BOOK REVIEW: ‘Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk’

OPINION:

SCALES ON WAR: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S MILITARY AT RISK

By Bob Scales

Naval Institute Press, $29.95, 248 pages

Had Tuesday’s election turned out differently, there would be little point to Robert Scales’ new book: “Scales On War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk.” While the campaign notoriously explored all manner of scandals, it never came close to a thoughtful debate over whether our defenses are adequate to protect us. Maj. Gen. Scales’ scathing assessment:

“Most of your Army is poorly trained and has no hope of receiving training above the squad level for another five years. The Soldier’s best friend, his rifle, was unreliable and weak fifty years ago. Our Soldiers carry the same rifle today (Because) the Army has essentially ceased the purchase of new weapons My grandchildren will fight with Reagan-era weapons.”

The effect of this bipartisan legacy of neglect, persistently shortchanging our beleaguered ground forces: “Sometime in the near future, an incident will occur that tells America that it has a broken Army on its hands.” The most likely scenarios: either another strategic debacle like the Desert One hostage-rescue or “a silent, creeping atrophy that sends the Army into another tragic dark age.”

If that sounds like an old soldier’s hyperbole, then you might recall that Gen. Scales is one of this country’s leading military thinkers. A West Point trained artilleryman, he won the Silver Star at Vietnam’s Hamburger Hill before earning his doctorate in history from Duke. The author of seven previous books on warfare, his final military assignment was as commandant of the Army War College. He then became one of the first military analysts to join Fox News after 9/11, his hard-hitting commentary making him a familiar TV personality.

Readers will appreciate Robert Scales’ candid conversational style, mercifully free of military jargon or the usual defense policy platitudes. For example: “In American wars, there is the other 99 percent, those who do not have to go to war thanks to the 1 percent who serve. A cynic might say that all the good citizens who shake hands with servicemen and say, ’Thanks for your service’ are really saying, ’Thanks for doing this so my son can go to graduate school.’”

Alas, that widening societal gap is the real reason why the author believes that our military is at risk. While Beltway experts may argue the virtues of “net-centric warfare,” or “effects-based operations” the reality is more sobering: “few concepts have emerged from (these) gurus that advocate for the Soldiers and Marines who engage daily in the bloody business of close combat. There’s just no money in that.” Worst of all poseurs: a president who believes that climate change is a national security threat. “Never in the written history of warfare, from Megiddo in 1500 BC to the Syrian civil war today, is there any evidence that wars are caused by warmer air.”

Instead, Gen. Scales believes that our enemies, particularly those in the Middle East, have watched carefully and are beginning to solve the riddle of defeating hi-tech American firepower. Like a succession of Asian enemies, al Qaeda and ISIS have learned that the trick is to hold the American soldier close, using either jungle or urban terrain to prevent air and artillery from rallying to his support. By offsetting US advantages in killing power, casualties will mount and, inevitably, American resolve will be tested. Therefore: “future combat will be tactical, isolated, precise . geographically remote, unexpected, and often terribly brutal and intimate … Thus, ground forces (Army, Marine and Special Forces) will decide the outcome of future wars.”

Now maybe those grim scenarios can be avoided simply by declining combat in any forbidding clime. Gen. Scales may even surprise some readers as he casually debunks forecasts of imminent combat with the usual cast of suspects: Russia, China, North Korea or even Iran. But it is always the wars no one predicted that suddenly appear. They represent the greatest threats to American interests — and thus to the “poor, bloody infantry” we typically dispatch to set things right.

Recognizing such stubborn facts, Robert Scales plaintively demands why we do not first set those things right that will enable the American infantryman to prevail. The common-sense shortlist: Armored vehicles acting as tactical “mother ships;” radios or cellphones primarily intended to link the grunt with his battle-buddies rather than with command centers micromanaging by remote control; enough tactical drones that American soldiers need not die for lack of information about their enemy; and even the advanced-design rifles, telescopic sights and grenades needed to defeat an aggressive, endlessly adaptive enemy.

While his book is well-researched, Gen. Scales is his own best source. He presents American readers with a compendium of expert advice, the peerless result of a lifetime spent studying war and its demands on a free society.

• Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel, is a military analyst and author on national-security issues.