The Politics of the A-10

The USAF has been trying to divest itself of the A-10 for nearly 20 years.  Early this morning the U.S. House Armed Services Committee voted to keep the A-10 flying for at least one more year.  Even an offered amendment to retire over 150 of the A-10s and keep 100 flying was (pardon the pun) shot down in the committee deliberations.  In the interest of full disclosure, while I am a fan of the aircraft (it is just cool), I have written and spoken out in support of retiring the aircraft.  Heck I think that the B-29 was cool and that the A-1 Skyraider was awesome, but they had their day and were retired.

Any of us over the age of 21 remember (or should remember) the images of the destruction of Iraqi tanks and trucks caused by the A-10s in 1991.  We also all should recall the file videos and photos of the A-10 firing the massive 20 mm cannon around which it is built.  Photos and video of the aircraft in action/training are still in current production. Even I, jaded, cynical, taking most things with a grain of salt, am impressed by this gun and think this aircraft epitomizes military hardware coolness.




But, the Air Force wants to get rid of this aircraft.  Why?  The USAF needs the money for the F-35 (you know, the expensive, doesn't work as predicted, needs improvement, costs tons of cash, aircraft of the future).  The Air Force also recognizes that while a grand aircraft, the cost of maintaining airframes designed and built 30 to 50 years ago is expensive--they are maintenance intensive and maintenance men and women do not come cheaply (remember nearly 70% of the budget is personnel cost related) and parts are expensive as well.  The US Army has rejected the idea of taking over the A-10 to use for close air support--the Army knows how much it costs to maintain and will cost in the future to maintain this airframe and want no part of that expense.  And for all worried about the close air support mission, here is a statement from the Secretary of the Air Force back in February 2015:
“the A-10 has done a magnificent job, but so has the F-16 and the F-15E, and the B-1 bomber has been a contributor and there have been a number of aircraft that have contributed to the totality of close-air support. So to me, close-air support is not a plane, it’s a mission.”

So why does a congressional committee insist that the USAF keep an aircraft it does not want in a time of fiscal tightening?  The simple answer is the politics of the A-10.  Support for the A-10 was pushed by representatives from Georgia and Arizona (where most A-10s are based when not deployed).  Further support comes from representatives from New York, Maryland and Texas--surprise, surprise, surprise, Fairchild Aircraft, Inc. has three large facilities in three states, want to guess which ones?  The A-10 means jobs in five states.  The A-10 looks cool and mean.  The A-10 is an easy sale to the U.S. public.  So, go out and round up a few former military personnel to testify about how great the A-10 is, make sure the press gets sound bytes from these testimonials.  Vote to keep an aircraft not wanted by its owners and voila--you have one of the results of the Armed Services Committee mark up of the 2016 defense policy bill.  Which for my two cents is bad business for the military, but makes perfect sense from the political perspective of the civil-military relationship.  After all, the jobs secured for having the A-10 have produced so much tax revenue that we have no need to trim costs from the DOD budget, right?

And on a totally unrelated note, a shout out to my mentor Steve Saideman, who covers civil-military affairs in Canada, I read a really good article this morning about Canadian SOF working with the Peshmerga against Daesh.  You can read the article here.

Never Again, Again and Again

"If we create a word today, does an event that happened thirty years before the creation of the new word automatically get recategorized?"

I was asked this question last week.  Should have written this post then, but things get in the way, important things like charity work for kids organizations kind of important things.  I was asked this question by an acquaintance when in passing conversation, as we were watching the ticker tape line on the bottom of the tv during a muted newscast, a note scrolled by about marking the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide (which is memorialized on April 24th).  The question is worthy of consideration.  But the context in which it asked was to ask whether or not the Armenian Genocide was a genocide or not simply because the word genocide (genos cidere) was created in 1943 or 1944 by Rafael Lemkin roughly 30 years after the events in eastern Turkey (modern Armenia) and northern Syria.  I am no fan of most words "created" since my own birth, finding most of them not worth the space they take to write.  Words originate as a means of expressing, explaining, and naming items and as such are useful tools for humans to use regardless of their particular date of origination.  My answer to my acquaintance was a curt yes without the meanderings of this paragraph.

And then my question in response was:

Do the Turks really think if they keep denying that the Armenian Genocide occurred and keep adamantly berating anyone who claims it did happen that the rest of the world will suddenly say that the Armenian Genocide did not occur?

Blame Games

I get really tired when I read the news, listen to the news, watch the news, listen to people around me, talk to my own sons, listen to myself, seriously contemplate my own behavior of the blame game.  People generally do not want to accept responsibility for their own actions.  I have argued that this lack of personal responsibility is why citizens of the U.S. are willing to give up so much liberty, since liberty demands a high level of personal responsibility.  Liberty demands personal accountability for your own actions, whether those actions be for your own economic/physical/social good or in the fulfilling of duties undertaken on behalf of others in your community/state/nation/country/world. 

Why am I rambling about responsibility and blame games today, because I read an article in the AP last night about China accusing the Dalai Lama of inciting self-immolations among Tibetans.  I kept a running tally in past years of Tibetan self-immolations, until it became too emotionally deflating for me to continue (according to the latest numbers we are talking about over 135 men and women killing themselves to protest Chinese occupation/governance of Tibet since 2011).

Self-immolation is first and foremost to be ascribed to the person who chose to take their own life in protest of some personally perceived problem in their life (in this case the sociopolitical problem of PRC governance in Tibet).  The person made a choice to douse themselves in an accelerant, start a flame, and place the flame to the accelerant on their own person.  Such an action may elicit pity/sympathy/fright/anitpathy/anger on the part of others depending upon how others see the justifiability of the action based on what reason is known to have led the individual to self-immolate.  Secondary ascription goes to those people responsible for the socialization of the individual who self-immolated.  Who and what causes a person to ascribe to a certain sociopolitical view (family, friends, religious guides, educators, etc.) carries responsibility to the extent that humans do not grow up in a vacuum, we are the products of the social setting in which we live (thus the very different views regarding the same issue held by people who live/have lived in different physcial and social settings).  Personal responsibility means accepting responsibility, for instance, for what I require students to read, how I teach students to analyze information, how I demonstrate analysis through lectures, etc.  Under this secondary ascription of responsibility, the family and religious leadership have greater responsibility in democratic settings and the state and education have greater responsibility in autocratic settings.   Secondary responsibility in the Tibetan case absolutely requires looking at the government and at the family and religious teachings.  Again, I really dislike blame games and still place the greatest responsibility for the choice on the person making the choice, even when I am sympathetic to the reasoning that led the person to the choice.

For my two cents, the PRC government representative who says that the Dalai Lama is responsible for Tibetans choosing to self-immolate is cheapening the personal decision of the immolating person.  The Tibetan who self-immolates made a choice, we should honor that choice post-event, whether agreeing with the choice or not agreeing.  By taking the choice out of the hands of the person and ascribing it to another source, the PRC's government representative is actually denigrating the human right to choose our own course of action.  Of course, we might ask, what do you expect from an authoritarian government?

Friday Frivolity

Hey, haven't done this for awhile, felt the need today.

I really enjoyed the retelling of "Beowulf" represented in the movie version of Crighton's Eaters of the Dead.  Also, for my two cents, lessons should be learned about how we dogmatically believe in our own martial superiority.

Threat Assessment

Like most people when I hear the term threat assessment my mind leaps to a military mode or to a personal security mode.  I automatically start to think about physical threat issues and how to defend myself, my family, my friends, fellow travelers of the moment, etc.  Or, if the conversation of threat assessment is in the context of international relations I think about security of populations, particularly the security of the population living in the United States.  Security, by the way, is not just immediate physical threat, and must recognize that security of general welfare is a major part of security of physical existence.  With these definitional issues in mind, let me turn to what I sat down at the computer to write this morning.

For the last 20 years I have divided my personal research and teaching considerations between two regions of the world--Sub-Saharan Africa and East/Southeast Asia.  In 1998 I was asked about my assessment of China as a military threat to the United States, as I worked through my assessment of the goals of Chinese foreign policy for a research project.  At that time I answered the question with a semi-shrug--I honestly was not certain of my assessment at that time.  I did note the growth of modernization of the PRC military and particularly the emphasis on technological advancement as well as hardware advancement in the air and naval services.  And in noting those efforts I did state that I believed China did not pose a current (late 1990s) military threat to the U.S. if our foreign policies clashed in the Asia-Pacific region, but could pose a threat in 15-20 years.  I also soft pedaled on the issue of China rising as global power, arguing instead that their interests were much more localized to the East/Southeast Asia region.

For my two cents in 2015, I stand by the initial part of my assessment.  China was not a military threat to the U.S. in 1998 if our foreign policies and interactions came into conflict.   Guess what, it is 15-20 years later, and guess what, I now assess the PRC military to be a force to consider if PRC and U.S. foreign policies come into conflict. 

Why is this reconsideration important?  First, we are still obligated by treaty to defend Japan.  Second, even with the one China policy, we are obligated to the defense of Taiwan (ROC) should the PRC decide that the ROC should no longer exist and determine to physically change the status quo.  Third, we have allies in the South China Sea region who are clashing with China right now over resource interests in the South China Sea and over ownership interests of the Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea.  Fourth, we have economic interests in the South China Sea--those little things called Sea Lanes of Communication, where ships transit with about 50% of the goods traded in the world today and over 80% of goods traded in the Asia-Pacific region.

Should I also reconsider the goals of Chinese foreign policy and my argument about the PRC's determination to become a global power?  Why yes, yes I should.  I was incorrect in the late 1990s.  The PRC is determined to become a global power and to challenge the United States for primacy.  I do not believe in global hegemony--no state can bear the costs for long enough to maintain such position.  I do believe in regional hegemonic aspiration and desire for primacy.  When a representative of the PRC speaks about multi-polarity, what they are directly challenging is the notion of U.S. economic/political primacy in the world.  There exist good reasons to challenge the idea of whether the U.S. is still in a position of primacy in the world and even if the U.S. is in a position of primacy multi-polarity still exists.  The PRC desires to hold equal position at the least and superior position optimally in relation to the U.S.  My blog is not the best place to discuss all of these issues in great detail as the purpose is to express some thoughts and draw some interest in discussions with those who might read my meandering thoughts.  So, I guess I will just have to do something academic about these thoughts and ideas floating around in my brain today.