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By John Ubaldi
Contributor, In Homeland Security

This month, President Barack Obama’s Defense Secretary nominee, Ashton Carter, will go through confirmation hearings to replace Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon.

This will be a perfect time to get a sense how the president and his prospective Secretary of Defense will transform the military for the 21st century–or will he just be a placeholder until the next administration takes office?

If history is any guide, it will be problematic for the country, as national security strategists often repeat the mistakes of the past.

After World War II, President Truman drastically reduced the armed forces, and his Secretary of Defense at the time, Louis Johnson, firmly believed it was unnecessary to full fund the Army, Navy and the Marine Corps, as the U.S. had a monopoly on the atomic bomb.

In a statement he made to a naval admiral, Johnson stated, “Admiral, the Navy is on its way out. There’s no reason for having a Navy and a Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do, so that does away with the Navy.”

This would have a disastrous consequence, as the U.S. was unprepared for its entry into the Korean War a short time later.

Again, this was replicated during the presidency of George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who advocated a more agile, lethal, force that could rapidly deploy and one that would require a minimum of logistical support.

Unfortunately, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed this military transformation.

President Obama seems to be repeating the mistakes of the past when he issued his 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to reduce force structure in order to protect and expand critical capabilities, modernize the force, invest in readiness all the while with a smaller force.

It’s easy to transform the Pentagon, but are we making the right decisions? The Pentagon needs to be reduced from its wartime high, but it must be done in a systematic and strategic way, not through the lens of politics.

Far too often political and national security strategist quote President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address when he warned,” In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

President Eisenhower was speaking in the broader context of military leaders who always seek the latest weapons program without contemplating future strategic threats posed to the United States.

In an article written in Armed Forces Journal, Lt Col Daniel Davis’ writing focuses on this point. A short, and by no means exhaustive list of such failures, might include the RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter (launched in 1991, canceled after $6.9 billion), the XM2001 Crusader mobile cannon (launched in 1995, canceled after $7 billion), and the Future Combat Systems (launched in 2003, canceled after $20 billion).

This is not just a systemic problem for the Army alone, but all branches of the armed forces face this problem, but the Pentagon continues to have an out of control procurement and acquisition system that needs to be addressed now not later.

Eisenhower’s edict wasn’t directed at one political party but the broad coalition which permeates in the national defense security issues. A draft of the original address had it titled the ‘congressional military-industrial complex.’

When Ashton Carter goes before the Senate Armed Forces committee, this is when members of the Senate need to ask pointed questions as to what strategic direction the administration plans on perusing with regard to national security and military transformation, and how the administration plans to implement that strategy.

Carter is immensely familiar with the workings at the Pentagon, since he was Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, and previously served at the Department of Defense during the Clinton presidency.

The question that needs to be asked is can the United States articulate a comprehensive reorganization of the Pentagon? In the era of austerity, and with the possibility of the resumption of sequestration in 2016, failure will have severe consequences for the U.S.

I am reminded of a quote by Edmund Burke, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” One only has to look at the history on how failed military reorganization has come back to haunt the United States time and time again.

Read more by John Ubaldi at The Ubaldi Reports.