The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz steams ahead of the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton during Malabar 2020 exercises in the north Arabian Sea, November 17, 2020. (Mass Communication Specialist Third Class Elliot Schaudt/IUS Navy)
Seth Cropsey, National Review: Is the U.S. Military Actually Ready for a War?
There are some worrying indicators within the military bureaucracy about our readiness. They should be fixed immediately.
The U.S. faces both the immediacy of great-power competition and the prospect of great-power war. Both of these require a military that is wholly prepared for combat. This preparation includes all the standard aspects of military power — personnel, matériel, and training. But most important and least measurable is intellectual readiness. There is no sign that the armed services, or the defense establishment more broadly, are intellectually prepared for a Sino–American clash.
A military organization’s first peacetime task is preparing for combat. Americans could be forgiven for forgetting this fact, given the state of our contemporary political debate, some of which has drawn the military into the political fray. This political tension combines with recent American combat experience to further conceal the military’s true purpose.
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WNU Editor: After what happened in Afghanistan in 2021 followed by no changes at the Pentagon. I would say no. The U.S. military is not ready to fight a major war.