Scanning this leads me to believe it’s nothing more than a hit piece against President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis. They’re apparently ignoring holdovers from the previous administration and failing to appoint new people of their own. And it whines about civilians not having enough say so over how things are run at DOD.
The Commission could have made a more compelling critique of military leadership if it had looked at the budgets of the individual military services. To date, they have shown no major apparent change due to the Mattis/Trump strategy of focusing on great-power competition. Plans remain largely as they were before Trump came into office—it’s just that his larger budgets have allowed the services to buy a bit more of everything, rather than reflecting any significant change in strategy. With budgets now likely to plateau or even decline a bit, the Commission might have made a larger contribution by telling us how to prioritize. In their future writings and testimonies on the subject, they should concentrate their attention accordingly, rather than reprise the false issue of a civilian-military chasm.
The full piece “@ Is civilian control of the military eroding?
The Commission could have made a more compelling critique of military leadership if it had looked at the budgets of the individual military services. To date, they have shown no major apparent change due to the Mattis/Trump strategy of focusing on great-power competition. Plans remain largely as they were before Trump came into office—it’s just that his larger budgets have allowed the services to buy a bit more of everything, rather than reflecting any significant change in strategy. With budgets now likely to plateau or even decline a bit, the Commission might have made a larger contribution by telling us how to prioritize. In their future writings and testimonies on the subject, they should concentrate their attention accordingly, rather than reprise the false issue of a civilian-military chasm.
The full piece “@ Is civilian control of the military eroding?
