{"id":65706,"date":"2003-08-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/08\/11\/il-faut-se-donner-les-moyens-de-faire-ce-que-lon-veut-faire\/"},"modified":"2003-08-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-11T00:00:00","slug":"il-faut-se-donner-les-moyens-de-faire-ce-que-lon-veut-faire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/08\/11\/il-faut-se-donner-les-moyens-de-faire-ce-que-lon-veut-faire\/","title":{"rendered":"Il faut se donner les moyens de faire ce que l’on veut faire<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Il faut se donner les moyens de faire ce que l’on veut faire<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t11 ao\u00fbt 2003 Le d\u00e9bat devient s\u00e9rieux d\u00e9sormais, au sein de la droite radicale et id\u00e9ologique qui inspire et soutient GW et sa politique. Comme on peut s’y attendre, il se fait entre la branche conservatrice (Rumsfeld et compagnie), repr\u00e9sentant les nationalistes am\u00e9ricanistes, et la branche lib\u00e9rale-interventionniste (n\u00e9o-conservateurs, ralliant enfin les ex-lib\u00e9raux et les ex-progressistes dans une politique d’intervention imp\u00e9rialiste maximale).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe d\u00e9bat devient s\u00e9rieux parce qu’il porte sur l’essentiel pour cette administration et pour les forces bureaucratiques qui s’affrontent, les perspectives budg\u00e9taires, la structure des forces arm\u00e9es US, leur avenir, par cons\u00e9quent la suite de la politique d’intervention et de conqu\u00eate d\u00e9termin\u00e9e par les moyens, y compris la politique suivie ou \u00e0 suivre en Irak. De fa\u00e7on tr\u00e8s concr\u00e8te, la question porte sur l’ampleur du budget DoD et sur l’effectif des forces terrestres am\u00e9ricaines, c’est-\u00e0-dire l’U.S. Army. (Question d\u00e9j\u00e0 implicitement \u00e9voqu\u00e9e par le nouveau chef d’\u00e9tat-major de l’U.S. Army, lors de son audition de confirmation devant le Congr\u00e8s. Le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Schoomaker, pourtant un homme de Rumsfeld, a r\u00e9pondu qu’il devait faire une estimation pour voir s’il avait besoin de troupes et de structures suppl\u00e9mentaires, mais qu’\u00ab il sentait intuitivement<\/em> \u00bb qu’il en aurait besoin.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe probl\u00e8me est d\u00e9sormais abord\u00e9 de fa\u00e7on tr\u00e8s s\u00e9rieuse par la presse la plus int\u00e9ress\u00e9e par cette question. T\u00e9moin, cet article du Jane’s Defence Group, paru le 6 ao\u00fbt,<\/a> d\u00e9veloppant le th\u00e8me d\u00e9j\u00e0 connu (il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9tudi\u00e9 d’un point de vue th\u00e9orique par Paul Kennedy) de l’\u00ab imperial overstretch<\/em> \u00bb.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab At first sight, the suggestion that US forces are overstretched appears startling. In the last three years, the US military has successfully removed from power no less than three governments that, for one reason or another, Washington did not like: in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, this has been accomplished with a relatively small number of troops and surgical strikes, creating vast destruction to the enemy but leaving US troops more or less unscathed. Even if US reinforcements are now required in Iraq and the country’s occupation lasts longer than originally envisaged, the deployment in Southwest Asia will not involve more than a quarter of the USA’s total military might.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Seen from this perspective, the USA remains more than capable of holding Iraq down, while confronting North Korea and Iran – its next main targets. Washington’s declared policy of being ready to fight two major wars around the world at the same time remains, therefore, intact.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb However, this is only part of the story. Twenty-one of the US Army’s 33 regular combat brigades are already on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans, amounting to roughly 250,000 fighting men and women. And this does not include a substantial number of US troops regularly stationed in Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan, or smaller contingents now scattered around the world. A traditional calculation assumes that for every soldier deployed on an active mission, two more are required to be kept in reserve, either in order to rotate those in action or to prepare for that rotation. Under this assumption, the USA has already reached its limit today. But, to the frustration of the Pentagon, neither US diplomatic priorities nor the sheer pace of international developments appears to take this into account.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The cost of occupying and rebuilding Iraq now runs at roughly US$4bn a month and is rising. More importantly for US military planners, it also costs, on average, the life of one US soldier a day. Furthermore, Washington has already decided that it will make no further cuts in its presence in Europe and cannot extricate itself from Afghanistan. Given the North Korean situation, no cuts in US troops can be expected in Asia either, notwithstanding the planned redeployment of US forces inside South Korea. And, to cap it all, Washington is now certain to deploy troops in Liberia.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tEffectivement, ce d\u00e9bat sur les capacit\u00e9s pour d\u00e9velopper une politique dont la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence imp\u00e9riale est in\u00e9vitable, qui avait d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 lanc\u00e9 sur le plan plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des d\u00e9penses du DoD<\/a>, en marge de la campagne pr\u00e9sidentielle de 2000 et dans l’univers pr\u00e9-9\/11<\/a>, touche des points conceptuels essentiels o\u00f9 les grandes tendances de la force id\u00e9ologique inspiratrice de la politique actuelle peuvent se diviser gravement.<\/a> Tout cela, le d\u00e9bat et la s\u00e9paration possible jusqu’\u00e0 l’opposition, sont des questions en suspens depuis des ann\u00e9es.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSur la question des forces arm\u00e9es elles-m\u00eames, on trouve deux grandes tendances et une tendance annexe, d’opportunit\u00e9 :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• La tendance des nationalistes comme Rumsfeld, qui acceptent des projets imp\u00e9riaux, \u00e9ventuellement habill\u00e9s de consid\u00e9rations id\u00e9ologiques am\u00e9ricanistes mais ne veulent pas, pour cela, \u00e9tendre les structures militaires jusqu’\u00e0 atteindre un poids bureaucratique et budg\u00e9taire trop grand. La formule de Rumsfeld est qu’on peut assurer l’essentiel des missions de guerre avec l’effectif pr\u00e9sent. Rumsfeld est oppos\u00e9 au projet qui est d\u00e9battu aujourd’hui au sein de l’U.S. Army de r\u00e9activer deux divisions en plus des 10 que d\u00e9ploie l’U.S. Army.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Cette position de Rumsfeld est combattue de fa\u00e7on opportuniste par l’U.S. Army (la tendance annexe), qui verrait d’un bon oeil sa puissance bureaucratique renforc\u00e9e par un d\u00e9veloppement de ses structures de combat (les 2 divisions en plus). Il ne s’agit l\u00e0 en aucun cas d’une position id\u00e9ologique, mais d’une position bureaucratique, d’un pur groupe d’int\u00e9r\u00eats.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• La tendance des n\u00e9o-conservateurs, qui subordonnent la puissance militaire \u00e0 des projets d’expansion h\u00e9g\u00e9monique, est tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rente de celle de l’U.S. Army, m\u00eame si elle recoupe ses demandes. Pour les n\u00e9o-conservateurs l’effectif actuel est insuffisant et il devient imp\u00e9ratif de renforcer les forces arm\u00e9es am\u00e9ricaines, essentiellement pour poursuivre l’expansion h\u00e9g\u00e9monique am\u00e9ricaine. Cette position a \u00e9t\u00e9 expos\u00e9e d’une fa\u00e7on pressante sur le site du Weekly Standard<\/a>, par un court article de Gary Schmitt, directeur du Project for the New American Century, qui est un des relais essentiels d’influence des n\u00e9o-conservateurs. L’article de Schmitt, tr\u00e8s court, repr\u00e9sente une prise de position tr\u00e8s nette de cette tendance essentielle d’influence de la politique ext\u00e9rieure US. Nous le reproduisons ci-dessous.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Donald Rumsfeld can study the issue of active-duty troop strength all he wants but it won’t change the obvious: U.S. land forces are two divisions short of being able to carry out effectively its present responsibilities.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Winning wars is not enough. We must also be able to maintain the peace globally and win the peace after the battles have been fought. It is clear that we don’t have sufficient troops on the ground in Afghanistan; we don’t have sufficient combat troops in reserve to handle a serious conflict on the Korean Peninsula; we are running around the world trying to pry troops from any and all countries we can to fill out deployments to Iraq; and we are deploying our reserve forces at unprecedented levels.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Instead of addressing the problem, Rumsfeld’s team will be studying how to \u00a0\u00bbprivatize\u00a0\u00bb base security and non-combat jobs now performed by uniformed troops. They will soon discover, however, that only a small percentage of these non-combat jobs can be safely given over to non-military personnel and that the rest are not civilian-jobs-in-the-making, but tasks military personnel carry out for good reason and, as such, require a military chain of command. Like any large bureaucracy, the Pentagon undoubtedly does not operate in the most efficient manner possible. And, to the extent one can, gross inefficiencies need to be addressed. But wringing the system of inefficiencies will not in fact solve the current crisis in end strength.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Rumsfeld’s apparent strategy is to hope that today’s high-level of deployments is more an aberration than the norm. But this runs counter to the broad implications of the National Security Strategy set out by the White House in September 2002. There will not be a return to the so-called era of strategic pause anytime soon. And it is a dangerous matter to pronounce a strategy that one cannot support safely and with confidence militarily.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tLes deux phrases clef de Gary Schmitt sont : \u00ab Winning wars is not enough<\/em> \u00bb et \u00ab There will not be a return to the so-called era of strategic pause anytime soon<\/em> \u00bb. Elles signifient que le d\u00e9bat n’est pas seulement technique, qu’il est ontologique. Par cons\u00e9quent, nous passons au d\u00e9bat sur l’empire, d\u00e9j\u00e0 mentionn\u00e9 plus haut, et dont on d\u00e9couvre aujourd’hui qu’il est en pleine renaissance \u00e0 Washington<\/a>, et qu’il y a toutes les raisons (Irak, capacit\u00e9s militaires, etc) effectivement qu’il renaisse, pour nous conduire, cette fois, au coeur de la question. On comprendra alors, et les Europ\u00e9ens les premiers combien la question du terrorisme n’a \u00e9t\u00e9 qu’un d\u00e9tonateur, un r\u00e9v\u00e9lateur et rien d’autre.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il faut se donner les moyens de faire ce que l’on veut faire 11 ao\u00fbt 2003 Le d\u00e9bat devient s\u00e9rieux d\u00e9sormais, au sein de la droite radicale et id\u00e9ologique qui inspire et soutient GW et sa politique. Comme on peut s’y attendre, il se fait entre la branche conservatrice (Rumsfeld et compagnie), repr\u00e9sentant les nationalistes… <\/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":[1104,569,4103],"class_list":["post-65706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-neocons","tag-rumsfeld","tag-schmitt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65706","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=65706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}