Well, that’s the word from a breathless Bryan Bender, over at Politico, citing both a “secret” (more or less) “high-level but low-profile” report on Russian military capabilities and recent congressional testimony from Lt. General H. R. McMaster:
“POLITICO has learned that, following the stunning success of Russia’s quasi-secret incursion into Ukraine, McMaster is quietly overseeing a high-level government panel intended to figure out how the Army should adapt to this Russian wake-up call. Partly, it is a tacit admission of failure on the part of the Army — and the U.S. government more broadly.
“‘It is clear that while our Army was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia studied U.S. capabilities and vulnerabilities and embarked on an ambitious and largely successful modernization effort,’ McMaster told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. ‘In Ukraine, for example, the combination of unmanned aerial systems and offensive cyber and advanced electronic warfare capabilities depict a high degree of technological sophistication.’”
Sounds bad, right? Well, it gets worse.
“McMaster added that ‘Russia possesses a variety of rocket, missile and cannon artillery systems that outrange and are more lethal than U.S. Army artillery systems and munitions.’ Its tanks, meanwhile, are so improved that they are ‘largely invulnerable to anti-tank missiles,’ says retired General Wesley Clark, who served as NATO commander from 1997 to 2000 and has been sounding the alarm about what the Ukraine conflict means for the U.S. military.”
Well, in 2015 the U.S. spent about $597.5 billion on defense, while Russia’s budget was about $51.6 billion. So, Lt. General McMaster, have you and the rest of the brass hat boys got some ’splainin’ to do?
Afterwords
Years ago, McMasters wrote an excellent book, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, accusing the joint chiefs of lacking the nerve to tell their civilian masters that committing U.S. troops in Vietnam was likely to lead to disaster. Now he seems intent on telling congressional defense hawks exactly what they want to hear.
You will not find any budget numbers in Bryan’s article, which pumps unashamedly for increased Pentagon spending, despite the fact that we outspend Russia 10 to 1 and despite the fact that there is no reason why we should go to war with one another in the first place. Despite all this desperate hype, Russia is no threat to the U.S. Furthermore, it’s effectively surrounded by Germany, China, and Japan, three nations that all have larger and more sophisticated economies than Russia, as well as long histories of mutual distrust and hostilities with that nation. It’s Putin who’s in a hole, not us.
