The Force of Special Forces

Governments across the globe and US industries have good reason to parse details of the US mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The mission’s success will have profound effects on US military strategy, organization and spending, argues Lawrence Korb, former assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, in an opinion essay for Politico. In recent decades, US legislators have assessed various threats, gradually assigning greater danger to borderless terrorism groups than specific nations. Korb anticipates that the US, struggling with deficits, will prioritize intelligence gathering, state-of-the-art technology and intense training rather than maintaining large numbers of ground troops. He concludes by quoting US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.” – YaleGlobal