Even before getting to the heart of this article, we see him highlighting that he was in the Reagan administration--over 20 years ago. The reason he does this is because Reagan would not have endorsed Korb's current defense views. But Korb wears that job as a talisman to ward off questions about what he proposes now, even though he has worked for leftist think tanks since he worked for Reagan. But he never seems to cite that in articles meant to persuade the general public.
In this article, Korb argues for painless defense reductions of $1 trillion over a decade. And he starts with an apples and oranges defense of cuts that should undermine any confidence you might have in his abilities to argue for cuts compatible with maintaining our defense edge:
Those opposed to reducing defense spending note that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said that any cuts of that magnitude would be catastrophic. They cite three reasons: We are fighting two wars; defense did not cause the debt problem; and Obama has already reduced defense spending.
But those arguments are without merit. Here are the facts.
He continues, but with facts that have nothing to do with the objections he cites:
U.S. defense spending, in inflation adjusted terms, is higher than at any time since the end of World War II. Over the past decade, the U.S. share of global military spending has risen from one third to one half. The United States now spends six times as much as China, the country with the next biggest budget.
And the proposed reductions in defense spending will not affect spending for the wars, which are funded in supplemental budgets (to the tune of $150 billion in the current fiscal year). The proposed reductions apply to the base budget.
This refutes the objections he cites? In inflation adjusted terms, our overall budget is a heck of a lot higher. Should that be slashed? Our economy is way bigger, and the burden of our defense budget compared to that is pretty darned low--even for peacetime levels during the Cold War.
As for the US defense budget being half of the world's--so what? The question is what do we need and what can we afford? We already see that Korb misrepresented what we can afford--as a burden compared to our GDP, defense spending is pretty low. Talking about defense as a fraction of our "discretionary" spending is also misleading because a vast span of domestic spending items are mandatory, while in the strange budgeting world of Washington, D.C., defense spending is a "discretionary" item--as if it is a luxury.
Back to the point, so what if we spend half of the globe's defense budget? One, this allows us to field forces to fight enemies far away from us rather than close to us. There is a reason that the only threats to our soil are terrorists and nuclear weapons. We enjoy the protection of our military keeping potential foes far from us. How much is that worth?
Second, the money buys us equipment and training that allows us to fight more effectively than our enemies. Spending money saves blood--that of our own troops and even the enemy's, too, for that matter. Yes we could win wars without all that stuff and skill. But we'd suffer far more casualties. And leave vast collateral damage in our wake.
As for his proposals not affecting the current wars, so what? Even if true (and the troops need the innovations and weapons that are paid for in the remainder of the budget even if the operations spending still keeps them supplied with existing weapons and ammunition), the ongoing operations are not the totality of our defense needs. We need forces for other types of war that we would like to deter and would like to win if we fail to deter them. The "base budget" creates the force that fights the current and future wars, and if that is inadequate, it will affect the outcome of the wars at worst and the cost in blood and treasure, at best, from higher casualties and a lengthier path to victory.
So what of his proposals?
He says we should reduce the Army and Marines to pre-Iraq War levels.
But those levels did not allow us to man the force structure fully. Korb says we won't engage in nation-building again so don't need the troops. We'll just support locals in fighting jihadis. Korb should really pull out the crystal ball he uses to predict the future so confidently. Ideally, we could do that. In practice, this will just allow anti-war types to argue that we can't fight a war until we build our ground forces up--which they'll oppose tooth and nail.
He says we should cut troops in Europe and Asia by 50,000.
Given the history of Europe, I think keeping a solid military capability in Europe is a prudent investment. Without our stabilizing presence, the long peace that Korb apparently thinks is the norm for Europe could disappear and major warfare could reappear on the continent. As for Asia, is he stoned? China is rising and if we pull back, our allies who are arming up to resist China will instead drift to seeking deals with China at our expense. So suddenly, with Korb's cuts in this area, we risk fighting potential foes closer to home.
He wants to cut the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles.
Fair enough. But if the EFV is cut, the Marines will need other armored fighting vehicles. Saying that a particular weapon system is not needed is not the same as saying no weapon system is needed.
He wants to cut a single aircraft carrier.
Again, fair enough. I think we should be preparing to phase out our use of huge carriers. But again, saying that the Navy doesn't need a particular ship doesn't mean that the money is just not spent. The Navy needs numbers to deploy globally. We may not need new carriers, but we need new ships. This is a matter of choosing where to spend Navy dollars and not whether they are needed.
He wants to cut the F-35 because he says "our existing fighter planes are the best in the world and unmanned aircraft are taking over more and more missions."
Now we are in to real Korbian levels of idiocy. Our existing fighter planes--other than the small number of F-22s--are ancient. They are good enough with the large logistical tail and support capabilities that our large "base budget" provides for planning, maintenance, training, and weapons, but Korb would risk that, too, of course. If we count on the yet to be developed unmanned fighter planes--that are a far cry from current unmanned combat drones--then we will have quite the gap one day not too far in the future. And if you think that Korb will be a supporter of the very expensive technology needed to create those unmanned combat aircraft that replace piloted warplanes, you're either stoned or stupid.
Let's move on.
He'd slash our strategic nuclear weapons arsenal.
He bases that on one analysis from the Air War College. Was it a term paper from a student? It may make sense, but then again, since nuclear war would be the biggest bad thing that can happen, I'd rather be more cautious in slashing this part of our arsenal. Insurance, baby. Don't leave home without it. Maybe some cuts are justified. But take it slow. Once gone, they aren't coming back. And when we realize we don't have enough, it may be because deterrence failed.
He'd cut the V-22 Osprey.
Once again, I'm not a fan of the system. Maybe we don't need to buy more but the Marines will need new helicopters, at the very least. Again, this isn't a spending question but a choice of spending question. Clearly, Korb is again using bait and switch by arguing against a specific weapon and concluding we don't need any weapon to meet the needs that weapon is supposed to meet. Further, arguing that it did not meet mission standards in Iraq is wrong-headed. I assume he means availability rates. That a new weapon in a harsh operational environment did not meet standards is hardly a shock. That was also a learning environment to learn how to meet availability rate goals. Nice try.
He wants to save money on pay and health care fees.
We ask a lot of the relatively few who volunteer to defend us. Cutting here during war is insulting, as far as I'm concerned.
Finally, he argues for a general application of his apples and oranges approach to cutting by saying that savings from waste that Gates wants to redirect to other spending should instead be simply cut for the sake of the deficit (yeah, I trust that any money saved here won't be spent on domestic fluff--dang, I just attracted more attention from Nigerian email scammers for that display of gullibility). Note that saving money on the EFV and spending it elsewhere is one of the savings that Gates proposes.
So there you have it: A proposal based on misleading arguments designed to do what Korb always wants to do--slash our defense spending.
Korb has been playing this awful tune for years. Go deer hunting without this accordion. I don't know what Korb was like in the 1980s, but Reagan would not have hired this Korb for anything in the defense realm.
UPDATE: The military lays out how it would like to save money and redirect it to programs it thinks it needs more.
UPDATE: An argument that we should not balance the budget on the backs of the military--which, given that we are at war, I heartily endorse. Anybody who claims that we can cut the military budget to become "leaner and meaner" is selling you something other than national defense. In the end, those people don't care about the "meanness" level and just want the "leaner" part.
