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Choice. The Problem Is Choice.
Travis | Apr 29, 2009 |
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Mo money mo problems
Do conservative national security analysts have regular meetings or an active listserv where they coordinate public messaging? They always seem like they are playing off the same sheet of music.
Take their rebuttal to SecDef Gates’s proposed budget reforms. The message conservatives have agreed upon is “These changes are ad hoc and motivated by budgetary concerns, not strategic concerns.” This meme was deployed preemptively by the Heritage Foundation and reiterated immediately after Gates’s announcement by AEI. Several members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, subsequently picked it up.
This morning Heritage’s own Kim Holmes restates the case in the Baltimore Sun. Let’s deconstruct a bit, shall we?
Holmes: “In defense, money should follow strategy. Guiding strategic judgments are made in two key documents: the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review and the National Security Strategy from the White House. Neither has been completed.”
As I wrote previously, anytime you oppose something the government is trying to do, the default tactic is to call for more study. The arms control lobby (aka us) did this for eight years under President Bush, so I know of what I speak.
Conservatives’ call for more study before any tough decisions is hackneyed. Are they seriously accusing Secretary Gates of not considering the strategic implications of his proposals? I have a 2-inch stack of speeches on my desk given by Gates since 2006 which clearly and consistently articulate his worldview. His budget recommendations are consistent with critiques he has been making for years. Moreover, as Anthony Cordesman pointed out, the QDR and NSS processes leave much to be desired and often generate little more than an aggregate list of the Services’ priorities completely divorced from roles, missions, or budgets.
Holmes: “What makes Mr. Gates so sure that large-scale, conventional warfare is a thing of the past? China is modernizing its armed forces at a feverish pace. Can we safely assume it won't use them against Taiwan in the next 10 years? Russia is increasingly belligerent toward Georgia and Ukraine. Can we confidently assert that it will make no military moves against them or any of our NATO allies?”
This is an irrelevant critique because nothing Gates is proposing will in any way compromise America’s ability to meet security challenges from China and Russia. Our military superiority remains intact and we will continue to invest heavily in conventional capabilities under Gates’s plan.
Holmes: “We don't have to choose between long-term modernization and near-term capabilities. History shows we can easily afford spending 4 percent of our gross domestic product on our core defense program. Yet Mr. Gates' core defense 2010 budget comes in under that figure by $27 billion. And the budget would continue falling to 3.3 percent of GDP by 2014. Defense cuts for these years could be even deeper as war costs are folded into the regular budget.”
That bolded phrase is really the crux for analysts like Holmes. They don’t think the United States has to choose when it comes to defense. They treat the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if they are somehow separate from the rest of the defense budget. Notice how reference is made to the “core defense 2010 budget.” That budget for FY 2010 is $536 billion when including certain mandatory spending, which is $27 billion (as Holmes says) less than current U.S. GDP ($14.075 trillion) X 4 percent, which equals $563 billion and apparently is Holmes’s preferred topline.
Notice what happens, however, when I add in spending on nuclear weapons and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You get:
$536 billion base DOD
plus $22 billion for nuclear weapons and miscellaneous defense needs (part of 050 budget)
plus $130 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan
= $688 billion, which is 4.89 percent of GDP
So, I would argue that the objective of Holmes – and the rest of the “Four Percent for Freedom” posse – already has been achieved. We currently spend well over 4 percent of GDP on defense when you include war costs, which we should because they are part of our national security. Just ask the men and women in uniform.
If conservatives didn’t want defense dollars to be diverted from preparing for future threats, they shouldn’t have advocated quite so vigorously for the war in Iraq. Now that we are there, Gates wants to give the men and women on the ground the tools they need to accomplish their missions, as well as the support they need when they return home. These are reasonable goals that deserve our full support.
Professor Richard Betts defined strategic studies as “how political ends and military means interact under social, economic, and other constraints.” Notice the word “constraints.” By refusing to acknowledge that there are constraints on how much the United States can spend on defense, conservatives like Holmes exit the world of strategy and enter the world of advocacy.
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