Stardate 20020607.1811

(On Screen): Since before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the have been two fundamentally different ways of fighting wars. It's actually a continuum, with each nation picking a point somewhere along the line. The two extreme positions on the line are best epitomized by two participants in WWII: the US and the USSR.

The USSR fought a poor-man's war. Men were cheap, equipment dear. The USSR had nearly unlimited supplies of manpower (not completely) but weapons and ammunition and trucks and guns and planes were in short supply for much of the war. In the battle for Stalingrad, units would be sent into battle with far fewer weapons than men. As men with weapons were killed, those who had none were expected to pick those weapons up and keep fighting. The "human wave" is a legitimate tactic in the poor-man's war. When the USSR needed to clear a mine-field, it would summon a unit of men who would link arms and march across it. Those who survived to reach the other side would be decorated.

Stalin was willing to trade three Russian soldiers for every German killed; it was the only way he could win.

The US was entirely different. The US had a lot of men but what it really had in abundance was materiel. No nation, for instance, was more heavily supplied with artillery ammunition, and the Germans soon learned that any attempt to attack an American part of the front would result in withering artillery fire beyond anything received anywhere else. The US was the only nation which was able to fight on three fronts all of which were on the other sides of oceans and still win.

The US could do that because of the American industrial base. The advantage of a Rich Man's war is that casualties are relatively low. The USSR lost more than 20 times as many killed as the US did. The disadvantage is that it is grossly expensive, and you have to be willing to pay the bill somehow. Which is why it was that even though the US was a late entry into the war, it still spent more on it than anyone else. Not only was the US lavishly supplying its own forces with materiel, it was also providing vast quantities to all its allies, including the USSR.

No-one is better at fighting rich than the US, and we still do it. With the lead-time involved in producing modern high-tech equipment, it's no longer possible to wait until a war starts and then build the equipment you need. In WWII the USSR was able to start producing the legendary T-34 in quantity only after hostilities began. The US built the world's best Navy from scratch in three years. That won't happen in future wars: any weapon which you can produce at the last moment won't be worth taking onto a 21st century battlefield. So if you want to fight a rich-man's war, you have to do your building before you even know you're going to be fighting. A world-class Navy takes 20 years to produce. World-class tanks take ten-years from design start to mass delivery. World class aircraft take even longer.

You have to maintain a strong peace-time force. It's as simple as that.

There are only three alternatives: prepare to fight a poor-man's war and accept huge casualties, hope you can dodge the fighting (or convince someone else to do the fighting for you) or accept that if war begins that you'll lose, and play a big bet that you won't reach that eventuality.

I don't like any of the alternatives, which is why I'm glad my nation has indeed built up and maintained a strong peace-time capability. Now we're in a war, and we need what we've got -- and we do indeed have it. We need a powerful Navy, and we've got one. We're using aircraft carriers which were built when I was in grade school, but they do last that long. As expensive as they are, you have to go back that far to maintain a reasonable force of them. We're using aircraft which we began building in the 1980's. Because we've had them that long, our pilots are very comfortable with them. We have the most powerful force of tanks in the world -- not the largest, but the most powerful. They're ready to go; their crews are the best trained in the world.

Europe says that it will provide bodies, but not equipment. It recognizes that when war comes that it will be necessary to fight it, but Europe will not increase its defense spending enough to start the equipment build-up needed to fight a Rich-man's war. Europe is, in fact, relying on the third strategy and hoping that if war comes that the US will fight it so that Europe doesn't have to. Without American might, NATO military power is an empty shell, a gutted building with a pretty exterior but nothing inside.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Lord Robertson, Secretary General of NATO. He's trying to convince the Europeans that they need to increase their defense spending substantially in order to have armies capable of operating on a 21st century battlefield. If they do not and they are forced to fight, they'll be fighting WWII all over again and will suffer similar casualty levels.

He's on the side of the angels, but I'm afraid he isn't going to succeed. He'll get lip-service, but no important increase in budgets. So the next time war comes to Europe, the Europeans will fight it like the USSR did in WWII, not like the US did.

Or they'll fight it like France did in 1940.