Contra ETA: Juaristi no quiere guerras, Hoffman quiere ganar las que hay

Leimos en ABC Desconfía del enemigo que ofrece treguas debido a Jon Juaristi y seguimos sin comprender por qué, pese al título, sostiene su rechazo a reconocer que ETA nos tiene declarada su guerra. Y sobre todo que use para negar tal aquello de que ETA no tiene un Estado, aunque fuera talibán, detrás

O acaso, si. De hecho, ETA ha tenido detrás a varios Estados, alguno extinto a Dios gracias. Extinto en una larga guerra, por cierto, ganada sin usar las divisiones convencionales previstas...

Ver luego a Juaristi y a Savater juntos en lectura de manifiesto me recordó aquellos años en que cierto teniente general de frios ojos azules y disciplinada dicción andaluza describió como guerra lo que ETA nos tenía planteado. Los registros están en la Fundación Ortega y Gasset.

Servidor entonces era estudiante y los intelectuales citados ya iban lanzando su carrera, en posiciones entonces distintas a las de ahora.

Servidor sigue estudiando las guerras y cómo ganarlas. Al dicho teniente general, a izquierda y a derecha, le quisieron empurar cuando ya estaba en la reserva... Es evidente que ambos no hicimos carrera.

Contra ETA: a De Juana como a Hess.

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Sobre estrategias racionales, lo último de Frank G. Hoffman. E-Notes: A Strategic Rationale for Land Force Expansion - FPRI

Los párrafos que siguen, aunque no lo parezca en primera instancia, son de integral aplicación para España, tal vez en mayor medida en algunos puntos que para Estados Unidos:

• Reverse the Slow Manpower Erosion.

Offset a decade of incremental reductions caused by rising personnel costs. The Services have been under significant pressure over the last few years to reduce manpower levels to pay for sharply higher recruiting, retention, and health care costs.

• Bury Our Technological Hubris.

Offset a decade of illusions about future warfare. Over the past decade a number of speculative concepts about the changing nature of warfare have worked against maintaining a sufficient ground force. These include Defense planning guidance predicated upon very short wars, a prejudice for technology over “boots on the ground” and an irrational exuberance about the productivity enhancements posed by the supposed wonders of information technology.

• Prepare for the 21st Century,

To better posture the Pentagon for the changing character of anticipated wars and contingencies, including the prospects of what the CIA calls the coming “Perfect Storm” of ethnic and religiously motivated conflicts. The historical patterns of such conflicts suggest that these will be protracted and manpower intensive, as we’ve seen in the last few years.

• Additive Missions,

To provide sufficient capacity to fulfill additive missions being placed on ground forces for preventive interventions in failed or failing states, as well as post-conflict stability operations. Our Special Operations Forces have been increased to meet their increased responsibilities but the Army and Marines have faced persistent pressures to cut end strength despite the changing and increasingly irregular character of conflict. If the U.S. State Department and other agencies have no stomach for “armed civil affairs” or what might be called “contested state building” then the land forces need to have the resources to fulfill these new governance, advisory and training tasks.

• Take Pressure off National Guard.

We must reduce the need to tap into the National Guard so heavily. The National Guard has been incredibly responsive to a range of contingencies since 9/11, including support to that domestic crisis, Katrina, enhanced border security tasks, supporting operations in Afghanistan, and major deployments to Iraq. This is a well we have tapped into far too often, as a buffer against bad strategic decisions in Washington. The families of our Guard and Reserve component have been asked to pay too high a bill. Likewise, state governors have been left short of units and assets to meet their emergency and homeland security needs. At a recent Governor’s Association meeting with the president, this was at the top of their agenda. The National Guard is close to being flat on its back and its preparedness for a major serious homeland security crisis is questionable. It too requires substantial reinvestment. As Stephen Flynn notes in his new book, The Edge of Disaster, we are inviting another crisis on the scale of Hurricane Katrina by how little we’ve prepared and how much we have overextended our Guard resources.

• Strategic Risk Reduction.

Lastly, and most importantly, increased land forces are needed to decrease precarious levels of risk. Our commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other ongoing contingencies, have placed a heavy burden on two Services. These commitments and the attendant degradation of our warfighting capability have given rise to the perception by some states that the United States is tapped out and unable to respond to other crises. Furthermore, these perceptions undercut our diplomacy and embolden major states to take license with our interests, and encourages regional actors like North Korea and Iran to act out without fear of reprisal.

Temo que Hoffman tampoco está en ninguna carrera