Andrei Martyanov is not at all impressed by the credentials of the incoming National Security Advisor:
“Mike is the first Green Beret to have been elected to Congress, and previously served in the White House and Pentagon,” Trump said in a statement announcing his latest cabinet pick. “Mike served in the Army Special Forces for 27 years where he was deployed multiple times in combat for which he was awarded four Bronze Stars, including two with Valor.” “Mike retired as a Colonel, and is a nationally recognized leader in National Security, a bestselling author, and an expert on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism,” the statement added. “He serves as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mike is a distinguished graduate with honors of the Virginia Military Institute. Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”
Is not an expert “on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and global terrorism” and especially on Russia, because there are about zero people for the least 20+ years in both House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs Committees who have any clue about the world outside and the modern warfare. He cannot be an expert, considering his alleged support for a delusional and utterly obsolete concept of “Peace Through Strength” for the United States. Waltz worked for Donald Rumsfeld–the guy who failed miserably in his understanding of the warfare and applied geopolitics. TOE of the US Armed Forces is a testament to the views of these people, not that anyone else would have fared better by screwing US doctrinal development so profoundly. Somebody has to tell the guy that “Strength” based on TOE from 1990s is not strength.
I had a very tenuous hope for Trump calling on Colonel Douglas Macgregor for the position of National Security Adviser, well … we all knew what was coming, didn’t we. Waltz is a “specialist” in high intensity police operations in Afghanistan, wow … Degree in “International Relations” from VMI kinda gets you some ideas. So, the “special forces” guy with zero understanding of technological and economic drivers of the modern war will be a classic US gung ho “advising” Trump. Well, looks like we exchanged one set of neocons for another.
I’m not impressed either, but then, I didn’t expect to be. There is absolutely no one in the US military establishment who is genuinely qualified to prepare for either the industrial element of a hypothetical air-sea war with China or the scale of the air-land war with Russia. Even the concept of an air-sea-land war with Iran in the Middle East might or might not be within the limits of the US military’s strategic capabilities.
Technology, demographics, industrial capabilities, and international economics have all changed dramatically since 1990 and that is not a coincidence. But as with the aphoristic generals always fighting the last war, US strategists have not even begun to correctly understand, much less anticipate, the current challenges; we know they have not because they would not be assuming that “strength” is their advantage anymore. Just as the British military still vastly overrates its own significance and abilities, the US military is not cognizant that it is now a regional power, not a global superpower.
And no one who has served in the military can claim to know anything useful about “national security”, not in a nation that has been invaded by tens of millions of foreigners without the military or the so-called security establishment doing anything about it.
This announcement is a bit more promising, although the two appointees are both clowns, they are from the sober faction that is trying to preserve the current system rather than destroy the world.
President-elect Donald Trump has officially named Elon Musk to head the newly created ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’