American Abrams tank destroyed in Ukraine by Russian army
Photo: Russian MoD
The U.S. is already overextended – what will happen if we actually enter a war? – asks ‘The American Conservative’. According to the most recent National Security Strategy, made public at the end of 2022, America’s official policy is “there is nothing beyond our capacity.” Such a statement is ridiculous, especially in light of America’s obvious overextension in the face of multiple simultaneous global crises.
America’s efforts to wage a proxy war in Ukraine are meeting with slow but grinding failure that has depleted our stockpiles and given Russia plenty of experience defeating numerous American weapon systems, ranging from Abrams tanks to Excalibur precision artillery rounds.
Our seemingly limitless backing of Israel and its flailing about in the Middle East has further depleted our military stocks and required the repositioning of numerous naval assets. Because of this repositioning, not a single American carrier remains on station in East Asia, despite endless crowing about the need to contain China and wage holy democratic war for Taiwan if needed.
We are in over our heads without even being in an honest-to-goodness shooting war. Yet the foreign policy establishment seems only interested in expanding American commitments and entanglements hither, thither, and yon.
America’s military power is constrained not only by a shortage of equipment, but by a shortage of men. American recruitment has been abysmal, with massive shortfalls for successive years, which seems unlikely to improve anytime soon, especially given the widespread phenomenon of military families deciding to leave the profession.
American global ambitions are not becoming any more humble in the face of these facts. Rather than returning to America’s traditional Monroe Doctrine and a focus on hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, the powers that be will probably attempt to continue our forward deployed primacist grand strategy until it all comes tumbling down from one catastrophe or another.
One perfect example is the Navy’s plan to expand the battleforce fleet to 381 vessels, up from around 295 currently. Yet the Navy is also currently discussing plans to mothball 17 support ships because there are not enough sailors to crew them. If we can’t man the navy now at its current size, how will we do so with nearly 100 more ships?
In the midst of the War on Terror, numerous military planners became convinced of the idea of “hybrid warfare”, meaning that the wars of the future, even between states, would be similar to the counter-insurgency operations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, the Ukraine war has demonstrated that the potential for full on modern industrialized warfare that requires the mobilization of vast portions of society to wage is a very real possibility.
America is already facing a dramatic recruitment shortfall and is in no way prepared to replace the massive losses that would be expected in a conflict similar to that in Ukraine. An essay in the U.S. Army War College journal published in the fall of 2023 acknowledges that such a conflict would result in 50,000 casualties — roughly the amount of casualties sustained in all 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — in a mere two weeks. The authors estimated that the US would suffer 3,600 casualties per day, requiring 800 replacements per day.
It is not surprising, then, that the authors state that there may be a need to reinstate conscription, stating, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”
The DoD has already begun to issue reports detailing the vast manpower shortages of skilled industrial workers in the military-industrial base, and they would no doubt salivate about being able to flip through the national manpower catalog to simply force people to man the production lines.
Such rumblings are not limited to academic musings. The 2024 NDAA contains provisions related to the draft in both the House and Senate versions. Both would make registration for the draft automatic, with the Senate version going even further to require women to register for selective service as well.
Despite the mounting evidence of U.S. overextension and vulnerability around the globe, it is worth reiterating that official government policy holds that “nothing is beyond our capacity”.
We face a looming military disaster and potential wars on multiple fronts as regional powers seek to settle scores in the face of American weakness.
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