Christ, Farley, Please Start Work on a Different Book…
By This Saturday, Firedoglake will hold one of its Book Salons for Grounded. I hope that a significant percentage of the LGM commentariat will show up for an enjoyable evening with the commenters from FDL.
As part of the promo for the event, I have some thoughts on the political implications of independent air forces up at War is Boring:
Foreign policy comes from the collection of organizations that make up the national security state. If you change the constellation of organizations, you change the foreign policy output. Creating the U.S. Air Force amplified a voice within government for fighting short, cheap, decisive wars from the air.
As independent but related bureaucracies, the three military services naturally compete with each other for funding, roles and influence. In a crisis, the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff contribute advice regarding military options. However, through formal, informal and sometimes public channels, the services also make their preferences known.
Air Force officers not only tend to believe in the decisiveness of air power, they have very good professional and institutional reasons for arguing in favor of air power as a strategic catalyst. Service-oriented viewpoints produce parochialism, the idea that the good of the service and the good of the country are the same.
Demonstrating that air power can, on its own, decisively defeat an adversary and create a favorable political outcome flatters not only the preconceptions of air power advocates, but also promises to generate greater resources, autonomy and influence.
[Erik] To make the joining of our two commentariats even more enjoyable, I am hosting Sunday’s FDL book salon, on When Mandates Work: Raising Labor Standards at the Local Level. Rumors of the two sites merging may not be correct.