Lawrence Korb and others have advice for President-Elect Obama with regard to our military forces. As readers will know, I've quoted Korb often as, despite his being Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense, he makes a lot of sense to me.
Looking at the Defense Department alone, why Obama wants this job is beyond me - two wars going on, real difficulties maintaining a volunteer army, unbelievable cost overruns, accusations of torture, etc. But Korb etal have great faith in the second level command and assert that the major problem may be the retention of these officers.
Korb argues that, despite the fact that we are spending more money on defense than at any time since WWII, we do not have a better military. Moreover, this largesse has enabled DOD to avoid having to make choices; they can have it all. "Sound strategy and military policy requires choices about organizational structure, resources, training, and other important issues."
Somewhat surprisingly, Korb is not recommending cuts in the budget overall. He does think that we have to spend our money on 21st century issues and, by cutting back on weapons designed for 20th century warfare, we can save enough money to pay for new capabilities.
Korb really pushes the idea of 'people, not hardware' being the sine qua non of the 21st century military. He wants to increase the size of the force but without the lowering of standards we have seen over the past few years. And, of course, we need people who can actually manage DOD.
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