April 10, 2015
"The Pentagon’s unchanging force structure is simultaneously wasteful and miserly."
In a speech on February 18 to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush declared “the next president should launch a strategic review of our military strategy so that we meet 21st century needs with a 21st century defense capability. Then we should fund that strategy.”
We should expect virtually all of the forthcoming U.S. presidential candidates to make a similar declaration. Come January 2017 there will almost certainly be a new leadership team at the Pentagon that will want to implement its views on defense strategy.
A new start after the election will also raise hopes for a resolution to Washington’s budget war, which Bush also called for in his speech.
Bush’s call for “a 21st century defense capability” implies he doesn’t believe the United States currently has such a force. Supporting Bush’s assertion is a force structure that, in spite of dramatic changes in technology and the geostrategic situation, has been largely frozen for nearly two decades.
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