I’m cursed with a long memory, except for things like where my car keys are or phone is, or what I intended to get at a supermarket. But when it comes to what could be deemed “political/military minutiae,” especially when I disagree with it; it seems like I can’t forget it. So, I recall it wasn’t long ago that the author of this article, former Marine Officer Jeff Groom, was "Singing Hosannas” to General Berger and chortling in The American Conservative of Berger (what is he, Berger’s “flack?”) that: "His plans are bold, ambitious, reasoned, and, given the current climate of the Blob, brave. If he gains traction, his vision has the potential to return the Corps to a lean, mean warfighting machine.” (And that’s to our benefit?)
All to the TAC Editor's scream: “Stop the Presses,” . . . Gen. Berger sees the writing on the wall, and wants to do more with less. But his battle with the Blob is just beginning.”
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Nonsense had also been spouted by the same publication that since some Marines were being redeployed out of the Mideast (supposedly), it meant that “Trump was ending the endless wars,” which that publication had insisted he was going to do even before he was elected. With no one there with brains enough evidently to recognize that Trump, and Berger, were merely redeploying the Marines for military aggression elsewhere in the encirclement of China (and with rotations to Scandinavia, the encirclement of Russia with Marines getting their share of that as well), while “retooling” them with far, far more expensive equipment, to be provided by the, wait for it, . . . the Blob!
But Groom let that slip, if anyone bothers to read links (Strauss and that Oklahoman would love those, to hide their “actual” message), with a Wall Street Journal link which provided the “rest of the story: https://www.wsj.com/articles/marines-plan-to-retool-to-meet-china-threat-11584897014
Quote: “The changes are part of a broad shift by all branches of the armed forces, which are honing new fighting concepts and planning to spend billions of dollars on what the Pentagon projects will be an era of intensified competition with China and Russia.
...
"Gen. Berger’s answer was to reconfigure the Corps to focus on a China threat. The Marines would fight within reach of Chinese missiles, planes and naval forces to blunt any aggression. While other services might lob missiles from long range, the Marines, in military parlance, would operate inside “the weapons engagement zone.”
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Spending “billions of dollars.” That’s what passes for "Fighting the Blob” at Responsible Statecraft,” if one has a memory. Which I point out only because it is too often put at the disposal of a “Republican/New Right” campaign strategy/platform in presenting a false history as “myth” of "the traditional Republican foreign policy of peace, non-interventionism, and Constitution,” when its actually the opposite case, as I pointed out yesterday.
Groom writes in his latest below: "To flesh out this concept the Marines have been busy investing in new technologies and refitting units, with $6.4 billion allotted in the 2023 budget for FD2030 items.”
Which may not seem like a lot, except this is virtually all dedicated to the “Blob,” Berger is alleged to be “Fighting.” With no need for these specific, extra, billions, but for “Berger’s Fight Against the Blob,” as he called it previously in 2020. And what elsewhere in Responsible Statecraft was called a “subversive new strategy,” as here:
"But it’s also “subversive,” as the Marine veteran of Afghanistan told me. “If Berger is right, if it’s possible to do better with less, then why can’t the Army, Navy and Air Force do the same?” he asks.”
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Subversive all right: subversive of the U.S. taxpayers, and the dupes who actually thought Trump was "ending the endless wars,” and of “Peace,” arrived at through diplomacy, not unadulterated “Strength." That a Goldwaterite Democrat carries so much of Trump’s Wars forward (though trying to do it cheaper than the Republicans, see below), doesn’t “transmute” Republicans/Conservatives (I’ve dropped “Neoconservative,” as it always was just an “offshoot” of the Conservative Movement) into “peaceniks!”
I could go through line by line showing so much of these articles are just so much gobbledygook, laced with military jargon, with a “message” not at all hostile to U.S. Militarism, particularly with the Marines involved.
What is virtually never questioned by so-called “Military Reformers,” is the “Mission” itself, with their “criticism” being in the realm of “how to make the U.S. military ever more lethal, while creating a strawman of the so-called “Blob,” which is the true beneficiary of such “reforms” as Berger’s fallacious “Fight Against the Blob,”
Having presented the “problem:”
"It isn’t hard to imagine if the DoD pauses amphibious ships for the Navy or decides to disinvest from them in the future, the Marines will likely be in the same situation with the majority of their LSMs. Indeed, the cards already do not look to be falling in the Marines favor. The first LSM has been delayed from 2023 to 2025. Following builds only add one in 2026 and two each in 2027 and 2028.”
The “political solution” is presented:
". . . wrote for RS in October 2020, FD2030 could be seen as the Marines positioning themselves as the “lead service for the emergent and increasingly empowered China-is-the-enemy lobby.” With a 2024 defense budget request of $842 billion dollars, one would think the stars are beginning to align for Berger and his Marines.”
But, "The OSD review and the delays to LSM shipbuilding seem to suggest otherwise."
But here’s both a problem, and a “solution,” suggested by the placement of this link:
"Last week the Pentagon released its fiscal 2024 defense budget request. While certainly representing a step in the right direction in some areas, such as an increased focus on munitions, the $842 billion requested [PDF] for the Pentagon falls $40 billion short in resourcing the military that our nation needs.”
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Add $40 billion to make up this “shortfall,” which is already being “remedied” by Republican proposals and denunciations of Biden for requesting too little, and presumably, Berger gets all he wants, and sort of putting the lie to all the “misrepresentations" of Gen. Berger’s “Fight against the Blob” and his “subversive strategy” 🤣 With the “Blob” looking like the Cheshire Cat,
On May 9, 2023, at 8:24 AM, Kelley Vlahos via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:--Great detail here from former Marine officer Jeff Groom on how the Marines have been trying desperately to get in on the US-China conflict strategy and hitting the wall of operational reality (and the Navy's dominance in the region). Please read and share if you are so inclined!https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/05/09/are-the-marines-losing-coveted-relevancy-in-china-battle-space/Best,Kelley--
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