This is a series of CBS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor. Gordon Chang at

Gordon G. Chang my colleague and co-host and we're very pleased to welcome Jim Finel from Europe, US Navy retired Captain Intelligence

to help us understand testimony before the US Congress. Once upon a time in my youth in the 20th century,

the US military maintained that it could fight two wars at once,

thinking of the model of the 1940s, the Pacific War and the European War.

And that was revised several times during the Vietnam tragedy.

Here we are again.

A major war, question mark.

Jim, a very good evening to you there are doubts in the US in the military and in Congress about fighting a major war what does that mean major war good evening to you Jim

Good evening to you Jim. Good evening John and Gordon. Well this this term major theater war we used to speak about back in the Cold War was this ability to fight the Soviets essentially on both sides of

the world, both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic, fight a fight in Europe against

a Russian invasion of Western Europe across the polar gap in Germany,

as well as be able to fight and defeat the Soviet Navy in the Western Pacific out of

Kinchetka and Bladavostock.

We used to also have two major theater wars plus a contingency.

So we were at some point the ability to fight two major theater wars against the Soviets

and be able to take care of some other contingency in the Middle East or Latin America

or Africa. And over the last 40 years that's degraded over time as we've done these

quadrennial defense reviews and and we watch our you know spending percentage of

our GDP go down and our defense industrial base go down and now we have this

report from Rand with their National Commission on National Defense where they come out and say

that the United States is not prepared.

...