Getting outside the box on national defense

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Monday, June 14, 2010 - 2:53 PM Share

A quick shout-out for two studies you should look at, particularly if you're interested on how the United States could spend less money on defense without making itself dangerously insecure. The first is Debts, Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward, and is from the Program for Defense Alternatives here in Boston. The second is a study by Patrick Cronin of the Center for New American Security, entitled "Restraint: Recalibrating American Strategy." There are points I might challenge in both studies, but each one shows smart people wrestling with the fiscal and strategic realities that are going to shape U.S. national security policy in the years and decades to come. To their credit, the authors of both studies are not wedded to inside-the-Beltway orthodoxy and they recognize that the United States will be much better off once it reduces its current level of over-commitment.

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FP WONK STEVE

10:20 PM ET

June 14, 2010

The first study

Was a pretty good assessment for the most part.

The only things I did not agree on were the cuts to Research and Development and the base sizes we have in Asia. I could probably be swayed on the latter but for the first one, at a fundamental level, R&D is far too important to cut like that. Technology is the future, it is the stuff that helps cut costs in OTHER areas if used correctly. If even 3-4 cuts listed were ever implemented, them many budget issues might go away. It will never happen though. The current administration is locked into fighting reality at the moment...

What we really need is some kind of viable fusion. Military or civilian researched, we need a top dog technology that can produce a second Golden Age in America. :)

BUBBLE BURSTER

6:46 AM ET

June 15, 2010

Interesting adjective

Steve,

Your choice of adjectives does not hearten me. So neither of these plans would leave the US "dangerously" insecure...so are we to assume they would leave us "moderately" or "somewhat" insecure?

The debate on overcommitment is important to have, but it is not self-evident that the answer is retrenchment. The withdrawal of US power and the creation of a vacuum will be met with it being filled by some other power. It is not abundantly clear that any other regional aspirant anywhere would order things in a way that is congruent with U.S. interests.

What is it that Pericles said..."Nor is it any longer possible for you to to give up this empire . . . it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go."

I would like to hear from you just what country's reach you would like to see increased as we decrease ours. If you are true to your realist roots and to the logic of relative power, this issue must be addressed.

J WILDERMUTH

7:26 PM ET

June 15, 2010

Good Ideas, wrong strategy

I also recommend Carl Conetta's Jan 2010 report "An Undisciplined Defense" which explores the reasons for our incredible defense budget growth in the past 10 years. We are currently spending more than our Cold War average ($423B), more than the Reagan average ($517B), and more than the Vietnam average ($495B). Surprisingly, the increase in spending isn't entirely associated with costs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conetta's report does a great job dissecting why these costs have exploded.

While "Debt, Deficits, & Defense" does a great job of showing some areas for serious cuts in the budget, I believe it misses the key point: Strategy must drive our force structure. Instead, this latest report treats strategy as an addendum (in section VII - "Strategy of Restraint").

Even in good times, our current defense budgets aren't sustainable, let alone in our current economic situation. However, In my opinion (as a mid-level Army officer who has experienced the austerity of the "go to war with the Army you have" force of the early 2000s as well as the opulence of get anything you want late 2000s) I think that a solid strategy that realizes the limitations and utility of the use of force should drive our force structure. Otherwise we will have another cycle of cuts followed by ballooning expenses (and worse, we will have forces untrained and/or unequipped to fight and win the war of the day) when our politicians choose our next military adventure.

BUBBLE BURSTER

8:51 AM ET

June 16, 2010

unsustainable?

I respectfully question your claim that current budgets are unsustainable. As a percentage of GDP current outlays are about 4.7% which is significantly LOWER than at the high points of Cold War spending. Adm. Mullen has testified (yeah take it with a grain of salt) that 4% of GDP should be considered an absolute floor.

Put in context, this only during the last two years f the Carter Administration and during the Clinton Administration did defense spending go below the 4.7% level. The 45 year average is 5.5%. Clearly one can mount an argument against measuring as a percentage of GDP, but the point is that since there are two reasonable metrics one might use, it i not clear the claim of unsustainability is actually true.

I think the more important issue is not weather the budget is sustainable (it probably is) but rather the operational tempo and its effects on the force (this is not sustainable).