ARE you afraid that the eco nomic downturn could get out of hand? I mean, really out of hand?
Well, don't worry.
The US Army War College is on the case - ready to handle "unforeseen economic collapse" and the "rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US."
Let me adopt my wet blanket posture here. I’ve been a fan of the War College and its Strategic Studies Institute for years and stop by its website regularly. The SSI is all theory and far removed from actual policy. I like to read it as encoded display of bureaucratic infighting. Before the invasion of Iraq, for example, they published a long dissection of the lack of planning and the consequent disastrous outcomes.
ReplyDeleteMuch of work the SSI publishes amounts to no more than student papers written for courses. The document linked to here belongs to the same special class as that critique of invasion strategy, a commissioned work by one of the profs.
In that regard, it’s probably more important that the author’s permanent position is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the prominent (post) Cold War liberal defense policy think tank. They have input with congressional and executive staff. Even at that, as the author states in his intro, the argument of the paper is preserve funding for the office now charged with these theoretical initiatives in strategic planning against any indifference or neglect during the transition to the Obama administration, a modest bureaucratic goal. Hard times mean tight budgets, after all.
This goal is twice removed from anyone being ‘ready to handle’ a domestic insurrection. It aims to preserve conceptual planning for strategic planning for exceptional contingencies. Having only skimmed the document, it looks to me like the colonel wants an attention grabbing example to put some topical zing in his argument. Like, “You thought 9/11 was a shock?’ I would also be very surprised if Army did not already have plans for this kind of contingency already on file somewhere. But I doubt that this work has any connection to them.
Chuckie K
kinda comical fear mongering, but puts the mindset on display.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the comedy is the real appeal of the SSI. The student papers are often a laugh riot. But no way are they even going to consider changing the name to The Fear Mongering Institute.
ReplyDeleteThe graduation ceremony is also a kitsch extravaganza. The War College has students from around the world. (Generalized and standardized fear mongering!)All those officers in all those uniforms tailored somewhere between soviet and fascist. It's worth the trip to Carlisle.
Chuckie K
they are war games geeks it seems mainly.
ReplyDelete