\t5 ao\u00fbt 2002 L’article de Stanley Kruntz, sur le site National Review, en date du 2 ao\u00fbt,<\/a> est d’un particulier int\u00e9r\u00eat. Kruntz est Research Fellow \u00e0 la Hoover Institution de Stanford University, et collaborateur r\u00e9gulier de National Review<\/em>. Dans cet article, il revient sur une th\u00e8se fondamentale, qui concerne les limites des capacit\u00e9s militaires am\u00e9ricaines. (On a vu d\u00e9j\u00e0 cette question sur ce site, notamment dans notre analyse du 25 mai<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tKruntz estime que le d\u00e9bat militaires-civils qui se d\u00e9roule au Pentagone sur la question d’une attaque en Irak (voir Notre Faits et Commentaires du 4 ao\u00fbt <\/a>) n’aborde pas la question centrale, qui est celle des possibilit\u00e9s militaires d’une telle attaque.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab Even counting what the military is asking for in the way of insurance, total troop strength for the proposed operation would still be far below the number of troops deployed for the [1990-91] Gulf War. Yet even this relatively small number is considered to be too large an invasion force by the civilians at the Pentagon. In fact, the unspoken implication of the [2 August] report in the Post is that neither side in the debate thinks that we can invade Iraq if the troop requirements reach the high-end estimates of two, or two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb Why is that? Why would a force substantially smaller than we deployed during the Gulf War be considered prohibitive by both sides in this debate? Doesn’t this simply confirm earlier reports that our radically downsized military is already stretched to the limit? Don’t the very terms of this debate reveal that our greatly reduced military forces have narrowed the president’s options to the point where the invasion of Iraq itself may actually be called off? And why is no one even raising the issue of the need for more troops?<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tKruntz a d\u00e9j\u00e0 beaucoup \u00e9crit sur cette question, notamment dans National Review<\/em> : deux articles, coup sur coup, l’un le 20 juin,<\/a> intitul\u00e9 \u00ab New World Realities<\/em> \u00bb, l’autre le 24 juin<\/a>, intitul\u00e9 \u00ab Our readiness problem, 24 juin 2002<\/em> \u00bb. Cette abondance d’\u00e9crits sur la m\u00eame question, que personne n’aborde par ailleurs dans la presse US, est une indication s\u00fbre que Kruntz, expert r\u00e9put\u00e9 tr\u00e8s s\u00e9rieux, travaille sur des sources elles-m\u00eames tr\u00e8s s\u00e9rieuses, sur cette question que tout le monde veut laisser de c\u00f4t\u00e9, sauf quelques chefs militaires.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tKruntz a une explication pour ce silence observ\u00e9 au niveau int\u00e9rieur, qui nous semble tout \u00e0 fait acceptable : la conscription. Seul un r\u00e9tablissement de la conscription peut r\u00e9soudre la crise d’effectif qui touche les forces arm\u00e9es US, \u00e0 l’int\u00e9rieur de la crise g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de capacit\u00e9 que subissent ces forces. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab As I argued in Our Readiness Problem, the reason is political. A draft would divide the country and drive the Republicans from power. But even increasing the size of the all-volunteer army makes for deep political problems. For one thing, simply admitting that we have too few troops raises the specter of a draft. That is politically unacceptable. But even paying for a much larger all-volunteer force is a political nightmare. Especially with the expanded pay and benefit packages that the military now gets, a significantly larger all-volunteer force would break the budget.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tHors des USA, cette crise est \u00e9galement quasi-unanimement ignor\u00e9e. Les Am\u00e9ricains se gardent de l’\u00e9bruiter parce qu’elle va directement contre l’image de leur toute-puissance militaire qui est un des principaux arguments de leur politique de force, exerc\u00e9e avec quel succ\u00e8s. Du c\u00f4t\u00e9 non-am\u00e9ricain, et notamment du c\u00f4t\u00e9 europ\u00e9en, on trouve tr\u00e8s rarement une simple allusion \u00e0 la possibilit\u00e9 que la puissance am\u00e9ricaine ne soit pas exactement ce qu’on en dit ; il s’agit d’un cas presque parfait d’une \u00e9valuation faite sous influence, entretenue par la r\u00e9p\u00e9tition ad nauseam<\/em> de formules qui sont de purs slogans de propagande (par exemple le technological gap<\/em>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa r\u00e9elle puissance am\u00e9ricaine se situe au niveau de l’influence et de la capacit\u00e9 virtualiste de projection d’une image de puissance. La Force Projection<\/em>, d\u00e9sormais neutralis\u00e9e par la Force Protection<\/em> (crainte de pertes, z\u00e9ro-mort, etc), est remplac\u00e9e dans l’arsenal am\u00e9ricaine par l’Image Projection<\/em>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" R\u00e9alit\u00e9s militaires 5 ao\u00fbt 2002 L’article de Stanley Kruntz, sur le site National Review, en date du 2 ao\u00fbt, est d’un particulier int\u00e9r\u00eat. Kruntz est Research Fellow \u00e0 la Hoover Institution de Stanford University, et collaborateur r\u00e9gulier de National Review. Dans cet article, il revient sur une th\u00e8se fondamentale, qui concerne les limites des capacit\u00e9s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3540,857,3539,3538,1417,3194],"class_list":["post-65204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-capacites","tag-irak","tag-jcs","tag-militaires","tag-myers","tag-pentagone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}