US should stay out of land wars: Defense Secretary Robert Gates

[Feuer Frei!]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned against committing the US military to big land wars in Asia or the Middle East, saying anyone proposing otherwise should have his head examined".

Gates said he was not suggesting that the US army "will - or should - turn into a Victorian nation-building constabulary designed to chase guerrillas, build schools, or sip tea.
"But as the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanised land armies seem less likely, the army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations," he said.
Future US military interventions abroad will likely take the form of "swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they army or marines, airborne infantry or special operations," which Gates said "is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions".
Gates is set to leave his job this year, and his presentation was a farewell speech to the West Point students.
"We can't know with absolute certainty what the future of warfare will hold," Gates said, "but we do know it will be exceedingly complex, unpredictable, and - as they say in the staff colleges - unstructured".
The United States also has a poor track record at predicting the next conflict, Gates said.
"We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more - we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged," he said.


SOURCE (FEB 26TH)