Compass Points - House of Cards
Losing the 911 capability.
Compass Points - House of Cards
Losing the 911 capability.
May 29, 2024
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On the 25th of May, the President spoke at the graduation ceremony for the US Military Academy at West Point. During his remarks, the President took time to praise the great work all the military services are doing around the globe.
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There’s never been a time in history when we’ve asked our military to do so many different things in so many different places around the world all at the same time.
. . . Across vastly different regions and very different challenges, our women and men in uniform are hard at work strengthening our alliances, because no country has allies like ours; investing in deterrence, so anyone who thinks they can threaten us thinks again; defending our values by standing up to tyrants; and safeguarding the peace by protecting freedom and openness.
-- The White House
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The President gave specific examples of great things being achieved around the globe: Navy ships in the Red Sea shooting down hostile missiles and drones, the Air Force conducting food drops in Gaza, and the Army and Navy building a pier in the Mediterranean. Then he switched to the Indo-Pacific region, and he praised the great work being done to deepen old alliances and establish new ones. The President took time to praise the great work being achieved around the globe by each of the major military services -- each of the major military services except one.
The great work being done by Marines around the globe did not merit even a mention. The President could have mentioned the Marine MEU that went into Hati, or the MEU that intervened at the Philippines’ Second Thomas Shoal, or the Marine non-combatant operations to evacuate Americans from Sudan and from Israel. The President might have mentioned those operations except for one thing: they never happened.
For decades the Marines focused on being the 911 force for the United States. Always on-board Navy ships, always nearby when a crisis erupted, and always ready to arrive quickly to deter, assist, and fight. But in recent years, the Marine Corps has put less emphasis on crisis response.
Writing for Real Clear Defense, General Zinni and Brigadier General McAbee have written a powerful article detailing the decline of Marine Corps units, equipment, and capabilities.
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How did the United States Marine Corps transform itself from the world’s premier expeditionary force-in-readiness to a poor parody of the French Maginot Line in just four years? In his Force Design 2030 plan, the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps radically redesigned and restructured the Marine Corps to operate as a defensively oriented, narrowly specialized regional force under Navy command to attack and sink Chinese warships in the South China Sea. This new mission came at the expense of providing much needed crisis response and global force projection capabilities to all Geographic Combatant and Functional Commands in an increasingly unstable world. The crown jewel of this new warfighting organization are called Stand-in Forces (SIFs), which are small isolated detachments of Marines, armed with anti-ship missiles, persistently spread across islands in the so-called “contested” areas of hostilities: specifically the first island chain.
To fund these largely experimental units, the Marine Corps divested proven capabilities needed to fight and win today anywhere in the world, an unwise and unproven approach termed “divest to invest.” The Corps jettisoned all its tanks and bridging, most of its cannon artillery and assault breaching, and much of its infantry and new, state-of-the art aviation at a time when these certain capabilities are showing to be critical in ongoing conflicts.
-- Anthony Zinni and Jerry McAbee
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Generals Zinni and McAbee go on to arrive at a sad conclusion.
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The Marine Corps has transformed to irrelevance. The poster child for its new look is the SIF, a “house of cards,” supporting a flawed operational concept. Even on paper, the SIF has minimal utility to confront threats from adversary general purpose forces or unconventional/irregular forces like those operating today in places like Ukraine, Syria, and Gaza where belligerents are effectively using combined arms together with emerging technologies to locate and destroy the opposition using fires and maneuver to great effect. No amount of slick talking points or empty words can alter the facts. Now is the time for a serious discussion about the future of the Marine Corps.
-- -- Anthony Zinni and Jerry McAbee
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Compass Points thanks General Zinni and Brigadier General McAbee for their powerful article and also thanks the President who in his remarks at West Point made it clear that if the Marine Corps wants to add to its incomparable history, it will need to do more, much more, than sit and wait on Pacific islands.
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The White House - 05/25/2024
Remarks by President Biden in Commencement Address to the United States Military Academy at West Point | West Point, NY
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Real Clear Defense - 05/28/2024
Marine Corps Stand-In Forces: A House of Cards
By Anthony Zinni & Jerry McAbee
General Anthony Zinni (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) is a career infantry officer. His last assignment was Commander, United States Central Command.
Brigadier General Jerry McAbee (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) is a career artillery officer. His last assignment was Deputy Commander, United States Marine Corps Forces, Central Command
Under General Berger’s secretive guidance the Corps divested itself to irrelevance. It is a large force of 160,000 that cannot contribute in any relationship to its size. Its current, self delineated mission hardly warrants 15,000 Marines let alone 160,000. Congress will soon realize this and the Army, Navy and Air Force will gladly point it out. Their recruiting shortfalls will benefit from 145,000 Marines made available at the garage sale of people and equipment.
The nation’s inability to intervene will be an isolationist’s dream. To the liberal culture warriors the dissolution of the most traditional and Spartan military service is an unanticipated but welcome benefit.
As soon as the Maginot Line in the South China Sea is rendered obsolete the need for any USMC of any sort becomes clear. Probably a ceremonial squadron of about 1000 Marines as a Navy MOS. The Drum and Bugle Corps, Drill Team, Marine Band, White House support detachment and some Presidential umbrella holders.
The Marine Corps is and has been a pebble in the shoe of all five sides of the puzzle palace for decades and before that the war department and members of Congress and before that circa 1775 anyone who wanted to be a Marine and either didn’t or couldn’t. The last thing the transformational society of “elites” in Foggy Bottom want is a small seaborne force capable of short, mid and long term military and or humanitarian operations. General Berger and for that matter General Smith can paint it any way they want but they attempted and hopefully have failed to reduce the Corps to irrelevance. The open question is did they do enough to succeed. The larger question is what had prompted this dissolution effort. Not sure how it is today, but back 40 years ago there was a box that got checked by the reviewing officer on one’s fitness report. An officer could be marginal in many areas but the ONE box you wanted checked is “would serve with in combat”. If that box was a negative it was a show stopper. Something or someone had gone horribly wrong or bad. We all served with a couple of officers that we did not trust and did not like and did want to be in the TOAR with them. Sadly not knowing Berger or Smith, but knowing they came behind me, it is hard to imagine that they did not already smell badly. We know them when we see them. Equally we know the guys that without equivocation we would lay down our lives for if it came to it. It would be simple muscle memory and the pathological optimism in our personalities that would say “Hell we are both or all going to get out of this mess.” Then out to face whatever it was that trying to do us harm.
The next question is can we save enough of the blue water navy to get back out to sea and can we convince enough politicians that while they might not like us, America and Americans have spoken through the years, “Representative Pinhead, we may not need a Marine Corps but we want one.” Besides who will guard the gates of Heaven if not us. Exactly it’s a short list with one name, United States Marines…