Are We Winning The Long War?

Long War: Pres. Obama and Def. Sec. Panetta gave speeches yesterday explaining what they will do with the Pentagon's budget and overall LW strategy in the years ahead. Since Obama will almost certainly win the next election this is a pretty big deal and it begs the question: Are we winning the LW?

Obama says he will slash troop levels and expand the Reserve. The Navy and Air Force will be held steady but the Army and USMC will shrink drastically. Special Forces will be expanded. Weapons systems that can defeat China will be maintained but if there is a big war with China, the US will have to ramp up to win. Either that or resort to nuclear weapons right away. He can't talk about the CIA in public but just look what he's done... Panetta is a former CIA Director and the current director, Petraeus, is the greatest military mind in 70 years. As I've said so many times, the LW is being handed over to the CIA.

Let's take a detour and talk briefly about Tajikistan (trust me its relevant). To escape the Af/Pak war the bad guys there have to go through Tajikistan to hook up with the bad guys in the Caucus mountains of Russia. Tajikistan has the most savage anti-jihadist laws and policies of any country in the world. Radical Islam is brutally crushed there in a hundred different ways and in a manner that speaks of heavy CIA involvement. This bottles up the bad guys in Af/Pak. Changing the nature of the Tajik government from the inside out is something the US Army simply cannot do, no matter how much money we might throw into tanks, men, and guns. So Obama's strategy is correct, assuming there is no war with China.

Okay, here is how we know if we are winning the LW or not... Global reserve currencies held by the planet's central banks are currently 62% US dollars, slightly above historical average. For decades the dollar has gone up in value and increased its reserve currency status whenever the geopolitical temperature goes up. Except one time, when Obama said that America will "lead from behind" in the Libyan War. But shortly after he said that media accounts exploded of Special Forces soldiers with phony British accents leading the Libyan rebels and taking the wood to Gaddafi. The dollar returned to its former role as investors figured out what lead from behind actually meant.

The highest reserve currency percentage level ever attained by the dollar was 73% shortly after 9/11. It went down as the US faltered in Iraq and then back up as the US prevailed. The percentage has gone up every year of the Obama presidency. Look, we could try to add up the daily number of bad guys killed vs good guys killed in the LW, graph this info and scratch our heads at the trends to decide if we are winning or not. But a better report card is the role played by the US dollar. And the report card is saying America is getting a solid B- in the Long War. Now I know a lot of you got straight A's in school, but any normal person will tell you a B- is pretty good.