The Pentagon's boosters are right that big cuts will limit military capabilities. But that would actually be a good thing for the United States. Shrinking the U.S. military would not only save a fortune but also encourage policymakers to employ the armed services less promiscuously, keeping American troops -- and the country at large -- out of needless trouble. ... Going beyond the demands of the White House and the Budget Control Act and cutting the non-war military budget by at least 20 percent would be a first step toward addressing this problem.
Austerity is an efficient auditor. It forces Washington to scrutinize expenses and to prioritize.
I at least appreciate his honesty for not trying to claim that we can just seek efficiencies and waste to maintain current military capabilities at lower levels of spending. And boy does he want lower levels of spending. But he thinks that we can buy peace through weakness:
Far bigger savings are possible if the Pentagon is recast as a true defense agency rather than one aimed at something far more ambitious. And cuts would force U.S. officials to prioritize. For starters, they would have to recognize that the U.S. military is currently structured to exercise power abroad, not provide self-defense. The U.S. Navy patrols the globe in the name of protecting global commerce, even though markets easily adapt to supply disruptions and other states have good reason to protect their own shipments. Washington maintains enormous ground forces in order to conduct nation-building missions abroad -- despite the fact that such missions generally fail at great cost. Garrisons in Germany and South Korea have become subsidies that allow Cold War-era allies to avoid self-reliance.
Not only are these missions unnecessary, they are counterproductive. They turn economically capable allies into dependents, provoke animosity in far-flung corners of the globe, and encourage states to balance U.S. military power, often with nuclear weapons. A strategy based on restraint would allow Washington to save at least about $1.2 trillion over a decade, three times what the Obama administration is now asking for.
His list of cuts is specific. He wants to gut the fleet in carriers, amphibious assets, and total ships, with cancellation of the LCS and F-35B vertical take-off version of the plane. He wants to cut ground strength by 250,000. He thinks we can halve our nuclear arsenal, eliminate our nuclear capable bombers, and restrict missile defense to the battlefield. Plus pay the force less and other administrative cuts.
So, let's have a go at this, eh?
He thinks the post-Cold War era has caused us to use our military too much for bad things. Was keeping Saddam from keeping Kuwait bad? Was stopping genocide in the former Yugoslavia wrong? Was destroying the Taliban regime, keeping it from reverting to a jihadi haven, and eventually killing Osama bin Laden bad? Was destroying the Saddam regime ill considered or bad for us? Was toppling the Khaddafi regime wrong? Is fighting globally in the shadows against al Qaeda a mistake?
Even if you can make an argument that some of those were ill advised, do you want to destroy the capabilities that let us fight and win the good wars, too? How do you prioritize fighting in a distant place if you can't reach the theater or sustain a force to fight there? Massive Europe couldn't reach across the Mediterranean Sea to attack weak Libya without our help.
The idea that you can distinguish between "true defense" and a more ambitious foreign policy is not as clear cut as you think. We're huge. We have a target on us just for being large. We don't have to do anything to be blamed for everything. And events abroad affect us. Again, from sanctuaries in distant and backward Afghanistan, we were staggered on 9/11. Their claims that they are mad at us for doing this or that, or being here or there, are not reasons. They are just justifications. The jihadis have a long history of killing non-Moslems (and even Moslems who aren't the right kind), and thinking we can pull back to avoid their wrath is folly. Just try drawing an offensive cartoon, eh? Or do we pull back even that far?
Counting on unseen forces to balance disruptions is idiotic. Surely, over the course of decades, things can balance out as countries seek to defend their own interests. But their interests aren't necessarily ours and the balance that results can leave us out in the cold. When other countries secure their access to critical resources, why would they keep our interests in mind? Is it really just a matter of "balancing things out" if, absent our presence in the Gulf, Europe and China had paid Saddam Hussein and the Iranian mullahs whatever price they wanted for oil? It doesn't take much imagination to see that scenario escalate into a nuclear arms race around the Gulf and an eventual nuclear war. What's the half life of waiting for that to balance out? Oh sure, we could adapt by reverting to 18th century standards of living, but is that a balance we want to see?
The idea that keeping forces in Germany and South Korea is counter-productive is just astounding. We have created prosperous and friendly states who have been allies for decades. They help maintain stability and peace that we benefit from, and keep regions friendly to us and potential foes in check. And they are becoming power-projection points to help us maintain order near them as the threats we originally intended to defeat fade away. Both Germany and South Korea help maintain those forces with cash, reducing the cost to us if we kept them back home.
The idea that we maintain "enormous" ground forces is just ridiculous. We had difficulty keeping enough troops to win in one small country with most of the population on our side (Iraq).
While I'm not going to say that cutting our carrier force is totally bad, I'd rather let the investment in existing assets stand and phase them out over decades as we retire them. Our amphibious assets are vital and increasingly should be our reserve light carrier fleet as our big decks become too vulnerable and expensive to risk forward against any type of capable enemy. The F-35B is vital for that role. The LCS surely isn't something we should risk in coastal waters, but it is the only new reasonably inexpensive ship we have on the table that we can build in any numbers.
As for the rest? Well, let me just say that our military spending allows us to fight our enemies over there rather than over here. And it allows us to leverage the isolated capabilities of weaker allies into our efforts. It allows us to win with lower American casualties and much lower civilian casualties as we can focus on the enemy's forces with less collateral damage. Our nuclear power helps keep conflict in the conventional realm where our power dominance is most usefully exploited.
I do not consider it acceptable that our defense capabilities should be reduced to 1940 levels of keeping enemies from approaching too close to the continental United States with our forward outposts standing at Hawaii and Iceland. Even the author's support for cutting missile defense for our people betrays his claimed desire to focus on defending America's shores. And meanwhile, the rest of the world adapted and balanced amongst themselves to cope with the problems they saw. How'd that work out for you?
We can have a debate over what we spend on defense and how we use it. But just pretending that we can withdraw from the world and that the world will magically work out to our advantage is folly. Perhaps we can't afford our military. Although its relative burden on our budget and economy is much lower than in the past. But if we decide we can't afford our military, don't pretend that cutting our defenses is painless or has no consequences. People like this author can't distinguish between "restraint" and "retreat," and honestly don't care if they did. The unseen hand will kill us.
This is why I cancelled my subscription to Foreign Affairs. As an undergrad, I thought it was holy writ from the great minds of foreign policy. Reading it was something I looked forward to. But I began to realize that it was merely a collection of the banal and the idiotic. I kept buying it for years from the reputation (and have the cupboard full of their coffee mugs to prove it), but eventually just decided that I couldn't pretend that it was anything but foolish dross dressed up as authority.
UPDATE: Deep cuts have real consequences. We spend money to avoid spending blood. General Odierno states this clearly:
Odierno, who sat on a panel with the other three service chiefs, laid out in stark terms what was at stake if the force becomes any smaller than the 520,000 active force the Army is aiming for, saying that the service’s ability to be “decisive and dominant” on the battlefield would be threatened.
“We can still win, but we’ll win at the cost of the lives of the men and women who serve,” he said.
And we might not win. No war is a guaranteed win or loss. But we can with more assurance say that casualties will be higher either way.
UPDATE: Well, I worry that our cuts will leave us with 1940-level defense missions. Panetta says we'll get a 1940-level military with bigger defense cuts than he plans for should those automatic cuts be triggered. Sadly, some people will be happy about both. Even sadder, some will be Americans.
