The question is – will we force our military to do more with less? The President has not made the distinction between cuts and military strategy, instead proposing defense cuts while expanding the military’s mission (Libya, Japan, Haiti, fighting pirates off the coast of Africa) and expecting our troops to maintain their current duties.
According to General Martin Dempsey, President Obama’s nominee to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it would be "extraordinarily difficult and very high risk" to cut $800 billion from defense spending as is proposed by President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as part of efforts to reduce the national debt. General Dempsey accurately points out that "national security didn't cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it.” Despite this fact, Senate Democrats and the President continue to insist on cutting defense to pay for deficit reduction anywhere from $400 billion to over $800 billion. Service Chiefs Wary of Deep Cuts This sentiment was underscored by four senior military officers at a Readiness Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday where all four leaders told the subcommittee that they are “currently unable to meet all the needs of the military’s regional combatant commanders,” according to the Hill. The Vice Chiefs and the Assistant Commandant all stated on the record that they could not withstand additional, significant defense cuts without fundamentally altering force structure and strategy. They offered a chilling, but realistic view of their current readiness status and what might happen to U.S. national security strategy should cuts be enacted on this level. United States Marine Corps, Assistant Commandant General Joseph Dunford: “Marines and their gear at their home stations were in a ‘degraded readiness state,’ thanks to their decade of war, meaning they’d be late to ‘respond to unexpected crises.’ “Dunford, told a House subcommittee that he had enough Marines to service the needs of CENTCOM (Central Command) but not the other commands. In other words, the Marines are stretched thin, a point that McKeon says applies to the entire military,” according to Fox News. “The Marines would face challenges in absorbing its share of a $400 billion cut. If cuts go beyond that, we would have to start making some fundamental changes in the nature of the Marine Corps," Dunford said. United States Navy, Vice Chief Admiral Jonathan Greenert: “Greenert said the Navy needs more ships to meet demands of combatant commanders worldwide.” "The stress on the force is real," Greenert said. "and it has been relentless." United States Air Force, Vice Chief General Philip Breedlove: “Air Force Vice Chief Gen. Phillip Breedlove said defense cuts larger than $400 billion would force a ‘fundamental’ change in how the service meets its part of the military’s mission, and force it to reduce ‘capacity,’ meaning equipment.” “Some portions of the Air Force are right at the ragged edge." United States Army, Vice Chief General Peter Chiarelli: “The Army is also stretched too thin, Chiarelli warned, and noted that the Army still hasn’t met goals for dwell time at home for American troops. Chiarelli, also said "Bigger reductions would require his service do a ‘major reassessment’ of how it carries out its missions.” According to the Vice Chiefs and the Assistant Commandant, the logical conclusion is that drastic defense cuts will require a new national security approach. The question is – will we force our military to do more with less? The President has not made the distinction between cuts and military strategy, instead proposing defense cuts while expanding the military’s mission (Libya, Japan, Haiti, fighting pirates off the coast of Africa) and expecting our troops to maintain their current duties. If enacted, defense cuts discussed by the President and Senator Reid mean that our Armed Services will have to do a “major reassessment” of how they carry out their missions, as the Vice Chiefs and the Assistant Commandant acknowledged.The President should be frank with American people about the condition of our military and recognize the potentially disastrous consequences of his proposed cuts," said Chiarelli.
As some readers of IC might recall, I’m very skeptical about large cuts in military spending. Of course waste should be identified and money shouldn’t be wasted–no one can object to that. But I believe that our military has already suffered from the rush to downsize during the 1990s and would suffer more from more downsizing now. There is now no effective possibility that the US could wage a two-theater war–we could not maintain our presence in the Middle East and respond effectively to an attack by North Korea on South Korea. We don’t have the troop strength or logistic capability to do this anymore. My question to both liberal and conservative budget-cutters is this: Can you really be so sure that the US will never, ever have to operate globally, projecting force in more than one hemisphere? Can you be so sure that the US will never, ever have to mobilize on a massive scale–including, perhaps, a return to a much larger military? I had that question in mind when lots of bases were shut down. And as for military R&D, are you really so sure that we won’t have to deal with an enemy possessing a large force of Generation 5 aircraft? And so on.
The temptation for bean-counters is to assume that the military can just be rolled back and then pumped up later at a moment’s notice if needed. War doesn’t give you advance notice. So, I’m not happy with the easy assumption that cutting the military is a key to huge savings. It can be an enormous mistake.
Here are the dismal facts of this charade. Politicians are always having to make the choice; “Guns or butter?” It is a fact that the current situation in several of the social democracies in the EU is because those country’s politicians deliberately chose butter over guns. The EU has had this ability in the past because they relied on the US to supply the guns so they could enjoy the butter. We’ll save, for another day, the foolish fallacy of a diet of ‘pure’ butter. The EU did this, as I said, because they relied on the US to project the military power they purposefully stripped from their respective budgets.
The progressives in Washington, by making the same choice of entitlement programs versus defense are making the same mistake, in spades. For while the conversation in the legislative branches of the EU went something like; “We can afford to strip defense to supply entitlements because the US will be there in the future to pull our fat out of the fire just as they were during two World Wars.”
Which country will pull America’s ‘fat out of the fire’ if we gut the US military? The budget for the US military in FY 2010 was $663.7 billion The budget for Medicaid, and other mandatory welfare programs was $861 billion. Cutting $400 billion out of the US military without drastically cutting back on commitments is suicide. How do you defend your butter without guns?
I understand that progressives believe that if we just ‘talk’ to them an understanding can be reached. Is there any current hot spot in the world where diplomacy has achieved such a goal? Palestine, the Sudan, North Korea, Iran? The answer is nowhere has this worked: And as lomg as the US is a ‘toothless’ tiger it won’t.
Keep this up and it will certainly be America’s fat that will need rescuing next. And exactly who do ya’ll think will do that? It will be the very people our President excoriated back in April of 2008; “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Bill, I’m not happy that so many conservatives are willing to line up to support significant cuts in military spending. The cuts talked about now are quite large and, in my opinion, inimical to the security of our country. If a liberal like me is a defense hawk, surely rightwingers should know better.
If I ran the circus, I’d start reducing US support for EU nations, with an eventual level of zero. We see in Libya just how little the Brits and the French can do. The US is the only nation that can play hardball for more than 5 minutes.
Was it Harry Truman who said that people who talk about ‘guns v. butter’ have never made either?