Sequester delivers some sanity to America’s bloated defence budget
by Michael William, Guardian
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The cuts are clumsy but long overdue: the US has stayed stuck in a cold war mindset of military overkill it can now ill-afford
The political stalemate that has led to the sequester – a $1.1tn cut across the entire federal budget – will impact all federal spending, including defense. The DOD will receive a 7.9% reduction, amounting to about $42.7bn in cuts.
Defense spending is the sacred cow of Washington and in the run-up to the implementation of the sequester, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers sought to find ways to spare the Pentagon. The sequester, however, may prove a useful way to break the national myth perpetuated by politicians that cuts to defense spending would be a national security disaster.
For the past 60 years, a culture of militarization has taken hold in America ensuring that both parties continually overspend on defense while neglecting other important national priorities. The over-emphatic and myopic focus of American politicians on defense spending is extremely dangerous. As Duke University Professor Peter Feaver has argued (pdf), the “ability of the military to destroy a state by draining it of resources in a quest for ever greater strength as a hedge against the enemies of the state” is a serious risk to national security.
In the United States, the military certainly lobbies for its interests, as it should. But American civilian leaders have become so enamored of the use of force and the military that they are no longer capable of putting the defense budget and America’s national security priorities into a wider strategic framework informed by the overall national interest.
Consider the following. The United States total defense and defense-related expenditures was between $1tn and $1.4tn last year. The DOD alone cost over $700bn. This is far more expenditure than the entire rest of the world combined. The next largest group of defense spenders is the European Union, all of which are American allies. The trillions Europe spends on defense, however, does not mean that the EU could militarily match the US – after all, Europe ran out of bombs in Nato’s Libya campaign and had to be bailed out by the US.
Meanwhile, China, considered one of the possible future challenges to the United States, will spend $114bn in 2013. Russia, the state former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the United States’ “No 1 geopolitical foe”, spends only $71.9bn. That is just barely double the amount of the US is cutting to its defense budget under the sequester.
The US possesses by far the most advanced sea, land and air forces in the world. The American navy alone wields enormous destructive power. Take aircraft carriers – a typical indicator of traditional military power. The US navy currently operates 11 aircraft carrier strike groups. China has one carrier, which is really only a training platform. Russia has one old carrier dating from the cold war – and that was immobilized in the late 1990s because Moscow could not afford to maintain the ship.
The United States has the responsibility for ensuring the freedom of the seas and therefore does require a well-equipped navy. But the superiority of the US navy is so great today, that no other state even dreams of competing with it. Beijing, rather than creating a blue-water fleet to match US capabilities, is focusing on advanced technologies in the hope of cancelling out US naval forces’ strategic advantage.
When a Chinese submarine popped up inside the security perimeter of the USS Kitty Hawk carrier strike force in October 2006, it demonstrated the general direction the Chinese were taking towards American sea power. Why should Beijing send a Chinese aircraft carrier strike force to challenge a US force when it could spend less and be more effective with different systems? The 3,000 missiles that China has pointed at Taiwan also mean that using a US carrier battle group to defend Taiwan would simply result in a larger number of US ships at the bottom of the Taiwan Straits – a body of water too narrow for American naval power to be effective.
Supporters of American defense spending will say that the sheer size of the American military is what dissuades peer competitors from challenging the US directly. There is some merit to this argument, but there is such a large gap between the US and the rest of the world that it would behove American politicians to focus on more acute threats to the United States’ position in the world.
America’s domestic infrastructure is woefully out of date. The World Economic Forum ranks the US No 16 in the developed world, indicating a serious deficit in US economic potential and competitiveness. The country’s electrical network is fractured and unable to distribute power across the national network – a crucial feature of a system that might benefit from renewable energy produced in one area of the country but required in another. The performance of American schools drops year after year, with only 6% of US students scoring at the advanced level in international tests. Underfunded American public universities are increasingly becoming unaffordable.
Former chairman of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, once said that the national debt was the biggest threat facing the US today. Focusing on domestic revitalization and a responsible budget would be a good way for American to preserve its standing in the world – instead of excessive defense spending.
Before he died, at the age of 101, the US diplomat George Kennan lamented that nearly no American alive today could recall the country before it was overly militarized during the cold war. Instead of viewing the military as a necessity in times of war and a luxury in times of peace, American politicians have mortgaged the future health of the nation for unnecessary defense spending. Most ironically, as the 9/11 attacks, the bombing of the London Underground and cyber-attacks against European banks illustrate, armed forces are not always relevant to the most pressing security risks of the 21st century.
It is best that the sequester smashes the golden cow of American defense spending. The economic ramifications of such unplanned cuts will be painful for the country. But Americans will finally see that a reduction in defense spending does not herald the end of the world. Perhaps, then it will be possible for politicians in Washington to pursue a responsible national budget – one in which defense gets its due share, but is subject to necessary constraint.
