May
17, 2002, 8:45 a.m. On
the Defense
A reply to Mackubin
Thomas Owens.
By Mark Helprin
itter
experience leads me to reply to Mackubin
Owens's gentle and constructive criticism.
To wit, I have been through this before. I have served in an army (and
air force) that was enchanted by its new and rapidly increasing technological
wizardry, which had given it almost bloodless victories against much bloodied
opponents on a number of occasions. This military was so far ahead of
its archaic rivals that it neglected to be watchful, to provide redundancies,
and to attend to staple items such as platforms, transport, and munitions.
Worst of all, its estimates of a future battle discounted or ignored the
enemy's imagination, resourcefulness, and perseverance. The result was
a disastrous war, a staggering amount of combat deaths, and almost the
death of a nation. This was Israel in 1973, when Egyptian low tech could
have prevailed were it not for the Israeli nuclear deterrent, frantic
American resupply, rapid readjustment of tactics and strategy to what
had been presumed were models forever left behind, and the incredible
valor of a boy named Zwicker who, left alive and alone in a single tank,
turned back the Syrian Army at its crest.
I remember that the
only thing that (eventually) saved the "world's best tank force"
from complete annihilation was a desperate call for the artillery that
had been written out of then current war plans as hopelessly old fashioned,
and then I think, for example, what if a future enemy decided to treat
all our wonderful electronics to a few blasts of electro-magnetic pulse?
Where would we be then? I want precisions means of attack as much as anyone,
and am willing to pay for them in vast numbers, but massed infantry and
armor on the scale that we must take account of in China and North Korea
at least as a contingency may not be so polite as to proceed at a rate
at which it can be picked off. There are a thousand possibilities like
this, all of which argue very strongly for belt and suspenders.
As for naval power
and allies, I am well aware of the need for basing and allies, which comprised
and important part of my argument. I do know, however, that the best way
to line up allies is to impress them with the scale of one's independent
power, which was also an important part of my argument. And with the military
we would have if I ran the zoo, we could take down Iraq purely from the
sea, just as we took down Japan. Yes, I want 40 carriers.
Meanwhile, my best
to Mr. Owens. Let us go forward together toward a stronger defense. We
many have different numbers in mind, but we are both pointing in the same
direction.
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itter
experience leads me to reply to 
