【Article/Observer Network Columnist Chenfeng】
Donald Rumsfeld died On June 29 at the age of 89. He was once the youngest secretary of defense in the United States, the second oldest, and the only person in U.S. history to serve as secretary of defense twice, with a high position of authority and influence on the construction of the U.S. military that only Robert McNamara could match.
He wasn't just secretary of defense, he entered the U.S. government's inner circle during Nixon's administration, rising from the position of White House Chief of Staff to Secretary of Defense during Ford's tenure, and the White House Chief of Staff was the chief power manipulator of the U.S. government. His political enemy Kissinger said of him as one of the few people in Washington circles who combined the ambitions, power, and talents of politicians and professional bureaucrats.
After Rumsfeld's death, the American "Beast Daily" published an article saying that "the murderer who killed 400,000 people died peacefully."
The best example of Rumsfeld's ambitions and power is the Iraq War. After 9/11, together with Vice President Dick Cheney, he actually overthrew George W. Bush, usurped the decision-making power of the war, and did not hesitate to falsify intelligence to expand the war on terror to Iraq. Far from the interests of Iraqi oil, this is to take Iraq as the starting point, politically and culturally transform the greater Middle East, solve Israel's security problems in one fell swoop, and greatly expand the sphere of influence of the United States.
Rumsfeld finally left the scene amid the rebellion. Bush Jr. always stood in favour of Rumsfeld, but finally accepted his resignation as he was about to leave office. The war on terror, which should have been a cattle knife, deviated far from the United States' vision, and the result was "the more anti-anti-terrorist the more fearful." The war not only dragged the United States into great injustice politically, but also made the United States bear an unbearable burden economically. Militarily, it has left the US military scarred, and when the US military finally climbed out of the anti-terrorism mud pit, it suddenly found itself incompetent for confrontation between major powers.
In the United States and the West, Rumsfeld's evaluation focused on his ambitions, his power, and the damage to The War on Terror's national strength. But for Chinese, his impact on the construction of the US military and even the military trend of the world may be more worthy of attention.
In 1973, Nixon successfully ran for re-election, but the Watergate outbreak broke out and he was forced to resign in 1974. When Vice President Ford took over, Rumsfeld was appointed White House chief of staff. These are turbulent times. Saigon was captured by North Vietnamese forces in 1975, and the Vietnam War ended in a complete defeat for the United States. The US military found that the Soviet army has undergone qualitative changes in equipment, training, combat readiness, etc., and the US military has not only been dragged down by years of anti-guerrilla operations, but also seriously affected the hearts and minds of the military because of the conscription system.
Many countries implemented conscription, and the Conscription system in the United States during the Vietnam War was inherited from World War II. The unjust wars of peacetime have caused great social contradictions. People with money and ways to evade military service are examples of Clinton and Bush Jr.; people who have no money and have a way to run to Canada, and the largest immigrant group in Canada is still Americans, not Indians or Chinese. Only the poor, who had no money and no way, were forced to go to Vietnam to fight the damn war.
In the 1968 presidential election, Nixon promised to change conscription to conscription. In 1970, the Gates Commission formally proposed an end to conscription, but it was not until the end of 1973 that conscription came to an end in the final conscription notice. The real transition from conscription to conscription in the U.S. military was fully launched during Nixon's second term and the Ford era, and maintaining the readiness and cohesion of the troops in the transition phase of mixed establishment was always a difficult point, involving a large number of treatment differences, personnel and budget issues. When Ford took over as president, Nixon's secretary of defense, Slesinger, was temporarily retained, but Rumsfeld showed outstanding talent as white house chief of staff and was transferred to a new position by Ford, who became the youngest secretary of defense in U.S. history.
Rumsfeld did a good job, and the transition from conscription to conscription was successfully completed. The all-volunteer conscription system has largely solved the problem of the source of soldiers and the morale of the US military, and the longer service time of volunteers has also greatly stabilized the ranks of soldiers, which is conducive to accumulating and maintaining military skills, and also avoids the social problems caused by conscription, which is the most important transformation in the history of the modern US military. The conscription system is also gradually being emulated by many countries in the world, especially those with better economic conditions.
Rumsfeld (left) with President Ford on Air Force One. Pictured from surging image
At this stage, the United States was in a decline in national strength compared with the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War exposed the shortcomings of the US military's one-sided emphasis on large-scale mechanized warfare, but the transition to anti-guerrilla warfare has wasted the skills of large-scale warfare. The U.S. military's prided equipment superiority has also been greatly eroded. Economically, Germany and Japan recovered from the war, and even attacked cities, eroded the commercial advantages of the United States, and even shook the national capital of the United States. In order to stop the further decline of the US economy, Nixon ended the gold standard system of the US dollar, but also opened the door to the hollowing out of the US economy. The oil crisis of 1973 further exposed the fragility of the U.S. and Western economies.
Nixon and Kissinger pushed for the thawing of US-China relations on the one hand, and the détente between the United States and the Soviet Union on the other hand, while cutting military spending at home to win a little breathing space for the United States. However, Rumsfeld opposes sitting idly by and watching the US military's strength continue to decline, and vigorously advocates increasing military spending and developing a new generation of strategic equipment. He eventually led the development of cruise missiles (including air-launched cruise missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles) and B-1 bombers. This is contrary to the KISSinger-led U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
The cruise missiles of the Rumsfeld era were nuclear warheads, and combined with the Pershing II medium-range missile, it formed a strong constraint on the numerically superior Soviet army in Central Europe, and was also a strong countermeasure to the soviet SS-20 medium-range missiles launched by the new generation of mobile launches. At this time, the B-1 bomber was also a B-1A that took into account both high-altitude supersonic speed and low-altitude high-subsonic penetration.
Nuclear cruise missiles and pershing II forced the Soviet Union to sign the INF Treaty, and both the United States and the Soviet Union withdrew their intermediate-range missiles and nuclear cruise missiles. The treaty brought about a fundamental turnaround in the European security landscape and set in motion a post-Cold War security order. The withdrawal of the United States and Russia from the INF Treaty in the 21st century is another shift, but it is another topic.
After the INF Treaty, cruise missiles were diverted to conventional strikes, becoming a unique U.S. stunt for decades to come. The B-1A was dismissed because of the obsolete concept of penetration, but led the Soviet Union astray for the Tu-160, and he himself was re-admitted as a semi-stealth B-1B after receiving a new life permit. Cruise missiles and B-1Bs became the backbone of the most important quasi-strategic strike force in U.S. armed forces since then, which was the foundation laid by Rumsfeld.
Quasi-strategic weapons for conventional warheads are of particular significance to U.S. global military strategy and war practice in the post-Cold War era. Tactical weapons are used to ensure victory in battle, and strategic weapons are used to ensure victory in war. In the nuclear age, only nuclear weapons can be called strategic weapons. However, mutually assured destruction makes nuclear weapons practically only useful to ensure that the war is not lost, not to win it. Even if nuclear weapons were used against non-nuclear States, the moral counterattack would be devastating. This makes nuclear weapons, to a large extent, strategic weapons that are inconvenient to use.
But conventional warhead quasi-strategic weapons under the nuclear threshold are different. Range, accuracy, power, and penetration capabilities make cruise missiles and bombers the weapons of choice for the first wave of attacks in the U.S. wars since the Gulf War, and few opponents have interception capabilities, let alone reciprocal counterattack capabilities. This is the sharp knife of American military strength.
When Rumsfeld left as White House chief of staff, he recommended Dick Cheney to take over. During the George W. Bush era, Cheney served as vice president and introduced Rumsfeld to George W. Bush as secretary of defense, making him actually the supreme commander behind the scenes of the U.S. military in the George W. Bush era. Speaking of which, in the Ford era, Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. still had a holiday, and the Department of Defense he held squeezed the CIA controlled by Bush Sr. out of the national security decision-making circle, and the two did not deal with each other. But both generations of Bush recognized Rumsfeld's talent, hoping to learn from Reagan, and Bush Jr., who was in charge of the cabinet, especially valued Rumsfeld.
Then-U.S. President George W. Bush ( center ) with his Secretary of State Powell ( left ) and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ( right ) . Screenshot from a US media video
This is also the era of another transformation of U.S. military power. After the Gulf War, the US military was at its peak, but the difference was only quantitative, such as F-15 vs. Su-27, M1A1 vs. T-80, and so on. The U.S. military tried to use the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) to open up the qualitative gap and gain a crushing, "permanent" advantage.
RMA is not purely technical or tactical, but an organic combination of the two. Stealth, long-range strikes, and precision strikes make non-linear combat possible, with no longer front and rear lines and rears, and combat becoming highly fluid; high mobility and network centralization make it possible to engage in full-level, close-knit system confrontation.
On the other hand, military thinking has also developed from step-by-step battalion, front-line flat pushing, simple interspersing and encirclement to the "shocking tactics" of blossoming everywhere and striking simultaneously, and dismantling the opponent's combat system with the swift and changeable active strike of the Cu Ding Xie Niu style, making the other side collapse in complete dizziness and foot confusion. The focus of the new military thinking is to smash the key nerve centers and bearing points of the opponent's combat system, and crushing and depleting the opponent's strength is no longer the focus of the battle. For example, the F-22 and B-2 were designed on the basis that the F-22 used stealth and super-patrol to penetrate the shallow depth of the Soviet air defense system, hunt down early warning aircraft, and destroy the structural stability of the Soviet tactical system; at the same time, the B-2 broke into the soviet union's far-reaching depth, destroyed nuclear weapons, strategic command and communication centers, and other strategic nodes, and destabilized the stability of the Soviet strategic system. Thus, it does not matter whether the dismembered Soviet system of war surrendered or was easily destroyed.
Because the US military has an overwhelming superiority in strike power, the development focus of the US military has shifted to agility, flexibility and lightness, greatly reducing the time of dispatch and the logistical support requirements for long-range deployment, sticking to the threat when it is still in the embryonic stage, and calling for superior firepower to strike and eliminate it. As a result, the importance of firepower and protection has decreased, and the requirements for mobility have been greatly increased, including tactical mobility on the battlefield that relies on its own capabilities and strategic mobility that relies on transport aircraft or shipping in the war zone. The requirements for network centralization have also been greatly enhanced, including the tactical communication coordination capabilities of combat-level and friendly and neighboring combat units and the strategic communication coordination capabilities at the theater level or even higher levels. Special forces, the Stryker armored vehicle and the Littoral Combat Ship are the embodiment of this idea.
RMA has become a hot topic in the US military after the Gulf War, but by the time of Rumsfeld, the "silver bullet power" advocated by Rumsfeld is a concrete embodiment.
General Tommy Franks, the supreme commander of Rumsfeld's two wars with Afghanistan and Iraq. Pictured from surging image
More importantly, Rumsfeld is not just saying it, but putting it into action. After 9/11, the United States quickly decided to march into Afghanistan and crush the Taliban, and The commander of The Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, based on the successful experience of the Gulf War, proposed a combat plan that deployed 60,000 people and required six months of preparation time, but was immediately rejected by Rumsfeld, who wanted the U.S. military to invade Afghanistan and crush the Taliban not in six months, but "now".
The second plan presented by Franks embodies the RMA's philosophy, in which U.S. air power and ground forces of the Northern Afghan Alliance, guided by U.S. special forces, quickly crushed the Taliban's organized resistance and easily entered Afghanistan, avoiding the mire of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Of course, history proves that Rumsfeld still misjudged, and in fact the mistake is the same as that of the Soviet army: the problem in Afghanistan is not to fight in, but to stand firm. The mujahideen did not defeat the invading Afghans and Soviets because of the support of the United States and China, and the Taliban did not need outside support to defeat the invading American forces.
Rumsfeld's RMA transformation is in trouble. The U.S. military that successfully penetrated Afghanistan and Iraq was caught in two decades of anti-guerrilla warfare, increasing its troops year by year, reaching 150,000 people at its peak, and the U.S. troops shrunk within the fortified fortifications completely lost their mobility and flexibility, and the special forces were no longer mysterious knives, but fire brigades in grassland fires. Neither the Stryker nor the Littoral Combat Ship met expectations, and the combination of special forces and air strikes could not replace conventional heavy-duty strike forces.
However, the basic philosophy of RMA has reshaped the modern battlefield. Stealth, long-range strikes, precision strikes, non-linear combat, network-centric warfare, and systematic warfare have become new features of the modern battlefield, and Rumsfeld is the main driver of this transformation.
Rumsfeld began by cleaning up McNamara's mess and ended up creating a mess bigger than McNamara's, which may be a reflection of America's prosperity and decline. When Rumsfeld was the first secretary of defense, the United States was in its prime, stumbling and being able to get up and shake again. By the time of its second secretary of defense, the United States was aging but unaware that it would have to stumble in the same place and climb out of a deeper pit. Moreover, the United States is now facing China, a competitor that is fundamentally different from the Soviet Union, and the comparison is not in boxing, but in standing on the pile.
President Biden visits Area 60 of Arlington National Cemetery on April 14, 2021. Biden announced that all remaining U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Photo by AP Andrew Harnik/Photo
Rumsfeld famously said: "We have known known, known unknown, we have more unknown unknown". This is actually a philosophical tongue twister, and the title of his memoir is "The Unknown and the Known". Rumsfeld's ambitions, powers, and talents are known, but what is unknown is what would have been like if he had been in a higher position of power.
When Reagan ran for president, Rumsfeld was another considered vice presidential candidate. It is said that if he had become Reagan's vice president, with his thick blackness, there would have been no bush running for re-election and losing to Clinton. When Clinton ran for re-election, Rumsfeld also considered running, but eventually withdrew, and the Republican Party elected Dole as the candidate. In fact, as early as bush's first campaign, Rumsfeld also participated in the party election, but also withdrew.
History cannot be assumed, but if Rumsfeld becomes president of the United States, how much ugliness will he toss? This is his unknown.
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