America, Global Military Competition, and Opportunities Lost: Reflections on the Work of Michael W. Wynne
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West believed in the ascendency of liberal democracies.
The United States became the sole superpower or hyper power and Western Europe celebrated a “peace dividend” and dismantled much of their defense capability.
The focus of the West was not on the rise of the next round of great power competition, and the American leaders the focus was upon the dramatic events of September 11, 2001 and a priority on a war on global terrorism and then the George W. Bush launched an invasion of Iraq and a stepped up engagement in Afghanistan. President Obama would follow this with closing the Iraq phase and ramping up “the good war” in Afghanistan.
“Stability operations” rather than building and maintaining a force for great power competition was the order of the day and Europeans strengthened their “out of area” forces rather than direct defense forces.
But someone failed to send the memo to Beijing and Moscow that the great power competition was over. In this book, we look at the lost decade of the United States in focusing on the land wars at the expense of a focus on building an innovative new force for great power competition.
We do so by looking at the dramatic firing of the Chief of Staff of the USAF and the Secretary of the USAF in 2008 which marked a symbolic transition to shaping a military primary able to do counter-insurgency warfare.
In the book, we look at the work of Michael Wynne, the 21st Secretary of the USAF and members of his team, as they continued to highlight opportunities throughout this decade to do course correction. Fortunately, the F-35 global enterprise was woven throughout the decade, with little support from DoD or any president for that matter, and that thread has been part of the great power competition awakening and shaping of the forces needed to compete with China, Russia and the other players in the rise of multi-polar authoritarianism.
The “rules-based” order of the West is shrinking as the area influenced by multi-polar authoritarian powers, groups and movements is expanding. “Stability operations” was an investment which only accelerated the new global order.
This book will be published during the first quarter of 2025 and is a member of our global change series of books looking back at global change in the past 15 years.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024916779
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9907867-4-5
Hardback ISBN: 979-8-9907867-5-2