An unprecedentedly aggressive campaign of targeted assassinations via drones and special operations. It amounts to the same whack-a-mole tactics that alienate the locals; it just employs a far smaller hammer.
This assassination-heavy approach kills several expensive “birds” with one stone:
- It suppresses the whole Guantanamo debate -- as in, no prisoners, no problems.
- It sidelines the Army and Marine Corps’ shift to counterinsurgency, thus mindlessly reliving the post-Vietnam error of discarding hard-won lessons learned.
- It disavows any ideological (read: nation-building) ownership of the subsequent Arab Spring.
- And it signals to allies the world over that Great Satan will no longer be the “first to fight” when it comes to regional crises -- aka “leading from behind.”
Zooming out to l"pic L'grand - it could mean -
- “Lead from behind” when events clearly demand a Western-led international intervention, thus allowing troop reductions among the now less-needed Army and Marines.
- Near-bootless interventions driven by special operators and drones on the hunt for bad actors, but only when it comes to combating transnational terrorism in general, which also contributes to U.S. ground troop cuts.
- A cyber-intensive approach to Iran that helps justify, along with Chinese hacking, the Pentagon’s newest war-fighting command.
- And a “strategic pivot” to East Asia -- where old Air Force and Navy platforms, not to mention Ronald Reagan’s old “Star Wars” programs, go to retire on lavish government pensions -- to keep the “Big War” services reasonably happy.
Pic - "Drones Futur and au courant"
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