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AIR SUPPORT MOZAMBIQUE
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It is a basic axiom of military strategy that, when you opt to deploy your militaries into harm’s way to achieve a mission objective or goal, you need to equip it as best as possible with the optimum force size and composition, supplies, and supporting assets. When lives are at stake and the consequences of mission failure are so stark, it’s dangerous and strategically inept to under-resource a mission as badly as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has done with its mission in Mozambique (SAMIM).
THE MISSION TO MOZAMBIQUE, which deployed there a few months to assist in the campaign against ISIS-linked Islamist insurgents, has received only a small fraction of the budget it needs for the tasks it has been set, and therefore it’s ridiculously undersized and under equipped.
Of course, there are limits to what can reasonably be provided and spent, given limited national budgets, and you obviously can’t afford to throw endless resources at every mission or engagement without bankrupting yourself rather quickly. Moreover, as Donald Rumsfeld pointed out in one of his few wise moments, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Meaning that most of the time when war becomes a necessity, there’s no longer enough time to rectify the mistakes, neglect, and shortcuts of under preparing your military in peacetime.
Read more in this months edition..
