Understanding the role alliance systems play in international politics is a basic requirement for any successful statesmen.  Judging by the administration’s impartial treatment of other nations (both allies and adversaries), it appears as though this important fact is lost on the president and his senior advisors.  Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War communicates not only the centrality of military power in the conduct of international politics but the critical role of alliance systems.  While its primary actors were the city-states of Athens and Sparta, the story of the Peloponnesian War is a tale of alliance systems.  In the end, it was the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League that defeated the Athenian-led Delian League.

Now consider President Obama’s treatment of Egypt (a U.S. ally) and Libya (a U.S. adversary).  The Obama administration was more than eager to push former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power.  The president held two major press conferences and issued numerous statements through White House channels urging, albeit in sometimes veiled language, for Mubarak to step aside.  Mubarak, a benign dictator and strong U.S. ally, received no support from the White House during the crisis, whose message was based more on platitudes than substantive and thoughtful policy.  Now a military dictatorship has supplanted Mubarak and it appears that elections may follow at a later date.  The risk, of course, is that an Islamist government assumes power democratically and then proceeds to turn Egypt into a one-party state.

Now take Libya and its flamboyant and repressive leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who has masterminded and been linked to numerous terrorist attacks over the last four decades, many of which have led directly to American deaths.  Some of Gaddafi’s terrorist bona fides include:  the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, the 1986 bombing of the German discotheque, and Pan Am Flight 103.  During the recent protests, Gaddafi has used tanks, helicopters, and fighter aircraft to attack civilian protesters (one report puts the death toll at 560); Mubarak did no such thing in attempting to maintain civil order during the protests in Egypt.

One would reasonably assume that Gaddafi’s regime should be on the receiving end of much more critical rhetoric from the White House.  However, it was Egypt—a U.S. ally—which received more pointed criticism from the White House, along with the de facto request that Mubarak step aside so that another dictatorship could assume the reins of power.  Gaddafi—a longtime adversary with American blood on his hands—has received virtually the same treatment afforded Mubarak.  What type of message does this send to U.S. allies?  Certainly not a message of consistency, credibility, or reassurance.

During the 2009-2010 popular uprisings in Iran following the Iranian presidential election, the White House was mostly reticent as the regime violently suppressed the protests.  Again, President Obama’s reticence is difficult to understand; the protesters were standing in opposition to the brutally repressive and staunchly anti-U.S. regime in Tehran.  Washington should have been more vocal in its support of the protesters.  The Obama administration’s inconsistency in dealing with Egypt and Libya highlights its poor understanding of the role alliances play in international politics.  The president and his senior advisors need to re-read Thucydides.

Liberals and Democrats are split into two camps:  There are those Democrats who remember the Left’s shameful behavior during the Vietnam War and are reluctant to propose cuts out of fear for appearing weak.  Then there are liberals and Democrats who can’t cut enough from the defense budget and have lost sight of the important fact that one of the few constitutional responsibilities of the federal government is to provide for the “common defence.”

Then there is a third category which includes liberals and Democrats, conservatives and Republicans:  politicians with defense contractors in their states.  These politicians are reluctant to cut defense programs even when they’re no longer needed in order to protect jobs in their districts and states.  The F-22 is a case in point.

So what did President Obama do with the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 defense budget?  He did what was politically safe and made no cuts to the baseline budget but slightly reduced funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a liberal Democrat, he is extra sensitive to being perceived as weak and can’t afford the political risks associated with larger cuts to the defense budget; he does want a second term so why stoke the Jimmy Carter comparisons?  Justin Fishel writing at FoxNews.com provides a good snapshot of the FY 2010, 2011, and 2012 budgets:

In 2010 there was a base budget of $531 billion, with an additional $130 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, known as OCO (Overseas Contingency Operations) funding. President Bush called it Global War on Terror or GWOT funding, a term dropped by Obama. Later in 2010 President Obama added another $33 billion in supplemental spending to fund the 30,000-man troop surge in Afghanistan.

2010 grand total: $694,000,000,000

The proposal for FY 2011 asked for a $549 billion base, with $159 in OCO spending.

2011 proposed grand total: $708,000,000,000

The FY 2012 defense budget asks for $553 billion in base spending, with $118 billion for the wars. That significant decrease in war spending is directly related to heavy troop withdrawals in Iraq.

2012 proposed grand total: $671,000,000,000

In January Secretary Gates announced a plan to cut $78 billion in defense spending over five years.  The largest savings would come from shrinking the size of the Army by 27,000 soldiers and the Marines by 15 – 20,000 in the year 2015.  That assumes the war in Afghanistan will be over for the U.S. by the end of 2014.

If you’re going to cut defense spending it makes sense to slash ineffective pet programs, of which the Pentagon has many, rather than funds for ongoing operations in Iraq and, especially, Afghanistan.  I don’t agree with our current strategy in Afghanistan, but if we have troops in harm’s way we have  a moral obligation to fully fund them.  Anyone who has worked in the Pentagon has seen these pet programs and inefficiencies, though Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made some significant progress in streamling Pentagon operations.

Thinking about the defense budget in a vacuum is strategically unsound but a common practice in Washington.   A budget is required to help an organization achieve its objectives; a budget is a means to an end.  So this begs the question:  what is our grand strategy?  Rather than reflexively opposing cuts to the defense budget, conservatives should not cower from reasonable cuts to the defense budget.  Any analysis should consider the following four questions:

• For what reasons does America engage in foreign affairs?
• What are America’s national interests?
• What are the threats those interests?
• What is America’s grand strategy?

The answers to these questions will determine what kind of military is required to support these ends and how much it will cost.  I believe that our current grand strategy is too costly and disconnected from the national interest and Constitution.  I recently laid out my vision for a conservative foreign policy in the Washington Examiner in a piece entitled, “It’s time to end big government internationalism.” In it I argued:

Since the end of the Cold War, American statesmen have defined the national interest in far too broad of terms, squandering taxpayer dollars in support of a foreign policy that does not clearly advance America’s core national interests.  In FY 2008, Washington provided foreign aid to about 154 countries.  Today, the U.S. military has a presence in about 150 countries.  The majority of these aid packages and military deployments do little to promote America’s national interests; still, this type of big government internationalism has become unquestioned convention for the Washington foreign policy establishment and conservatives are as guilty as their liberal counterparts in pushing the global welfare state.

Many Republican and Democratic policymakers conflate American diplomatic, economic, and military primacy with omnipotence.  As a result, they have consistently failed to reconcile America’s desired end states with its available means—eschewing important economic realities such as the $14 trillion national debt while failing to make the difficult tradeoffs often required of effective statesmen.  In order to avoid the fate of previous great powers, the United States should adopt an economically sustainable grand strategy that advances a set of more narrowly defined national interests, encourages burden-sharing among its allies, and is consistent with the Constitution.  More specifically, Washington should reduce its global footprint, keep its military power in abeyance, and discharge that power only in defense of the national interest.

The sole aim of Washington’s international engagement should be the preservation of American political and economic liberty—not to remake the world in its image.  In his book, A Foreign Policy for Americans, former U.S. Senator Robert Taft argued, “I do not believe it is a selfish goal for us to insist that the overriding purpose of all American foreign policy should be the maintenance of the liberty and peace of our people of the United States…”

So where would I cut?  I would do a few things right off the bat.  I would redeploy the 50,000 military personnel we currently have in Europe (it costs serious money to train, equip, and sustain forces in a foreign country).  Correspondingly, I would scale back our commitments to NATO.  NATO is a military alliance without a clear mission.  It achieved its Cold War-era objectives, but it is no longer useful in the 21st century; it should be replaced with bilateral or smaller multilateral alliances to increase burden-sharing and reduce the stress on the U.S. force.  The alliance’s biggest test in recent years–Afghanistan–has yielded disappointing results.  The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)–the NATO military organ in charge of operations in Afghanistan–places the vast majority of the burden on the U.S.  Some troops have quipped that ISAF really stands for “I saw an American fight.”

I would also adopt a new strategy in Afghanistan, one that significantly reduces our land (conventional ground forces) commitments and emphasizes special operations forces and airpower.  In terms of major acquisition programs, I would initiate a sweeping program review to weed out costly programs which are not required to achieve our military and defense policy objectives.  Each military service has pet programs which continue to exist more because they embody the service culture (read U.S. Air Force and the F-22) than actual military requirements.  Weapons acquisition must be driven by military requirements, not service cultures or Capitol Hill politics.

Defense is one of the few legitimate responsibilities of the federal government.  There are many other programs, which are well beyond the scope of the government’s responsibilities, which should be eliminated all together to address our dire fiscal situation.  Conservatives need to realize, however, that there is nothing unconservative about reasoned and rational cuts to the defense budget.  The fact remains that there is waste in the Pentagon and part of that waste stems from an overly costly grand strategy, one that is disconnected from America’s core national interests.  Republicans in Congress must think very carefully about this nation’s involvement in foreign affairs and whether our current strategy is appropriate.  The Tea Party movement should take this opportunity to extend its limited government message to U.S. foreign policy.  Without pressure from the Tea Party movement, many Republicans will shrink from this challenge.

Relative to other states in the region, Egypt is not a major oil exporter.  But Egypt has been a stable ally of the U.S. in a turbulent region for the last thirty years.  Egypt fought alongside U.S. forces during the Gulf War and has honored its peace treaty with Israel, thus preventing another major regional war between the Arab states and Israel—which would be calamitous for global energy prices.

Today, as it has been for the last thirty years, stability remains our core interest in Egypt.  Instability creates uncertainty and uncertainty means higher gas prices for Americans.  Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will slow America’s anemic economic recovery even further.  Can you imagine what six- or eight-dollar-a-gallon gasoline would mean for America’s ailing economy?

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously remarked, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  Washington policymakers should use the crisis in Egypt to initiate a three-step approach to ensure stable gas prices in the near-term and energy independence in the long-term.

1.       Washington must support the outcome that results in near-term stability. This means that the Obama administration should not support a hasty transition to a democratic form of government which could see the rise of belligerent forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood.  Of course there is a natural tension here for Americans who are rightly inclined to support self-determination, but this is one instance where the stability provided by a benign dictatorship (like that of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak) is preferable to the democratic rise of an Islamist government.  Mubarak’s civilian dictatorship provided relative stability for decades in Egypt; only time will tell whether the new military dictatorship is benign or malignant.  Washington should support a deliberate transition to increase the likelihood that the new popularly elected government is a pro-Western, democratic regime.

2.       Washington must take steps to weaken the price-fixing OPEC. It must no longer be the policy of the United States to tolerate the price-fixing Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).  For far too long the international community has allowed this cartel to set the price of oil at artificially high levels.  At its best, the interests of these countries are orthogonal to Washington’s; at its worst, as in the case of Iran and Venezuela, member countries actively work against the interests the United States.   Lest we forget that the 1973 energy crisis occurred when OPEC refused to ship oil to states that supported Israel in the Six-Day War.  The U.S. should explore the prospects of entering into exclusivity agreements with member states to fracture the cartel.  If Country X can proffer more from an exclusive arrangement with Washington than with OPEC, why remain a member?  Don’t forget that many of the OPEC members have single commodity economies; without oil exports their economies would collapse.  Washington needs to use this blunt reality as bargaining leverage.

3.       Washington must make energy independence a national security priority. It remains popular for politicians to talk about “energy independence” but the reality is that U.S. energy policy has not undergone the changes required to put this country on a path toward energy independence.  The Obama administration has declared war on the coal industry through its proposed cap-and-trade legislation (and likely forthcoming EPA regulations); the licensing process for building new nuclear power plants has not been accelerated and the administration refuses to grant additional offshore drilling permits.  What is required is an integrated energy strategy which includes the expansion of offshore drilling and a significant increase in the development of nuclear power, along with an expansion of natural gas, solar, and wind sources.   Washington should use tax policy to incentivize to automakers to make hybrid automobiles more affordable.  Nuclear power is perhaps the greatest untapped resource in the United States.  France generates more than 75% of its electricity from nuclear power while the United States generates only 20%.  Nuclear power suffered a public relations crisis during the Three Mile Island incident from which the industry has never fully recovered.  The reality is that the United States Navy has been using nuclear propulsion safely since the late 1940s and if Washington is going to cast off the yoke of energy dependence, then nuclear power must be dramatically expanded.

Energy independence is both an economic and national security issue and the situation in Egypt underscores this point.  Our dependence on foreign oil requires that we engage in a dangerous and hostile region; this reality has guided U.S. foreign policy for too long.  This trend is reversible but requires immediate action at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

The real deficiency is a failure to communicate and share information.  “Information sharing” is a buzz word these days among the various executive departments and agencies, but the reality is that genuine information sharing is still rare; instances of effective information sharing can usually be traced back to established personal relationships rather than an institutionalized culture of information exchange among departments and agencies.

Bureaucratic politics and cultural barriers are the primary culprits.  There is no standardization of information in terms of sensitivity and classification levels which can make information sharing across departments difficult.  Bureaucrats are also reluctant to share information out of budgetary concerns.  No one likes to open up their books to other departments and agencies out of fear that duplicative efforts will be merged and programs cut.

The establishment of the DNI, while well-intentioned, was a mistake.  The DNI does not have the power of the purse over the other agencies and growing government by creating more bureaucracy usually doesn’t solve anything.  It placates some individuals and gives politicians something to point to so they can say, “Look, we did something.”