A former partner in a top-10 global management consulting firm, Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. Two of his non-fiction articles received annual literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. He is also a national bestselling author of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and special operations forces in action at their bravest and best. Joe holds a master's degree in math from MIT, earned under a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He worked as an intern at the Argonne National Laboratory. Previously a qualified actuary for twenty years, with extensive experience at interpreting policy implications of dire "what if" scenarios, he is now a member of the Society for Risk Analysis, a non-partisan international scholarly body headquartered in McLean, VA.
Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. Joe is a Life Member of the following Navy-related organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. During 2004, after having been a guest luncheon speaker at their Annual National Convention, Joe became a sponsored Life Associate Member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc. He was recently made an Honorary Life Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans of America, partly in recognition of his pro bono work for Operation Seabees Knowledge.
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March 10, 2005
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
"I never saw it coming" is a frequent lament among people who've been caught by surprise in a car crash. The corporate management buzzword for the same sort of ruined day, when a business calamity approaches and then clobbers its unseeing victim, is called being "blindsided." Nations get blindsided too. For national populations, the ultimate calamity is having to cope with an unexpected aggressor's act of war. December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001 are two cases in point of how recognizing precursor red-flags for what they are, and preparing to deflect or absorb the impending hard impact, can defy the best minds and best gadgetry in each U.S. generation.
It's thought-provoking to realize that, in barely two more months -- before this coming Memorial Day -- as much time will have passed since 9/11/01 as the entire duration of America's formally declared involvement in World War II. It doesn't feel like so long. Maybe that's because the Global War on Terror is such a different sort of conflict compared to W.W.II. More likely it's because of the lesser intensity. But some of the many distinctions between the two wars, I believe, are really red herrings. There are fundamental similarities, lurking not far beneath the veneer of the differences. The facts of their comparability carry important lessons that Americans at large appear to not be learning. This missed self-education, the duty of every responsible leader and each concerned citizen, could cost us dearly if we don't close the knowledge and insight gaps rather soon. My premise for this essay is that history does indeed repeat itself, and thus by analogy errors of the past, if recognized as such and projected forward, will help us not make the same mistakes again. I'll save what I think are the biggest lessons for last.
I mentioned red herrings. Let's clean some fish.
World War II as FDR and Truman fought it had no articulate exit strategy, beyond the vague demand for "unconditional surrender." World War II, in its day, was an asymmetric war -- levels of technology, layouts of geography, belligerent ideology, all were very imbalanced between the Allies and the Axis. Nuclear proliferation was a serious issue then, too: Germany, Japan, and the USSR had their own atomic bomb projects during the war. And speaking of Allies and Axis, the coalitions on both sides in that contest were distrustful of their partners, amorally manipulative in their supposedly collaborative planning, and deeply selfish in their near-term actions and post-war aims.
The U.S. spoiled the UK's and France's last chance to rebuild their Third World empires, even as Stalin consolidated a new empire of his own. We didn't do this from pure altruism -- commercial interests, and vying to project diplomatic power, were key drivers behind our policy of self-determination for liberated peoples. Nor could we claim to have invented the latter idea. The seeds of emergent nationalism, and also of ethnic-religious strife, had been planted much earlier than 1945. They were sprouting from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia, to the Muslim enclaves in the southern USSR and the Balkans -- and beyond -- well before V-J Day.
During World War II, the U.S. became so fixated on winning the war that it didn't look past the end of its nose at the real costs in money and blood of winning and maintaining the subsequent peace. The Marshall Plan and the long occupations were the least of it. After "major combat" was over, disarmament and budget cuts were swift, even precipitate. Then came the real shockeroos. The Korean War, on the UN side, was fought at the start with World War II weapons and weary or poorly trained troops, while the communists -- supplied by Stalin -- were in some ways a step or two ahead.
So transformation was declared. What this meant, back then, seems to have depended on whom you asked: Nuclear weapons made conventional arms irrelevant, and therefore unnecessary. Jet fighters would duel from now on only with missiles, no more with guns. Aircraft carriers were obsolete. Submarines were a solution in search of a problem that wasn't there -- or was it?
(continued)
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