The long reach of Putinismo - Opinions Review
Gian Gentile: The U.S. Army must remain prepared for battle Sunday April 20 th , 2014 at 10:36 AM 1 Share How had the force that had driven the German army across France and back into Germany just five years earlier, at the end of World War II, lost the ability to fight effectively? The answer: During those few years, U.S. political leaders had concluded that with the advent of nuclear weapons, land wars were a thing of the past. Taking this cue, generals had allowed the armored brigade combat teams from World War II to atrophy. In their place were skeletal divisions of poorly trained U.S. infantry on constabulary duty in Germany and Japan. Slightly more than 40 years later, a very different U.S. Army evicted Saddam Hussein’s military — a far more formidable foe than the North Korean army of 1950 — from Kuwait. In 1991, the U.S. Army was not only better trained and had better resources; it was also working as part of a joint...