It's Worth It to Train Foreign Militaries

Over at Foreign Policy, John Norris has a rather pointed piece arguing the United States should be training far few foreign military officers than it is now. Some of his criticisms are very valid, most notably the lack of capacity for State Department Foreign Service Officers to fully monitor and provide oversight for foreign military assistance programs. These are programs largely under the purview of the State Department with implementation by the Defense Department.

But Mr. Norris goes down a treacherous path when suggesting we need a rubric in determining which countries we should assist. Certainly ideally we would want to engage with robust democracies, countries that have traditions of military subservience to civilian authority.  Trouble is, particularly for the more strategically important countries, that is rarely the case.

In perhaps a telling moment, Mr. Norris says:

[A] few months spent studying tactics and logistics in Kansas or Georgia rarely seems to slow down a power-hungry colonel when he is hell bent on toppling the elected government that just threatened to cut his budget.

Quite right, but how can we know which colonel has ambitions of a coup? And aren't we better served to have a relationship with that colonel? Could we not provide a moderating influence over his ambitions if we have a relationship with him?

The relationships developed as part of our foreign military assistance are real and strategically important, if intangible. I think there's a danger of pulling back engagement at our own long-term peril.  I would point to the pivot or re-balance to Asia that has been the talk in military circles. Given the lack of desire and resources for the United States to create more permanent or semi-permanent installations in Asia, foreign military assistance, training the militaries of our allies, providing foreign military assistance can help us re-balance on the cheap. If we intend to counter-balance a rising China, we need a long roster of friends and an expansive rolodex of contacts. Foreign military assistance gives us both. To set a bar instead of a floor, we imperil our own strategic initiatives.

A Not-So-New Line of Defense

SecDef Panetta is a busy man in his closing days at the Pentagon. Last week he removed restrictions on women in combat. This weeks he's approved a five-fold expansion of DoD's cyber security force, reportedly approving the move to take the force from 900 to 4,900 people.

Being 100% honest, cyber security is something I know almost nothing about, but I was surprised to learn DoD's cyber command had only 900 folks before. It's a big internet out there. 

Closing Thought: Selective Service for Everybody

A male friend of mine suggested on an email chain that with the Pentagon's lifting the ban on woman serving in combat positions it's time the ladies also register for Selective Service.  All the women on the email agreed with my friend.

So to expand on yesterday's closing thought: Equality means equal opportunity to be drafted into the armed forces, even though the odds of a draft are really, really rare.

Dissenting voice: Ryan Smith, a former Marine infantrymen, isn't as excited about lifting the ban because:

Societal norms are a reality, and their maintenance is important to most members of a society. It is humiliating enough to relieve yourself in front of your male comrades; one can only imagine the humiliation of being forced to relieve yourself in front of the opposite sex.

Glib response: Everyone poops.

Closing Thought: It's a Girl Power Wednesday

Really, two thoughts on what's become a girl power Wednesday:

1) It's about time women can serve in combat. Sometimes equality means equal opportunity to be shot at in a warzone.

2) Don't mess with Hilary Rodham Clinton. She p-owned the both chambers today in her Benghazi hearings and weather a bizarre question from Sen. Rand Paul to boot. My money is still on her not running in 2016, but today's performance did nothing to damage her candidacy should she pursue it.