Social Security may be the third rail of American politics, but the defense budget is at least worthy of notable mention. In fact, the defense budget is arguably the most politically sensitive budget item after entitlement spending. Conservatives and Republicans, who have enjoyed an advantage over their liberal counterparts on national security issues since Vietnam, too often associate a “strong national defense” simply with increases in defense spending—without considering the expenditures in the context of broader U.S. grand strategy. Many conservatives and Republicans are reluctant to propose cuts to the defense budget out of fear for appearing weak. Many just lack any strategic sense and simply follow the big government internationalism crowd which includes both liberals and parts of the conservative movement.
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.
