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The Spectacle Blog
Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly take to the Washington Post op-ed page today to push back against what they see as insufficient support for high defense spending on the right. They make some good points, but they seem a bit deaf to the reason that Republicans are starting to make noises about cuts to the Department of Defense, namely the state of the federal balance sheet. Too often, commentators who call for spending on defense seem so indifferent to domestic policy that they never get around to addressing where the money for all this spending should coming from.
As Peter Suderman notes over at Reason, the GOP can’t seem to bring itself to tackle the cost of health care entitlements, and indeed often seem to talk as if Medicare is sacrosanct. If foreign policy hawks like Pletka and Donnelly are serious about shoring up defense as a spending priority, they ought to be joining budget hawks in calling for cost control in entitlements.
View all comments (55) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/24/dont-want-to-cut-defense-bette
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Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 9.24.10 @ 9:57PM
Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and Yes, even the untouchable Department of Defense need to make huge cuts from here on out!! And I'm in the Army (so I guess I should be defending the DOD?), but even if I end up on the cutting room floor in the end because of it, oh well then, so be it (I'll shift gears, and move on again)!! There's plenty of room for cuts in every part of this Government, everywhere you look there's massive waste, and nothing can be looked at as being sacred any longer. Government programs, and Government Departments never add to the economy, they only take away from the economy, even the honorable U.S. Army (as hard as that is for me to say) waste a lot of the American Taxpayer's money, and it's got to stop. So everything has got to be on the table from now on, everything!! Cut, slice, dice, dismantle, liquidate, destroy!! But a great, and easy way to start this process is in November, with the total destruction of the Democratic Party in America, plus on top of that, it's also my New Year's resolution!! It's a small dream, but it's my dream, and you all know how hard it is to fulfill your resolutions, don't you? Won't you please help me with mine? Vote out the Commies (pardon the shorthand) in November!!
Warrior | 9.24.10 @ 10:27PM
Remove all or drastically reduce bases in Germany, England, Italy, Japan, etc. Make these countries pay for their own military defense. We could, of course, assist by selling equipment. That alone will assist in shoring up the DOD budget.
DrTomVoter| 9.25.10 @ 8:28AM
Right on, LLL. It's not just how much you spend, it's how you spend it, and all of government is FUBAR in that sense.
Fred Beloit| 9.25.10 @ 10:40AM
Many years ago I ran a range at Ft. Ord, CA: two ring-mounted 30 cal MGs and two 3.5-inch rocket launchers (we fired dummy rocket rounds). The first range day I mentioned to my NCOs that I intended to return the left-over ammo at the end of the day; they went bonkers. They predicted that the civilians who distributed ammo would never forgive them and would short us of ammo on all future range days. The civilians didn't like to do anything after 1600 it seems. They begged me to use up what was left myself for practice. (Practice for what?) Being a fairly new 2nd Lt., I bought it. I was wrong. I wish I had it to do over again. I would have carried in the ammo to be returned personally. The next range day, I would have gone in with the NCOs to count the ammo before signing off for it and insisted we be given the amount requested. That's the kind of thing officers, especially junior officers, should do. A lot of hanky panky and waste by civilian employees of the Army would be eliminated.
S.L. Toddard| 9.26.10 @ 3:55PM
Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and Yes, even the untouchable Department of Defense need to make huge cuts from here on out
LLL Cool J has the right idea. Our government is too huge, too expensive, too powerful, and it is hostile to the interests of true blue Americans. All that power concentrated in Washington must be decentralized, spread out and shared by the states and people. If American citizens wish to retain Medicare, Medicaid and SS then they should petition their state governments to assume these responsibilities. Also, it is self-contradictory to argue that Big Government is too huge and hostile to the interests of regular Americans while arguing that more and more wealth be redistributed to it to expand its already terrible might. If one is serious about shrinking Big Government one must be willing to shrink Big Government's armed wing.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 9.26.10 @ 7:09PM
Is that really you Toddard? I thought you drowned in the "Great" flood in New England last spring? Oops, I guess not!! So how's the portfolio going for you? Are you investing in those new Israeli settlements yet? I am!! I see "big" growth for the Great State of Israel, now that the latest round of the "so-called" Peace Process has broken down, yet again. But it really does make me wonder how, and when, our President is going to earn that Nobel Peace Prize he was given after only 11 days in office? Maybe it'll be for finally winning the War in Iraq, huh?
Hey, but look on the bright side S.L., you're only 5-1/2 games back from my second place Yankees, and that's not too bad!!
Oop, I'm sorry dude, I just looked at the schedule, and it turns out, there only four games left for the entire season!! Yeesh, I didn't mean to rub it in your face like that!! Maybe next year, huh Sport? Let's Go Yankees!!
Tim*| 9.24.10 @ 10:22PM
"Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders” by U.S. Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) trumpets Rep. Ryan’s ‘Roadmap’ budget plan that would privatize Social Security and replace Medicare with a voucher system
William R| 9.25.10 @ 7:32AM
Pletka is a Neocon extremist.
"." For others, doctrinaire fiscal conservatism blends easily with a renewed isolationism. As one GOP up-and-comer told us recently, "America has borne the burden of making the world secure for 60 years; it's someone else's turn.""
The country is broke. We are running trillion dollar deficits and Pletka thinks we can continue to police the world and fight endless war in the Middle East. She is not a serious person.
Siegfried X| 9.25.10 @ 10:57AM
If we're going to make the perfect the enemy of the good, let's also promise to cure all sickness, bring world peace, and walk on water.
Siegfried X| 9.25.10 @ 11:00AM
This shows why the Contract With America was much, much better than the Pledge. The Contract was a checklist of specific rules & legislation to be passed with two years; the legislation was already written, hundreds of pages, at the time the Contract was released. The Pledge is mostly vague noise.
Oldefarte| 9.25.10 @ 11:40AM
There is plenty of areas to cut, once politicians obtain the guts to do so. Conversion of welfare to workfare, eliminate foreign aid, farm aid, excessive/wasteful military hardware, dismantle the educational and energy departments are but a few examples to begin with!!!!!!!!!!
JP| 9.25.10 @ 2:05PM
I agree with most people in that the DOD can drastically reduce forces in Europe, Japan, and Korea. The US Army has a "heavy corps" (V Corps) in Germany; once you include costs for dependents, civilians, etc... it costs taxpayers over $60 billion to keep them there. The Navy has large operations in Naples Italy. The USAF keeps large bases all over Europe, including Turkey. In Japan and Korea, taxpayers are paying over $30 billion to keep the force structure in those nations.
The costs savings for large force reductions overseas can be put into modernization of our air forces (the F-16 and F-15 can no longer command battlefield superiority). The Navy still uses the F-14 (which was designed initially during the Vietnam Era). The Army needs a more advanced general purpose armored infantry carrier. The M-16 has been around for almost 50 years.
Of course, these high ticket items become very politicized. The DOD ditched the most advanced air superiority jet fighter in the world (the Raptor), for the more politically feasabile F-35. And many of the prototypes for the M-16 would cost over $5000 per weapon, and are of dubious quality (some analysts say we should just find a weapons company to get a license to manufacture the AK-47 stateside). The Navy continues to scale down; it is now almost below 300 ships. How many carrier task forces will we need in the future? Even President Obama extends our promises overseas. How will we project our forces with reduced naval assets?
The costs of Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid will reach a combined $3 trillion in the not too distant future. The current GOP "pledge" is absurd. The GOP leadership still runs scared, as it refuses to tackle the very difficult decisions needed to reform these giant entitlements. If they do not get reformed, the DOD will suffer and with it innocent Americans will suffer.
Thom| 9.25.10 @ 9:28PM
JP, you need to update your talking points here a bit. The F-14 has been gone as well as the S-3 from carrier wings. All that is left is F-18 variants and some EW A-6 stuff and the carrier wings are reduced in size to save money already.
I seriously doubt that you have looked into the actual cost of moving our forces back home to bases here since we have shut down a lot of bases here. I also doubt you really understand what the cost here is vs what the cost there is for the same and when you combine that with the cost to move the “bases” the short term cost is enormous. That is why the other “heavy Corps” based in Europe was not brought home, it was disbanded completely and just the movable stuff and personnel sent home. What you are suggesting in effect in just Europe would eliminate 3 divisions and one Brigade from our 10 Army and 3 Marine active duty divisions. Sending home the forces in Japan and Korea would drop another two Plus from our active duty force. Now we are down to about 8 total divisions or about the combat forces we had deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan at their peaks. What next JP, carrier battle groups? In 2012 the Enterprise will finally go out of service. It will cost more than half what it cost to build a new one to decommission it. Its replacement has already been delayed by a year in building thus it will be 2015 before we can even get back to 10 deployable carriers again. Carrier Battle groups are the only means we have of projecting power outside the continental US that isn’t subject to the jurisdiction of the foreign governments. Our Air Force can only operate where foreign governments give us permission to thus the Air Force can’t really be counted on for contingencies outside of secure military bases like those worthless NATO bases we have in Europe from which we stage numerous military missions and refuel missions coming from the Continental US. Simple put JP, no military bases in Europe or Japan and we won’t need an Air Force either because our enemies aren’t going to give use permission to base in their countries and our allies won’t be our allies if we don’t have skin in the game. Get it?
Zbigniew Mazurak | 9.25.10 @ 3:25PM
This blogpost by John Tabin is ridiculous. It suggests that defense spending is the cause of America's fiscal woes. It is not.
Defense spending constitutes only 14.87% of the total federal budget, and only 3.65% of America's GDP (which is $14.61 trillion). It's not a burden on the US economy at all - it's within the statistical margin of error.
This share of GDP is the DOD's SMALLEST share of America's economy since FY1948 (if you exclude the Clinton era). During the ENTIRE Cold War, except FY1948 (when Louis Johnson was the SECDEF), the US spent a larger percentage of GDP on defense than now. The DOD's share of the total federal budget is also at a historically low level - excluding the Clinton era, it has always been larger during the last 69 years than it is now. Ditto the DOD's share of the discretionary budget.
The US military was SEVERELY weakened by Presidents and lawmakers of BOTH political parties during the 1989-2001 period. During these 12 years, members of both political parties halved defense spending, cut force structure severely, closed over 100 weapon programs, and reduced equipment stocks significantly. The US military STILL hasn't recovered from the defense cuts of the 1990s, yet Mr Tabin demands further defense cuts.
Mr Tabin was right only about one thing - entitlement programs. The current 3 entitlement programs, together with debt interest payments, constitute 58% of the TOTAL federal budget (by comparison, the defense budget constitutes only 14.87%). Significantly cutting the costs of entitlement programs is the ONLY way to balance the budget (on top of cancelling the TARP program, the stimulus, and Obama's socialized medicine scheme).
DRed| 9.25.10 @ 4:50PM
Can you explain what you mean when you say that defense spending is within the statistical margin of error?
Thom| 9.25.10 @ 7:03PM
DRED, it means that the percentage of Defense spending is within the statistical variant from one year to the next over decades of spending adjusted for inflation. It means that our spending during the last 9 years "at war" are within the margins of what our spending was when we were at "peace" going back several decades. That's a point many simply don't want to accept when looking at the whole spending picture by the Federal government.
DRed| 9.25.10 @ 7:14PM
Thank you.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 9.26.10 @ 2:26AM
I mean that the percentage of the US economy that the DOD consumes annually (3.65%) is so small that it is within the statistical margin of error.
There are those who falsely claim that America is an empire, or possesses one. It is not and does not. Most of the 700 or 800 "bases in foreign countries" that libertarians complain about are actually tiny facilities; the number of big American bases abroad is measured in tens, not hundreds.
Some people here have even ridiculously demanded that the US withdraw from NATO - the most successful alliance ever established on this planet - and cede all of its allies (not just Europe but also Japan, South Korea, Israel, etc.) to totalitarian allies (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, etc.). These people are irresponsible. Ceding Japan and its Senkaku islands to China would be a grave mistake - the world's 3rd biggest economy and the minerals-rich Senkaku islands would be ceded to an anti-American, hostile, Communist, expansionist country. Ceding Israel to Iran means a death sentence on Israel. Ceding Central Europe to Russia means giving Russia a permission to reestablish its empire.
The proposition that much money can be saved by cutting defense spending is ridiculous. Firstly, the post-9/11 growth of defense spending constitutes only a tiny portion of the total spending growth and total deficit growth since then, and secondly, the FY2010 budget deficit ($1.4 trillion) is so large that you could abolish the entire DOD and disarm the US completely, and you STILL would've had a $900 bn annual budget deficit.
William R| 9.25.10 @ 4:51PM
Here's a pie chart on how the 2009 Federal Budget breaks down!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....Y_2007.png
Anyone who thinks we can start addressing our budget problems without making large cuts in the defense budget don't live in the real world
Zbigniew Mazurak| 9.26.10 @ 2:41AM
HAHAHAHA! Wikipedia as a source of information? No wonder you're spouting that pacifist gibberish.
Here are the FACTS: The FY2010 defense budget is $534 bn (14.87% of the total federal budget). Together with the FY2010 GWOT supplemental, total FY2010 military spending is $664 bn, i.e. 18.5% of the total federal budget. Wikipedia is simply lying, by grossly overstating military spending and including nonmilitary stuff in that category.
So, TOTAL FY2010 military spending constitutes just 18.5% of the total federal budget. What is the problem - the 18.5% part or the 81.5% part?
Even DISBANDING THE US MILITARY COMPLETELY would not balance the budget, because the deficit planned for FY2010 is at least $1.4 trillion (officially - the real figure is more likely $1.6 trillion), so disbanding the US military would mean you would STILL have a FY2010 budget deficit of $900 billion.
Cutting defense spending is NOT the solution. Fact.
Oldefarte| 9.26.10 @ 12:13PM
They need to take a wack at the OTHER DISCRETIONARY and OTHER MANDATORY [and make it NON-MANDATORY through legislation], which together is 29% of the federal expenses!!!!
jomo2009| 9.25.10 @ 5:31PM
The first thing to do would be to leave NATO (the Europeans are rich enough to defend themselves). This move alone could save about $200-300 billion over the next ten years. It's a start.
William R| 9.25.10 @ 6:20PM
Is NATO irrelevant?
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/.....irrelevant
Thom| 9.25.10 @ 6:50PM
More often than not calls to cut defense spending are born of one part brazing ignorance of what actual Defense spending involves and one part wishful thinking as to what cutting it will bring about.
As to the first part, the bulk of defense spending increases since 2001 after being adjusted for inflation, concerns operational cost associated with fighting two low intensity conflicts 8000 miles away and a general heightened state of readiness (meaning increased operational training cost and numbers of people full time active duty employed). We have called up hundreds of thousands of Reservists and Guard for yearlong deployments to the above mentioned places and to bolster our active duty forces. All that cost money, lots of money. Supporting a nominal 200,000 troops 8000 miles away adds its own cost and has anyone noticed that we are spending about twice as much for fuel and ammo now as we did in 2001? Fuel cost is one the contributing factors to the “light footprint” Jeep based model being employed in Iraq with predictable results. We traded bodies for operational cost. If the reason for all this operational cost isn’t going away what would be the likely result of cutting the defense budget while still ongoing operations are underway? A hint, the fewer the units for deployment the more often each unit has to deploy the worse moral becomes the less effective our limited all volunteer forces become over time. The Brits are glowing examples of this thinking and “burning out” their few combat formations when deployed in such conflicts.
By the same measure, cutting operational forces to save money for operational cost trivializes the capital cost to build and maintain such forces in the first place. We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq 9 and 7 years later partly because we don’t have enough forces to fight effectively there and cover our other contingencies worldwide. The cost of maintaining forces and bases in Europe and Eastern Asia might be elevated over and above maintaining those forces here but I would point out two universal truths about such matters. One, the cost to bring our forces home carries an enormous upfront cost and the cost to go back is both enormous and costly in human capital. For those that can’t grasp this, take a look at world map and draw a straight line between the East Coast of the US and the center of the Middle East and the same on the West Coast and dead center between Taiwan and the Korean peninsula. Along that general path you will find our forward deployed forces in bases where they can react to events in days not months as would be the case if they were home based. Second, I would point out that all previous cuts to operational forces levels from forward locations resulted in their disbandment not their redeployment back to the states. In effect what those that take such simplistic positions are advocating is the destruction of what is left of our ground forces simply because they are based outside the US proper. We are not still in Europe to defend Europe by any means. We are there to defend our interest in the Middle East and Europe makes a much better base of operations than the desert.
With every major weapons system canceled since 1988, which includes the F-22 now and the bulk of our forces operating 1970 designs, this idea that we can cut force levels to pay for operational cost in two low level conflicts that have barely risen to the level of D-Day after nearly a decade is tantamount to military suicide and beyond naïve in the world we currently live in. We’ve been cutting military spending in real terms since 1988 and those “savings” have been spent on domestics programs all along. As others have pointed out our actual defense spending in the middle of ongoing conflicts 8000 miles away is historically low even by peace time standards. We are 5% below Reagan’s defense spending as a percentage of the Federal Budget and he never had to fight a war his entire two terms.
People who keep looking for simplistic solutions to domestic spending being out of control by cutting defense spending are the same mindsets that during the 30s couldn’t see the forest for the trees and enabled both Japan and Germany to run amok to the tune of 60 million dead. If we got rid of the entire Defense Department cost by some magic act we would still be running huge deficits because the Federal Government continues to spend money we don’t have on things not granted in the Constitution. National Defense is in the Constitution and the Federal Government’s number one responsibility.
William R| 9.25.10 @ 7:57PM
Thom, it is time to come home. Junk the empire and have a rational foreign policy. Get out of the Middle East, Europe, Japan and Korea. We can have a defense second to none and still make major cuts in the defense budget. Time to realize that Iraq and Afghanistan were major blunders. We are reaching the point of no return if we don't start addressing our budget problems.
Thom| 9.25.10 @ 9:09PM
William R, we tried that pacifist/head up your ass approach in the 30s and it did not work out too well. We stood by and let both the Fascist and Imperial Japanese Empire gobble up countries and become more powerful with each new conquest. We have one of the smallest military forces on a per capita basis in the industrialized world and while it might have the sharpest spears on a man for man basis I think our accumulated experiences in the backwaters of both Iraq and Afghanistan after 7-9 years of effort speaks to the myth that we can withdrawn behind two oceans again and not be hit by significant force if we don’t deal with where the problems are rather than waiting till they develop the means to hit us with non conventional means without coming here.
As to this nation being an Empire, well if we are we are the weakest known Empire in the history of mankind and as to withdrawing from the Middle East, well you are either a complete dumbass about the world wide economic impact that would have or working for our enemies. Which is it? We could get zero oil from the Gulf region and a regional war there would collapse the world’s economy in short order and make our current difficulties look mild by comparison. The only people that think that way are either morons or have some kind of twisted death wish for this country and the world at large. I find that mindset common among environmental extremists who typically have the maturity and mindset of a child and simply can’t grasp the simplest of adult rational thinking. If you truly think we can actually defend ourselves by pulling our military back to the continental US you are truly ignorant of both our capabilities and limitations.
As I said, the bulk of our increase in military spending is operation cost associated with fighting two conflicts. Your approach to that is simply ignore the reality of that or to simplify your position by saying both conflicts were “mistakes” while ignoring the events the led up to us actually starting to fight back after 30 years of making excuses for not fighting back. The ash heap of history is full of nations that tried your way William and Pandora is out of the box. Deal with that. The problem does not go away simply because you wish it to or because we have thousands of miles separating us and the “problem”. Technology has compressed both time and space to the point that your naïve thinking becomes downright suicidal in the 21st century. 85% of the Federal budget is non military spending and our deficits are almost twice the entire Defense Department budget. Try dealing with that comrade since non DOD spending is on an every increasing curve while real military spending have been on a declining curve since 1988.
John - TMF| 9.25.10 @ 11:55PM
Ok... I'll play too..
Lemme see.. the cost of having say 3 brigades stationed in Bavaria vs the cost of 3 brigades stationed in someplace really special like Fort Knox - since some moron decided to move the Armor School to the Infantry school and make the Armor School a record and training depot. Probably a General Staff wanna-not-be blue-leg who wets himself when he hears the sound of tracks rumbling in the background
Knox would need a bigger PX, Commissary, support facilities. Of course because it was quasi-BRACed, it would have to have a facilities upgrade, new quarters for troops, new company command centers... etc.
It would eat up even more land (got to house those troops somewhere.) It would get busy again, might be good for Elizabethtown, and maybe Louisville (lots of Derby parties - with copious quantities of muddled adult beverages).
But by and large, the cost to the federal government for running Fort Knox at full capacity is not really greater than running those combat and support units in Europe.
Oh? I get it. The Isolationists are quietly pushing their pacifist fantasy that if we play in our sand box the bully will leave us with all the cat poo we can pile up.
So by "Bringing Home the Troops" from forward deployment bases nearer to potential trouble.... they really mean... cut the military to insanely tiny levels and go back to the notion that we can withdraw from the world security stage.
Hum. We live in a world where India and Iran have orbited satellites, and North Korea and Pakistan have short and medium ranged guided surface to surface missiles. A jet aircraft can fly halfway around the world without refueling with a full load of.. fuel and er um passengers in a matter of a few hours. The fore mentioned nations have diesel-electric submarines infinitely better than any German U-boat or Japanese I-boat.
Where does that sort of thing lead us? The primary job of the United States government is to provide for the common defense. In the modern world, that means being out there, not back here. HERE is to freaking late... don't you get it? (Not you Thom... you do... I speak of those who think that applying deafness will make the sound go away.)
Nine years ago I watched a TV screen as a simple civilian jet airliner was turned into a guided bomb and used to destroy the 2nd of two major skyscrapers in New York. A short time later I was treated to the sound of a colleague calling on the telephone screeching in panic and horror that he had just seen a jet fly into the Pentagon...
We cannot wait to have more losses of 3,000; or is 4,000 enough? How about the several million who would be incinerated if Iran develops a bomb and delivers it to a terror group?
Right. I won't even talk about the rapid disintegration of Europe into a squabbling mess if we leave, or the resumption of the Korean War which is almost guaranteed if we leave.
Nah... none of that matters. Just pull up the draw bridge and man the parapets.
Been there, done that. December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 if you can't hear them roaring in your ears, maybe you are deaf.
Regards,
The Mighty Fahvaag
William R| 9.26.10 @ 9:49AM
Thom, face it you're not a conservative!! A NeoCon yes.
Reagan’s wisdom on the Middle East: Leave!!!
http://orangepunch.ocregister......ast-leave/
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 11:36AM
William R, when did I ever say I was a conservative? What've I've said is you are a pacifist/isolationist and we have a horde of documented history to where that ultimately leads. Trying to project your weaknesses and labels onto me won’t buy you anything here. My position is based on historical fact not position papers, speeches and wishful thinking that has time and time again lead to large scale buffoonery and the unnecessary loss of life and prosperity because people like you think the world can be pigeon holed into precise and absolute pathologies that fit nicely into the labels you throw out. The pacifist/isolationists of the world have always lived under the protection of the larger majority that doesn’t buy their bull crap. When that protection goes away we get to read about the tragic end to the pacifist/isolationists noble experiment in the world of make believe. A case in point occurred on a large scale during WWII and you can’t escape 65 years after that war ended that it was your view that prevailed up until the reality of the world burst onto the stage and slaughtered tens of millions simply because it could.
You are advocating the pacifist/isolationist line. You are what you do thus we have to take you at face value here. What you advocate will get millions if not tens of millions killed or enslaved if allowed to play its self out. All the Saudi wealth in the world won’t build a military force that can take on Iran. Same for Taiwan vs. China. The Korean War did not end but I don’t expect you to understand the difference between an armistice and a verifiable and enforceable peace treaty. If North Korea attacks south China will support for no other reason than to keep a modernized united Korea off its border. South Korea could not prevail in that fight without our help. If Japan gets involved the chances of a nuclear exchange escalates rapidity. You discount all that ever happening. The views you spout are as much beyond naïve as they are without specifics or merit in the real world. You completely discount historical perspective and the lessons learned. Children do that because they lack wisdom and adult does that when they can handle being an adult and wish to remain in the world of a child. You are what you are William and we don’t need to invent new labels for what you represent.
William R| 9.26.10 @ 11:47AM
Thom, you don't even know what isolationism means. I'm anything but an isolationist. You on the other hand are warmonger.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 12:14PM
What you advocate is the essence of isolation in practical terms. Pulling our military forces back to the Continental US as you continue to advocate renders most of it moot or irrelevant for military purposes. You ignore the upfront cost of that which makes your fiscal argument moot. Our Air Force has almost no conventional capability from the continental US thus it has no possible influence on events outside of our effective range with short range tactical aircraft. That represents a third of our forces. The Army has zero function or influence outside the continental US if it is based here. There goes the other third. The Navy can only operate outside the continental US facilities for extended periods of time by having support facilities close to the action. This is precisely the situation that existed before WWII. Academic nuisances don’t change the fact that pulling the US military back to continental US isolates us from having any influence outside the US proper. That is the essence of isolationism and was a demonstrated blessing to our enemies prior to the outbreak of WWII. You are advocating the pacifist/isolation message warped in fiscal responsibility cloth. Just exactly what war have I advocated having there William the Pacifist/Isolationist?
Zbigniew Mazurak| 9.26.10 @ 2:35AM
No, you can't. You can't have it both ways. You can't make huge reductions of defense spending and still have the best military in the world (BTW, the Chinese military is already superior to the US military). The current defense budget (3.65% of GDP) is barely sufficient to maintain the military as what it is today, and totally inadequate to replace obsolete military equipment produced during the 1960s.
As for your proposal to "get out of the ME, Europe, Japan and Korea" - are you insane? If the US does that, Israel will be eliminated by its enemies, Japan will be swallowed by China (the two countries are now quarrelling over vast mineral resources), and South Korea will be conquered by its aggressive northern neighbor.
The US is not an empire and doesn't have one. It merely defends foreign countries against aggressive neighbors.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan - the Iraqi war has already ended, and Obama has already presented his plans to bring American troops home from iraq and Afghanistan.
William R| 9.26.10 @ 9:53AM
China's military isn't superior. We could cut our defense budget in half and still be spending more than China and Russia combined.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 11:45AM
The Chinese military wasn’t superior during the Korean War either but they “won” and got what they wanted out of that adventure didn’t they? They suffered enormous losses but still prevailed in the end. Common sense coupled with Chinese history would suggest they don’t have match our capability on a man for man basis but just have to be the last man standing. Given our history of the last 50 years, I think their 1.3 billion male skewed population basis can handle our tiny force structure in a protracted conflict on their home turf.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 9.26.10 @ 3:03PM
Not true. Russia's defense budget is $100 billion (though the Kremlin admits only $50 billion), while Western analysts estimate China's defense budget to be as much as $180 billion. Combined, that is $280 billion.
The US defense budget is $534 billion, so cutting it by half would mean reducing it to $267 billion - a sum SMALLER than the combined defense budgets of Russia and China. And in those countries, $1 can buy much more than in the US, so their defense budgets can buy much more than the US defense budget.
And yes, the Chinese military IS superior. The USN cannot even detect Chinese submarines, cannot enter the Chinese airspace (because of radars and SAMs), and cannot protect itself against CHinese antiship cruise missiles. The majority of the USAF's fighterplane fleet (all fighterplanes except ca. 96 planes) are obsolete F-15s and F-16s, while China wields hundreds of modern SU-27, Su-30, J-10, J-11 and JF-17 fighterplanes.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 4:19PM
Zbigniew, you are getting a little carried away here with the comparisons. The Bulk of the US aircraft inventory is not obsolete but they are two and three + decades old and costly to maintain. They are as a whole approaching block obsolesce which will result in the same outcome because a very large chunk of our inventory will either have to be replaced in short order or massive amounts spent on rebuilding programs to extend their airframe lives which naturally takes away from actually designing and building their replacements in the compressed time span block obsolesce brings on. It is almost never a wise investment to sink billions into rebuilds of 30+ year old airframes compared to what you get with a technological updated design. What you usually end up with is a “new” version of a 30 + year old design with some improvements at a premium price. None of our 4th generation fleet is going to be performing well against Russian and Chinese 5th generation stuff 5-10 years down the road. The F-35 program is going to prove to be both unaffordable as was envisioned and not nearly the multi-role replacement airframe as some would hope. We’ve made that same mistake before and paid a dear cost for doing so. As a percentage of Chinese GDP, they are spending a lot more on defense than we are and they are the ones with 8+ percent GDP growth each year. Even when they falter, they exceed our spending on an adjusted dollar basis. They’ve done this for a decade now and another decade of this will have impact on our abilities in their sphere of influence.
Your point about what we think the Russians and Chinese spend on defense is just the tip of the iceberg because it has always been folly to compare our cost basis with someone who has a fraction of our per capita income level and labor cost. A simple illustration of this was observed when I visited Brazil in 1986 and ate at a McDonalds. I ordered the same menu item I would eat here. The product was in fact the same as here because McDonalds goes to great length to insure product consistency worldwide. The meal cost 18 cents there while the same here cost over a $1.00. This valuation difference stands up in defense related matters just as well. It cost a lot more to build the F-16s and F-15s Japan got from us thus a lot of that buy was built there to save money. I can’t think of anything that we build that can be compared to what the Russians and Chinese build on a dollar for dollar basis. Cutting our defense spending in half and not suffering for that is shear lunacy on the face of it. Doing so while two active conflicts are ongoing and burning up large amounts of operational consumables isn’t the actions of serious people. Fools maybe but not people to be taken seriously.
If we contract the Russians and Chinese to build our stuff to our specs then we could save hundreds of billions a year since they know how to get by on the cheap with a fraction of our labor cost basis it seems, etc. That of course might introduce some issues that can’t be resolved easily. Perhaps a better solution would be to lower our labor cost basis down to their level and see how that works to reduce Defense Spending. That way we won’t end up with a 750,000 man military force or half what we have today while the Chinese can field a couple million if we adjust for dollar for dollar spent basis. I strongly suspect none of this is going to fly with serious people.
Tenn Slim| 9.26.10 @ 8:31AM
For accurate, realistic, and competent data on DOD Budget cuts, go to mil.com DOD tech.
These folks have up to date data, expertise and a desire to see functional reductions that still enable the USA to maintain a viable defense oriented force.
DoD cuts should come first of all, at the Pentagon. The CS DOD Staff is humongeuos, bloated and way over staffed. We have to dredge this swamp, before we ever cut one dime from the MRE budgets.
end
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 10:16AM
Tenn Slim, I agree to a certain point but most of the CS expansion is the result of outsourcing previous military billets to “cheaper” civilian billets. The “cheaper” part sounds like an oxymoron but the long term cost of the average career military personnel that puts in their 20 is quite a bit higher than anything reflected in their AGI tax returns. A 20 year vet imparts about a 60 + year liability on the Federal Treasury when all is said and done. You get 30-40 years of work out of the civilian counterpart for the monies expended normally. To some extent it is also a shell game being that some of the money for the civilian billet can and often does come out of someone else’s budget not the DOD. Overall I agree the Pentagon is bloated but it has always been bloated with people in uniform that have advance degrees in Public Speaking, International Studies, Masters in Business Administration, Women’s studies, etc. There are a lot of military personnel stationed there that are really politicians that wear uniforms and never actually perform a military function in the scheme of things. Another reason the civilian work force has ballooned is related to our need for subject matter experts on all things these days and civilian staffs stay around for decades while the average military personnel stays only for one enlistment even today. The bulk of our military force turns over every 4-5 years. Without some sense of permanence at the upper levels you would get chaos due to the brain drain that is a constant in our all volunteer force today. Most of the benefits from an enlistment or being an officer in our current force structure today are delivered in the first enlistment period. After that, there are declining incentives to stay longer as a uniformed person. Many of those civilians are the same uniformed personnel that did similar jobs while in uniform. In that way, the way we “buy” our military forces today contributes to the need for larger civilian staffs. There is waste at the Pentagon but on balance no worse than what you find at every other Federal government agency which seem to be immune to any cuts at all in overhead.
Tenn Slim| 9.26.10 @ 8:36AM
"Thom, it is time to come home. Junk the empire and have a rational foreign policy."
Folks, this idea simply is naive.
Tryed many times, does not work in any era.
Humans, of any stripe, have and always will, want to venture over the ridge. To do so, requires some weaponry. Putting this as simple as the statement. The folks on the other side of the ridge, probably have spears, so we need to at least carry a axe.
Naiveness, is, as the teeners say, soooo 19th century.
end
Semper FI
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 9:45AM
Having actually read the article mentioned above I found nothing out of bounds presented and am always amused that the same pacifist/isolationist mindset that has no grasp of reality with regard to warfare often quotes one line out of the farewell address of the President that signed defense authorization bills throughout his entire two terms that are nominally twice the percentage of GDP we’ve had over the last decade fighting two conflicts 8000 miles away while that President rapidly withdrew from an unresolved active conflict and left a permanent state of war in its place. The enemy Eisenhower let off the hook on the Korean peninsula is nuclear arming and becoming more belligerent by the year because is thinks it has an ace up its sleeve to prevent it being conquered should an attack south fail. Iran is following the exact same model. The odds are that within 10-20 years the discussion won’t be about defense spending being 3-4% of GDP but whether 50% will be enough to handle another WWII scale adventure in the western Pacific. The Middle East will be a side show by comparison but the economic impact of a war in the Middle East will have a very disproportionate impact on the entire world’s economy. Our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over 7-9 years just touch one month of losses in WWII for the US where we had about 180,000,000 less people to cover those losses. Perspective is always important in such discussions of strategic consequence.
Since the pacifist/isolationist mindset can’t deal with abstract terms like scope, perspective and the uselessness of making broad emotional statement without benefit of relativity I won’t bore the simple minds by pointing out the WWII cost a nominal 54% of GDP and that does not include the massive increase in spending in 1940-41 after the Germans invaded Poland. I further won’t let facts get in the way of childish emotions by pointing out that even after a massive increase in military spending in those two years and a vast expansion of our armed forces prior to Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese military which was the poster child for an Empire, handed our head to us on a platter on Dec 7-8thth of 41 and with or without their attack on Pearl we had no capability to respond or save our forces in the Philippines. It took us months to slap together temporary logistical bases in the South Pacific after the loss of the same in the Philippines in order to have any ability at all to operate within range of Japanese forces. It was 10 months after our declaration of war that we even were able to put any forces into the fight in the ETO. The Germans had almost three years of get out of jail passes in Western Europe because we set on our arses and watched from afar as they gobbled up countries, industries and resources gaining strength with each conquest. We’ve spent decades expanding existing facilities in the Western Pacific replacing what was lost when we gave up our bases in the Philippines. The US as an Empire would be the only such Empire in the history of the planet that asked permission to build bases on foreign soil and pays for the privilege of doing so.
Of course if the pacifist/isolationist mindset had any grasp of warfare and logistical matters at all we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Such mindsets, as immortalized by Neville Chamberlain, are always surprised the “enemy” is indeed the enemy after all and dumbfounded by the ease at which they take advantage of their unpreparedness for that one option the pacifist/isolationist’s took off the table from day one. The educated dumbass Chamberlain did everything right except negotiate from a position of strength and prepare for war as the Germans were doing for 6 straight years. The educated dumbass FDR was seemingly shocked that the Japanese would actually take advantage of our gross unpreparedness for war in the Pacific after they had been at war for 5 years. He must have really been surprised by the fact that the plan the Japanese executed was modeled after the US Navy plan executed in 1936 against Pearl Harbor. Who was president from 1933 till Pearl Harbor? An educated dumbass who neglected the Federal government’s first priority in the Constitution. The losses we suffered at Pearl were a fraction of the losses we took in the Philippines. Using pacifist/isolationist logic we shouldn’t have had “bases” in the Philippines or Hawaii. Problem solved. Pure dumbassism on parade there.
The question of guns vs. butter always boils down to a simple but very difficult question to answer. Do we build enough military capability to deter aggression or do we risk letting our enemies throw the first punch, pay a premium in both blood and treasury playing catch up as we did in WWII. In the age of nuclear weapons the scope of that question and consequence is expanded a bit beyond the brain pan capacity of the pacifist/isolationist. The pacifist/isolationist simplifies the question by simply stating we can avoid the entire question by sticking our collective heads up our ass and the enemy will go bother someone else. Ignorance is bliss to the mind of a child.
William R| 9.26.10 @ 10:04AM
Throwing around isolationism and pacifism is buffoon bait. I certainly haven't said anything about withdrawing from the world. I want to invest, trade , and travel with any country that wants the same. World war 2 ended 65 years ago. The Korean war 57 years ago. Europe, Japan and Korea are all wealthy. They can defend themselves. The Russians have gone home. The Warsaw Pact no longer exist. It is time to put American First.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 10:38AM
If the shoe fits William wear it proudly. You keep avoiding the relevant facts in the matter. What we spend on defense is no more now and nominally no more than over the last 50 years of relative peace and half as much as we did during periods of blissful peace throughout the 50s all over the world. You ignore the logistical requirements necessary to support a military activity outside the continental US. You continue to quote as if it is a fact that we spend what we do outside the US to defend other nations. You couldn’t be more wrong in that matter. Our prosperity depends on free trade and the absence of large scale conflicts that interdict that trade all around the world. We’ve had to deal with this for over 200 years. This isn’t new. The Western Pacific and the Middle East are vital to the world’s economy and our prosperity. You would simply surrender that to the one with the biggest stick in those regions. When the real world changes to be like your make believe one William then maybe more than 7% of our population will buy into the childlike mindset you have. Until that day wear the pacifist/isolationist banner proudly because history is slam full of the where your thinking leads time and time again and people like you are curiously absence from history as having had to pay the supreme cost of dealing with such buffoonery.
William R| 9.26.10 @ 11:20AM
Uhhhh Thom, 50 years ago we weren't looking at economic armageddon. Get in the real world. We can't address our budget problems without big cuts in defense and entitlement reform. And our prosperity depends on getting our financial house in order. Not policing the world and fighting BS wars in the Middle East.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 11:59AM
50 years ago we had the entire war debt from WWII and all the monies we loaned our allies to deal with. You can't put our military expenditures now on the same page as WWII deficit spending. The different then and now is that we weren't spending two third of the Federal and State budgets on domestic entitlement programs and half the population wasn’t paying the freight for the other half because of this. You keep conveniently ignoring that the Federal government’s number one and primary responsibility is national defense and the spending for that responsibility has been on a more or less downward curve since 1988. Get a clue here William, we can’t save enough in the Defense budget to pay for one year’s Dept of Education bill and each year that Dept spends what the entire F-22 program cost over its run. Trying to make meaningful budget progress by cutting defense is like pissing into a Hurricane and hoping to not get wet. We’ve been cutting defense in real terms for 22 years while increasing domestic spending off the chart.
Tim*| 9.26.10 @ 9:54AM
Time to Get Real About Social Security & Medicare.
The Young Guns have placed Privatizing Social Security & Vouchering Medicare on the table .
The Tea Party Rebellion Escalates .
Rise Up !
John W.| 9.26.10 @ 10:51AM
I agree there is an almost reflexive opposition to cutting the defense budget. At least in my case, this is due to the fact that, historically, cuts in defense have never been for the sake of reducing overall spending. Instead, defense gets cut to pay for additional spending somewhere else. So, glad to put defense spending on the table - as the very last item budget line to be considered, and limited to no more than 4% (its proportion of GDP) of total spending cuts.
Thom| 9.26.10 @ 1:24PM
William R, four easy questions I think even you can answer.
Are you a paid/unpaid surrogate for a political agenda?
Are you in the service of any foreign government in any capacity or have been in the past?
Are you as really historically ignorant and naïve as you purport here?
Are you just bored and have nothing else better to do with your time than to be a contrarian to everything presented on this site?
I’ve met a few people in my life who just naturally take the opposite view you do just for the “game” of it. They tend to be pretty lonely in life as a result.
I considered “all the above” as a fifth question but figured that might tax you a bit. The essence of your arguments are the same I get with a ten year old who has no perspective on the world outside of what exists in their bedroom world. Children typically don’t comprehend the concept of “money” and “wealth” but they will tend to parrot back the right talking points if you condition them enough. You talk about our pending fiscal calamity but focus on the least influential component of that. A child will do that because they have no worldly concepts of what things actually cost and their whole life is delivered on a silver platter without a bill attached. My platter was more bronze in nature and my parents worked from age 13-16 on.
I could cover the odd 300 billion we spend on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the GWOT by eliminating several Federal Agencies that aren’t provided for in the Constitution. The Dept of Education, EPA, Amtrak would be just good starts. I would vastly cut back several more including the IRS and Post Office and force it to live within its means, the Dept of Commerce, the Dept of Health and Human Services and would convert all “public assistance” to low interest lows instead of handouts without promise or expectation of repayment. That alone would cut Federal and State entitlement spending by hundreds of billions a year. Medicaid alone exceeds the above mentioned 300 billion spent on what you call unnecessary military expenditures. Social Security could be vastly improved if it stopped paying out more than what the person that gets payments paid in and we stopped robbing all those not getting the bottom third of payments to maintain what is essentially a minimum wage existence for the bottom third. The current system rewards sloth and punishes doing the right thing over a person’s life. Same for Medicare, it rewards those that have paid little to nothing into the system at the expense of those that have paid the bulk. Children don’t understand who Karl Marx is or what he stood for but those of us who aren’t limited by the mind of a child do however recognize that both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid work exactly in concert with the progressive income tax system to destroy this nation from within. And you haven’t once spoken of these programs and how their mechanisms drive our fiscal irresponsibility. Your whole focus is on weakening this nation against external threats while ignoring the root problem here. Strikes me and probably many here that your agenda here is one thing and you continue to try to cover that with talking points that have no relevance to the root problem here.
So William, which one of the four above questions best fit your true self here?
William R| 9.26.10 @ 7:10PM
1. nope
2. nope
3.nope
4.nope
I've been a registered Republican for 39 years and I'm disgusted at what the party has become since the rise of the Neocons in the mid 90s through Bush the second. Wilsonian NeoConism instead of the cautious realism that's been the hallmark the GOP. And the real naive people were those that supported the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The two week wonder in Iraq and now being stuck in Afghanistan the graveyard for empires. Now these same clowns want to start bombing Iran. The American Enterprise Institute hacks.
Tim*| 9.26.10 @ 10:21PM
Secretary Of Defense Gates And CJCS Admiral Mullen are looking at Defense Waste .
George S| 9.27.10 @ 11:24AM
The purpose of our Constitution was to protect our freedom born out of the Declaration of Independence. To prevent the return of tyranny, we recognized that we needed two things: economic prosperity and protection from enemies abroad and from within. Economic prosperity comes from protecting individual liberty and private property rights, hence the Bill of Rights and the enumeration of powers to limit the scope of government. Protection from enemies requires a well regulated military. Both of these are better served with a united colonies than a band of thirteen separate entities.
To debate as to whether a defense is needed is to debate the rationale of the Constitution. Yet we see nothing wrong with a federal budget that takes money form one person and gives over half of it to another person. To cut defense to support that idiotic notion is throwing our system of government out the window.
If we get rid of defense spending to "bring our budget in line", we will experience first hand the European model. At the end of WWII, we took on the job of defending Europe. As a result, the money they "saved" went straight into social spending, creating the lazy welfare state that today is about to go bust. If we cut defense spending, will that money go into paying last year's borrowing? How will that get congressmen reelected? The 42 percenters do not care what you did for them yesterday. It is always the next election that matters.