It’s not a good thing when the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff visits Europe and it leads to a story like this from his own press shop:
It’s not his emphatic answer that counts, of course; it’s the fact that he felt obligated to state, in response to a question, that the U.S. military is not in decline — and then say it again.
But Army General Martin Dempsey ultimately gets it right:
We are simply responding to what one might argue is a historic cycle of resources…The key is that we have to ensure that what we do in contraction is ‘expansible,’ so if we get the future wrong – which, by the way, we have an uncanny capability to do that – that we’ll have enough capability to get through the initial challenge and then be able to expand the force.
