Generals Want Money for Yesterday's Cold War

U.K. and U.S. generals have good reasons to be grateful to Russian President Vladimir Putin. For the first time since the Cold War, Russia serves as a compelling argument in the budgetary tug-of-war and a focus of military strategies -- a far easier one than the non-state threats that confounded military thinking for the last quarter of a century. The problem with the generals' take on the Russian threat, though, is that they want more money for old-school kinetic might and military bases when the actual Russian threat is elsewhere.

Monday's speech by Sir Nicholas Carter, chief of the U.K. General Staff, the country's top general, was aimed at supporting the military establishment's push for more military spending -- they are seeking closer to 3 percent of economic output than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 2 percent commitment. In the speech, Carter made much of the Russian threat: As he put it, the threat is the "most complex and capable security challenge we have faced since the Cold War."