Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian military, despite being powerful, has been a shadow of its former self. Significant portions of its heavy equipment lie in varying states of disrepair. During the brief war last year with Georgia, the Russians suffered from many mechanical breakdowns and other problems.

Nevertheless, they quickly won the war, in no small part due to the fact that they fielded a larger force than the similarly equipped Georgians. This latest incident demonstrates that conventional warfare between civilized countries is still a very real possibility. It also reinforces an age-old military truth that those running the U.S. military need to remember: Mass really does matter.

In the age of sound-bite media, however, a few years of recent history can seem more important than decades of knowledge. Defense policymakers from both administrations seem to heavily favor a “light footprint” strategy.

This may be useful up to a point for fighting terrorists. However, it would be foolhardy to discount the possibility of a conventional war. Prudence requires the Defense Department to look at potential foes and determine how the United States will keep ahead of them militarily. Wars are not vacations that countries choose the time and place of.

The new administration is suggesting a 2010 defense budget that it says emphasizes the military’s ability to fight the war on terrorism. However, it appears that the possibility of war with another nation-state is not being taken at all seriously. Most unsettling are cancellations in missile defense and reductions in the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor program.

Despite the fact that they aren’t very useful in the war on terrorism, the United States still needs large numbers of high-quality air superiority fighters — namely the F-22. Ever since the harsh lessons of World War II and Korea, the United States has always established control of the skies before attempting major ground operations.

Although the Soviet menace no longer exists in name, many less-than-friendly nations around the world are upgrading their air forces. No quantity of littoral combat ships, unmanned drones or special forces can compensate for a lack of air superiority in a pitched battle.

Missile defense isn’t much use against al-Qaida either, but cutting it projects vulnerability to Iran, North Korea and any other hostile state armed with ballistic missiles. That will inevitably and unfavorably change the dynamics of any diplomatic interactions. Furthermore, in the event of an actual missile launch, reduced defenses would increase the likelihood of a deadly enemy strike on a major U.S. city. Better to go to war over a failed missile attack than a successful one — and better to bring as much firepower as possible to that war.

Senator John McCain agrees with the cuts, saying that he sees them as an effort to shift spending away from weapons plagued by scheduling and cost overruns. That misses the point. Bad procurement procedures, while problems in their own right, do not discredit or render unnecessary the underlying military hardware they create.

Not surprisingly, criticism of the cuts is often made by congressmen from the states impacted by them. In this case, they are making the right argument for the wrong reasons. The United States still needs heavy weapons, not to protect home-state contractor jobs, but to protect all of us from future threats that we need to be prepared for — however remote they may seem to politicians absorbed in the present.

Reach columnist Russ Wung at opinion@dailyuw.com.