Our Greatest Threat

In the immediate aftermath of the Viet Nam War, the United States made a collective and VERY important decision. The National Leadership decided the Soviet Union was not only our greatest threat, but that our entire focus to protect our nation and our way of life was going to be on defending ourselves (and our allies) against that specific threat.

Let me tell you the short version of what that means…

Diplomatically, Economically, Militarily, and Informationally, we were focusing our national level efforts to defend against, and eventually defeat, the Soviet Union. Our intelligence network, global trade, diplomatic alliances, and our military were all focused on that single thing.

For the military, we developed completely new doctrine on how to fight wars, and specifically the Soviet Union. That dictated our personnel management, our force structure, our equipment development and purchasing, and our training. All of that was completely revamped to beat the Soviets.

To give you a taste, the Blackhawk and Apache helicopters, the Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the Patriot missile system were direct results of that focus. For the Air Force and Navy, ships and aircraft were developed and modernized to defeat the Eastern Bloc, including the Stealth Fighter. Satellite technology including GPS, mapping, and surveillance came from this.

In 1989, the wall fell. The Soviet Union was done. That military, thankfully, never was employed against our greatest threat. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and we saw what the full capability of our military could do. In 100 hours we defeated one of the largest armies on the planet. It was, in short, a cakewalk. Our investments were tested and proven. They paid off.

For the next 10 years, our military struggled with it’s identity. So did our diplomats and our intelligence network. Even our economy struggled to define who we were. The globe became smaller. Our allies became complacent. So did we.

September 11, 2001 came and we had a new foe to focus on; terrorism. Global terror was our new focus. For the next 20 years we attempted to revamp our military. There was more focus on Special Operations. We changed our force structure by shrinking the military and making it more “agile” to be able to combat our new enemy. We focused on technology. Frankly, we became very myopic.

While we focused on terror, different threats grew. China. North Korea. Russia. These are NATIONS. These are not groups. They have economies. They have governments. They have borders. They have MILITARIES. They have agendas. China owns most of Africa. They want Taiwan. North Korea is continuing to develop nuclear capabilities. Russia is trying to expand in to Ukraine.

The question is; who is our Greatest Threat? From that are a series of other questions. What are we prepared to do about it? What is our diplomatic strategy? How will we focus our military to defend against it? Could we fight them now if we had to? How does that enemy impact our economy? What relationships do our allies have with our Greatest Threat? Does that matter?

Until we answer the first question, we cannot answer the others. Until we answer the first question, we are vulnerable. Until our NATIONAL Leadership comes out and says “This nation is our Greatest Threat” we cannot move forward. We cannot begin to develop an integrated national strategy to defend ourselves and defeat our new foe.

We need our National Level Leadership, meaning the President and his Cabinet, to answer this question…

“Who is our Greatest Threat?”