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Worth following: A Washington Post story about the Air-Sea Battle, the role played in ASB of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment and its legendary director, Andrew Marshall, and the involvement of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Affairs, has kicked off a fight inside the Beltway. Quite a few people see Greg Jaffe's report as an attack on ASB - and if you did not know anything about the concept, you'd certainly come away with the idea that it consists of the Air Force and the Navy playing the China card to boost their budgets, at some risk to peace and security. I am on the record as not believing that. The fact that this quote is high in the story certainly tends to support the idea that the WaPo's goal is to paint Marshall and the CSBA as neo-Strangeloves: “The old joke about the Office of Net Assessment is that it should be called the Office of Threat Inflation,” said Barry Posen, director of the MIT Security Studies Program. “They go well beyond exploring the worst cases.. They convince others to act as if the worst cases are inevitable.” There's also the tried-and-true strawman argument: Some critics doubt that China, which owns $1.6 trillion in U.S. debt and depends heavily on the American economy, would strike U.S. forces out of the blue. “It is absolutely fraudulent,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings. “What is the imaginable context or scenario for this attack?” But nobody has advanced that scenario. A2AD and ASB are not uniquely aimed at China, and are concerned with maintaining a balance of power and deterring adversaries from making moves against US allies. In any case, Galrahn's Information Dissemination blog was quick to respond, contributor Bryan McGrath calling it "a timid hit-piece, full of innuendo and with a whiff of score-settling." Others placed Jaffe among a group of writers who have bought wholesale into ground services and their boot-centric warfare philosophy. Those critics of the WaPo stand note that the most powerful Army or Marine Corps in the world is of no use if the adversary - China or otherwise - simply keeps them out of the theater. But the best moment so far is from a commenter on Galrahn's site: Question Andrew Marshall's integrity, Mr. Jaffe should not. Check the roster of the Jedi Knights, we shall. Damnit, Sailor_Bob, you owe me a keyboard for that.
Quite a few people see Greg Jaffe's report as an attack on ASB - and if you did not know anything about the concept, you'd certainly come away with the idea that it consists of the Air Force and the Navy playing the China card to boost their budgets, at some risk to peace and security.
I am on the record as not believing that.
The fact that this quote is high in the story certainly tends to support the idea that the WaPo's goal is to paint Marshall and the CSBA as neo-Strangeloves:
“The old joke about the Office of Net Assessment is that it should be called the Office of Threat Inflation,” said Barry Posen, director of the MIT Security Studies Program. “They go well beyond exploring the worst cases.. They convince others to act as if the worst cases are inevitable.”
There's also the tried-and-true strawman argument:
Some critics doubt that China, which owns $1.6 trillion in U.S. debt and depends heavily on the American economy, would strike U.S. forces out of the blue. “It is absolutely fraudulent,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, a senior fellow at Brookings. “What is the imaginable context or scenario for this attack?” But nobody has advanced that scenario. A2AD and ASB are not uniquely aimed at China, and are concerned with maintaining a balance of power and deterring adversaries from making moves against US allies.
Tags: ar99, air-sea battle