraining destabilizing rivalries? That is a joke. Who is it who started the destabilization of the ME? We are not very good at that because we think stable means safe for our corporations.

Providing a shield for economic growth and trade? More of the same as we did in the ME? More trickle down economics at the end of a gun? Disaster capitalism.

I am sorry - same old same old. Now if they had really meant that they are going to face some real crisis situations in the future and not wars we are lied into THEN I might agree. I like what we are doing to help with Ebola in Africa. I think we should do something about that murdering idiot in Nigeria. And I am not sure that we are not going to have to stop ISIS because they really seem dangerous to the world.

But we need to realize that there can be no intervention militarily where there is a chance that diplomacy will work. And this is what the Rs ignore totally. And none of these things should be taken on unilaterally. If it is a real crisis then the rest of the world should be expected to help.

[jakeXT]

4. Loosing an empire is a crisis, I'm still reminded of Karl Rove's words

As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from the summer of 2002. At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with "a senior advisor" to President George W. Bush (later identified as Karl Rove). Here's how he described part of their conversation:

"The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/us-karl-rove-iraq-crisis

[bemildred]

5. Aren't these the people who steered us into the mess we are in? nt

[jakeXT]

6. Everyone did their part /nt

[bemildred]

7. True, a team, or perhaps I should say herd, effort all the way. nt

[jakeXT]

8. I think Leslie Gelb wants Obama to hire some of them

...

In Search of Truly Wise (White) Men—Only Those 84 or Older Need Apply

All of this evokes a sense of unease, even consternation bordering on panic, in circles where members of the foreign policy elite congregate. Absent visionary leadership in Washington, they have persuaded themselves, we're all going down. So the world's sole superpower and self-anointed global leader needs to get game—and fast.

Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently weighed in with a proposal for fixing the problem: clean house. Obama has surrounded himself with fumbling incompetents, Gelb charges. Get rid of them and bring in the visionaries.

Writing at the Daily Beast, Gelb urges the president to fire his entire national security team and replace them with "strong and strategic people of proven foreign policy experience." Translation: the sort of people who sip sherry and nibble on brie in the august precincts of the Council of Foreign Relations. In addition to offering his own slate of nominees, including several veterans of the storied George W. Bush administration, Gelb suggests that Obama consult regularly with Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and James Baker. These distinguished war-horses range in age from 84 to 91. By implication, only white males born prior to World War II are eligible for induction into the ranks of the Truly Wise Men.

Anyway, Gelb emphasizes, Obama needs to get on with it. With the planet awash in challenges that "imperil our very survival," there is simply no time to waste.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/obama-mediocre-washington-visionaries-overrated

[bemildred]

9. It is good to have minions and a budget.

It is true it would be hard to conduct foreign policy in a much stupider way than the Bushites did, but the old guard did little but manage our decline and sip the sherry.