What is in the background of the last two Commandants that convinced them that they, and only they, see something that no one else can understand? Whatever it is, it must be excised immediately to keep it from spreading. Semper Fi
The larger question which the Rand Corporation discussion leaves loosely hanging, is “to what end?” China wishes to be a global power, has ambitious plans, but in order to control 1.4 billion citizens it has resorted to a unique strategy. Give them enough goodies, internal combustion engines for their cars, electricity, perfume, Rolex watches and other consumables and importantly smart phones to “inform” the citizens and importantly to track them for the security state. Belts and roads is an old idea, basically a Silk Road 2.0, colonialism is an old and basically failed idea. Global ambitions? They have a tiger by the tail with their own population, distractions abound, but ultimately it all comes a cropper.
Perhaps another way to look at China is “who gives damn about what they want to do?” If the industrial might of the USA is allowed to run again in full capacity in which we roll our own steel, build our own ships, extend cheap energy to businesses and residents and make a majority of our consumable goods to include antibiotics as examples here in the Western hemisphere, then let China and its global ambitions run wild. They will find sooner or later a nation of 1.4 billion that they can’t control and over stretched political ambitions that they can’t support. They are there already, the current iteration of Mao Zedong runs around creating mischief and telling us what he and his college aged CCP members with little red books are going to do to us. Good luck with that, as your flotillas cross the vast Pacific Ocean do you suspect we will do nothing? We will have drawn China out to our playground not a confined naval battle space between the mainland and Taiwan.
All that said, if General Berger had asked for an increase in the Marine Corps T/O of a regiment sized unit, with a T/E of older rocket technology and perhaps a couple of older sidelined amphibious vessels and said we are going to experiment on a broad basis with placing Marines on littoral outposts, starting in the Pacific, we may extend this to other regions, and importantly, we want to understand the issues, specifically of logistics to support these far flung isolated units, than most of us would have said great idea knock yourselves out. But he didn’t and we know it’s been a non starter and a fail as “divest to invest” has proved so non accretive that even Congress is waking up to the fact that the idea stinks.
Which brings the writer to the point. The Marine Corps has for most of its soon to be 250 years been a small highly mobile, mission specific, maneuver warfare fighting unit. Show us the mess and we will land and sort it. The book “The Banana Wars” by Lester D. Langley which chronicles Marine Corps activities in the Caribbean basin and in the Central and South Americas, from the late 1880 to just before WWII, is worth a read. Land the Marines. Straighten out the bad guys. Get the water running, get the lights on and pick up the garbage. Install a new despot so we can come back in 5-10:years. Sounds mundane, so much so that Navy Crosses and Medal of Honor were extended to Marines who exhibited courage above and beyond.
Returning the Marine Corps to its primary mission is not old thinking, it is an extension of existing thinking and supported by decades of experience and combat operations from the small to the largest possible in global world wars. We need new senior officers that have some real vision and strength of character. We have them back in front with the Chowder Society II, but that’s been a big ask of men who have already given so much and asked only that we get back the basics of the MAGTF construct and build on that strength. General Krulak is spot on, we will be far more likely to be engaged in smaller global messes that we can’t envision yet, but one need only look at the existing hotspots to see where we will be needed.
We need to keep pushing, reminding one and all that there is existing statue, that we are not meeting that statue and either change the law or comply. In the meantime quit playing games and word smithing a line of nonsense that only the blind, lame and lazy are listening to. If push comes to shove with China it will be so big that every combatant nation is going to be involved, but the size and scope of such a fight and the likelihood that it escalates to nuclear exchange makes it seem too big to imagine. So better to not imagine and get back the reality of being America’s 911 force in readiness, on ships that float and are not covered in rust plying, the waters of necessity as is where is. Go where we are sent, do what we are told, willingly, obediently and of course with our unique brand of elan, esprit, ethos and of course our famous gallows humor. One can also wish everyone here, but especially our deployed Marines a safe and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Only by pursuing a global offensive strategy can we counter the PRC. To do this we need to return to an offensive, globally oriented, combined arms naval expeditionary Marine Corps. A defensive oriented littoral missile force cannot challenge the Chinese. Japanese forces in the Central Pacific in WWII could not challenge Marine and Army amphibious forces. They could slow them down, but the Japanese could not stop them. As we know by the two articles cited, as well as others, the Chinese are seeking markets and basing rights around the world. Only an offensive force can deter or destroy these bases. This shows the need for a return to the traditional offensive MAGTF. We need our artillery, armor, additional infantry, and other units back. At the end of WWI, the Germans and French developed their own strategies for a future war. The French chose their Maginot Line for a defensive strategy, and the Germans chose armor, artillery, infantry and airpower for their offensive strategy. In this campaign, which side won? Let us not make the same mistake!
First, they’ve used the Road and Belt initiative to good effect for extending their power to almost every continent. And they’ve used it throughout the Pacific to great extent.
Second, whether we want to admit it or not China has a blue water and a brown water fleet. They have 3 operational carriers (I believe), and a good mix of cruisers and destroyers. Their amphibious fleet is large and growing by the day, and they’re exercising those amphibious ships in real exercises, much like the Corps did in the 1930s. Bottom line is they have the largest fleet in the world, and will for the foreseeable future. China will not stop either their expansion of their fleet , their strengthening of their ability to project their power globally through both their blue water and brown water fleets, and their ability to affect the political structure of the recipients of their Road and Belt initiatives.
What does this mean for the Marine Corps? It certainly doesn’t mean planting immobile missile units on first chain islands. My bet is that with the size of the PLAN fleets the Marine Corps will be need not only in the Pacific but in other CCP created hot spots and battlefields throughout the globe, on every continent in the world. The Corps better be globally ready to fight these worldwide battles and only a strong combined arms MAGTF will be able to meet those needs. SEMPER FIDELIS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!
FD2030 is pure insanity and has rendered our Corps impotent and irrelevant to the other 95% of real-world threats, while limiting the Corps to being merely anti-ship missile units (which ain't remotely ready to stand up as a deterrance or to counter the CHICOMs in the Pacific) located on remote Pacific islands... Gen Krulak and so many others are correct and this criminal divestment must be reversed and our MAGTF lethality and capabilities restored by immediate implementation of VISION2035!!! Semper Fidelis!
What is in the background of the last two Commandants that convinced them that they, and only they, see something that no one else can understand? Whatever it is, it must be excised immediately to keep it from spreading. Semper Fi
The larger question which the Rand Corporation discussion leaves loosely hanging, is “to what end?” China wishes to be a global power, has ambitious plans, but in order to control 1.4 billion citizens it has resorted to a unique strategy. Give them enough goodies, internal combustion engines for their cars, electricity, perfume, Rolex watches and other consumables and importantly smart phones to “inform” the citizens and importantly to track them for the security state. Belts and roads is an old idea, basically a Silk Road 2.0, colonialism is an old and basically failed idea. Global ambitions? They have a tiger by the tail with their own population, distractions abound, but ultimately it all comes a cropper.
Perhaps another way to look at China is “who gives damn about what they want to do?” If the industrial might of the USA is allowed to run again in full capacity in which we roll our own steel, build our own ships, extend cheap energy to businesses and residents and make a majority of our consumable goods to include antibiotics as examples here in the Western hemisphere, then let China and its global ambitions run wild. They will find sooner or later a nation of 1.4 billion that they can’t control and over stretched political ambitions that they can’t support. They are there already, the current iteration of Mao Zedong runs around creating mischief and telling us what he and his college aged CCP members with little red books are going to do to us. Good luck with that, as your flotillas cross the vast Pacific Ocean do you suspect we will do nothing? We will have drawn China out to our playground not a confined naval battle space between the mainland and Taiwan.
All that said, if General Berger had asked for an increase in the Marine Corps T/O of a regiment sized unit, with a T/E of older rocket technology and perhaps a couple of older sidelined amphibious vessels and said we are going to experiment on a broad basis with placing Marines on littoral outposts, starting in the Pacific, we may extend this to other regions, and importantly, we want to understand the issues, specifically of logistics to support these far flung isolated units, than most of us would have said great idea knock yourselves out. But he didn’t and we know it’s been a non starter and a fail as “divest to invest” has proved so non accretive that even Congress is waking up to the fact that the idea stinks.
Which brings the writer to the point. The Marine Corps has for most of its soon to be 250 years been a small highly mobile, mission specific, maneuver warfare fighting unit. Show us the mess and we will land and sort it. The book “The Banana Wars” by Lester D. Langley which chronicles Marine Corps activities in the Caribbean basin and in the Central and South Americas, from the late 1880 to just before WWII, is worth a read. Land the Marines. Straighten out the bad guys. Get the water running, get the lights on and pick up the garbage. Install a new despot so we can come back in 5-10:years. Sounds mundane, so much so that Navy Crosses and Medal of Honor were extended to Marines who exhibited courage above and beyond.
Returning the Marine Corps to its primary mission is not old thinking, it is an extension of existing thinking and supported by decades of experience and combat operations from the small to the largest possible in global world wars. We need new senior officers that have some real vision and strength of character. We have them back in front with the Chowder Society II, but that’s been a big ask of men who have already given so much and asked only that we get back the basics of the MAGTF construct and build on that strength. General Krulak is spot on, we will be far more likely to be engaged in smaller global messes that we can’t envision yet, but one need only look at the existing hotspots to see where we will be needed.
We need to keep pushing, reminding one and all that there is existing statue, that we are not meeting that statue and either change the law or comply. In the meantime quit playing games and word smithing a line of nonsense that only the blind, lame and lazy are listening to. If push comes to shove with China it will be so big that every combatant nation is going to be involved, but the size and scope of such a fight and the likelihood that it escalates to nuclear exchange makes it seem too big to imagine. So better to not imagine and get back the reality of being America’s 911 force in readiness, on ships that float and are not covered in rust plying, the waters of necessity as is where is. Go where we are sent, do what we are told, willingly, obediently and of course with our unique brand of elan, esprit, ethos and of course our famous gallows humor. One can also wish everyone here, but especially our deployed Marines a safe and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Only by pursuing a global offensive strategy can we counter the PRC. To do this we need to return to an offensive, globally oriented, combined arms naval expeditionary Marine Corps. A defensive oriented littoral missile force cannot challenge the Chinese. Japanese forces in the Central Pacific in WWII could not challenge Marine and Army amphibious forces. They could slow them down, but the Japanese could not stop them. As we know by the two articles cited, as well as others, the Chinese are seeking markets and basing rights around the world. Only an offensive force can deter or destroy these bases. This shows the need for a return to the traditional offensive MAGTF. We need our artillery, armor, additional infantry, and other units back. At the end of WWI, the Germans and French developed their own strategies for a future war. The French chose their Maginot Line for a defensive strategy, and the Germans chose armor, artillery, infantry and airpower for their offensive strategy. In this campaign, which side won? Let us not make the same mistake!
I posit that China already is a global power.
First, they’ve used the Road and Belt initiative to good effect for extending their power to almost every continent. And they’ve used it throughout the Pacific to great extent.
Second, whether we want to admit it or not China has a blue water and a brown water fleet. They have 3 operational carriers (I believe), and a good mix of cruisers and destroyers. Their amphibious fleet is large and growing by the day, and they’re exercising those amphibious ships in real exercises, much like the Corps did in the 1930s. Bottom line is they have the largest fleet in the world, and will for the foreseeable future. China will not stop either their expansion of their fleet , their strengthening of their ability to project their power globally through both their blue water and brown water fleets, and their ability to affect the political structure of the recipients of their Road and Belt initiatives.
What does this mean for the Marine Corps? It certainly doesn’t mean planting immobile missile units on first chain islands. My bet is that with the size of the PLAN fleets the Marine Corps will be need not only in the Pacific but in other CCP created hot spots and battlefields throughout the globe, on every continent in the world. The Corps better be globally ready to fight these worldwide battles and only a strong combined arms MAGTF will be able to meet those needs. SEMPER FIDELIS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!
China's strategic objectives: regional dominance, global hegemony. Why? Wealth, power, glory.
FD2030 is pure insanity and has rendered our Corps impotent and irrelevant to the other 95% of real-world threats, while limiting the Corps to being merely anti-ship missile units (which ain't remotely ready to stand up as a deterrance or to counter the CHICOMs in the Pacific) located on remote Pacific islands... Gen Krulak and so many others are correct and this criminal divestment must be reversed and our MAGTF lethality and capabilities restored by immediate implementation of VISION2035!!! Semper Fidelis!