Irregular Warfare Remains the Threat, Despite a Marine Corps Shift to the Near-Peer Fight by Todd South - Marine Corps Times
As the Marine Corps and its sister services shift focus to near peer battles and the range of ways to meet that fight, some experts think they may be losing sight of ways in which other threats could emerge both separate from peers and from them through other means.
A panel of national security experts at the annual Modern Day Marine Military Expo here acknowledged that both China and Russia do pose different threats to U.S. interests than they did in the past but the wide swing to meet those perceived threats may miss other dangers.
“I see some fairly exaggerated claims as to what those two countries can do,” said retired Marine Col. J.D. Williams, with RAND Corp.
Williams pointed to the drumbeat of speakers and conversations at various defense events in recent years saying that the United States has “fallen behind” Russia and China. In some areas those adversaries have made strides, but in many others the U.S. holds substantial overmatch…