Is the Salvation of the Marine Corps at Hand?

The word on the street is that President Trump’s administration has turned its eye on the senior leadership of the Marine Corps and not liked what it sees. A series of dud Commandants has left the Corps in a bad way.

The current Commandant’s predecessor wrapped the Marine Corps around something called Force Design 2030 that makes no sense. It is focused on a war with China that is unlikely to happen because both China and the U.S. are nuclear powers. Nuclear powers don’t fight conventional wars with each other because the danger of escalation is too great. Assuming such an improbable event occurs, the Marine Corps would seize sand-spit islands from China and mount anti-ship missiles on them. This duplicates Japan’s Pacific strategy in World War II with missiles replacing Japanese naval bombers. The Japanese strategy failed because the islands could not be adequately re-supplied. We would face the same problem, plus a lack of targets because China’s and America’s surface warships will all quickly be in port or on the bottom. Seen Russia’s Black Sea fleet recently? Anywhere near the Chinese mainland the air will be filled with both sides’ anti-ship missiles without the Marine Corps’ small contribution. If the Corps really wants to prepare for a war with China, it would train for boarding ships to enforce a distant blockade and defending against amphibious assaults in case a President wants to come to Taiwan's aid directly (which would be a big mistake).

The current Commandant, General Smith, inherited this situation from his predecessor and so far has not visibly acted to get the Marine Corps out of it.

The rot from the top does not stop with Force Design 2030. As I noted in a recent column, a wave of anti-intellectualism has swept the Corps, driven in part by making Force Design 2030 unquestionable and in part because the leadership has allowed the culture of order to submerge the culture of initiative the Marine doctrine Corps' maneuver warfare requires.

This military mess is compounded by a climate of "woke," the current term for cultural Marxism, that the senior ranks have allowed to be shoved down their throats for many years under Democratic administrations. Initially they bought into it because the alternative was an end to their careers. But many have now internalized it and protect it from an administration rightly hostile to it. Just one example is enough to make the case: the Corps has put women into the combat arms, including the infantry. The result in combat will be a disaster, not only because most women cannot do what infantry has to do physically, but even more so because the men, instead of becoming a "band of brothers," now see each other as rivals for the favors of the women. That strikes directly at what makes men fight, unit cohesion. If President Trump’s administration is serious about fixing the Corps, one of the first things it will do is make the combat arms all-male again.

I'm hearing the White House and OSD are aware of the Marine Corps’ leadership deficiencies at the broad senior level, not just the Commandant, and they will replace not only the present Commandant, who has major health problems in any case, but all the three-stars as well. They are steeped in “woke” and either believe in the Force Design 2030 crap or have been unwilling to oppose it. The former suggests a poor understanding of war and the latter weakness of character. Either way, they’re just ballast.

The new Commandant would come from the ranks of the two-stars, possibly someone who has retired; all those on active duty have signed off on Force Design 2030.

I know of one retired two-star who has the potential to be another Al Gray, the Corps’ last great Commandant,
He retired in 1991 (and died last year at age 95) which shows how long the Marine Corps has been wandering in the desert.

We’ll see if my sources know what they are talking about. If the Corps is left on autopilot, when the international debt and financial crisis hits, its head may be on the block.