The US Should Cut Military Spending in Half
by Benjamin H. Friedman
Benjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Ins ute and a PhD candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Ins ute of Technology.
Added to cato.org on April 27, 2009
This article appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on April 27, 2009.
Hawks depicted the cuts that Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently proposed for the Pentagon's weapons programs as a savage assault on the military industrial complex.
They insisted that Secretary Gates would leave us prostrate before future rivals.
Counterinsurgency enthusiasts, meanwhile cheered Mr. Gates's willingness to swap high-tech platforms for capabilities suited to the unconventional conflicts we are fighting.
The truth is that the Gates proposal is both too cautious and inadequate. After all, Gates isn't cutting non-war-related military spending; he's raising it slightly, to a whopping $534 billion.
If he has his druthers, the next military budget will look much like this one: It will still serve excessive objectives. We will still defend allies that can defend themselves, fight in other people's civil wars in a vain effort to "fix" their states, and burn tax dollars to serve the hubristic notion that US military hegemony is what keeps the world safe.
To really keep us safe, we should slash defense spending. Americans should prepare for fewer wars, not different ones. Far from providing our defense, our military posture endangers us. It drags us into others' conflicts, provokes animosity, and wastes resources. We need a defense budget worthy of the name. We need military restraint. And that would allow us to cut defense spending roughly in half.
Two points demonstrate how unambitious the Gates proposal is.
First, he would just replace most canceled programs. Gates suggested ending production of the Air Force's premier fighter, the F-22. But he wants to accelerate the Joint Strike Fighter program and to buy more F-18s. He would delay the Navy's procurement of cruisers and its next carrier, but only slightly. He would end the Navy's DDG-1000 destroyer program, but buy more of the Navy's older Arleigh Burke class destroyer, and keep buying the Navy's littoral combat ship.
He proposes breaking up the Army's modernization program, the Future Combat Systems, and canceling some of the vehicles – but they will be replaced with others. All told, spending on a national missile defense program would be cut by only about 15 percent.
Second, the military's size will barely budge under this plan. Yes, the Army would grow to only 45 brigade combat teams rather than 48, as was planned. But the people who were to fill out the 48 would be stuffed into 45 – the units will have higher readiness. The Navy is likely to shrink to 10 carrier battle groups instead of 11, but the decline will take decades. The Air Force will shrink only slightly. Gates wants to halt personnel reductions in the Air Force and Navy and continue to expand the Army and Marines by 90,000 servicemen.
.author_pub2 a { float:right; margin: 10px 0 8px 8px; display:block; height: 142px; width: 110px; background: url(/people/pub_photos/bfriedman.jpg) no-repeat -110px 0; } .author_pub2a a { float:right; margin: 10px 0 8px 8px; display:block; height: 142px; width: 110px; background: url(/people/pub_photos/bfriedman.jpg) no-repeat 0 0; } To understand why that is conservative, consider how much we spend on defense relative to both our purported rivals and our past. Our defense budget is almost half the world's, even leaving out nuclear weapons, the wars, veterans, and homeland security. It is also more than we spent at any point during the cold war. When that struggle ended, we simply gave back the Reagan buildup and kept spending at average cold war levels. Then we began another buildup in 1998 that nearly doubled nonwar defense spending.
There are no enemies to justify such spending. Invasion and civil war are unthinkable here. North Korea, Syria, and Iran trouble their citizens and neighbors, but with small economies, shoddy militaries, and a desire to survive, they pose little threat to us. Their combined military spending is one-sixtieth of ours.
Russia and China are incapable of territorial expansion that should pose any worry, unless we put our troops on their borders. China's defense spending is less than one-fifth of ours. We spend more researching and developing new weapons than Russia spends on its military. And with an economy larger than ours, the European Union can protect itself. Our biggest security problem, terrorism, is chiefly an intelligence problem arising from a Muslim civil war. Our military has little to do with it.
We should embrace this geopolitical fortune, not look for trouble. If we decided to avoid Iraq-style occupations and fight only to defend ourselves or important allies, we could cut our ground forces in half.
If we admitted that we are not going to fight a war with China anytime soon, we could retire chunks of the Air Force and Navy that are justified by that mission. Even with a far smaller defense budget, ours will remain the world's most powerful military by a large margin. The recently enacted GI Bill, which gives veterans a subsidized or free college education, offers a vehicle for transitioning military personnel into the civilian economy.
Of course, powerful interests benefit from heavy defense spending, and cutting the military budget would be a tough sell. Both political parties believe that American primacy is the route to safety. But they're wrong.
A more restrained approach to defense is what would make us safer.
WH23, you know there's no way this will get approved by either party.
It's true in a sense that less capability = less responsibility which then leads to less wars. I prefer the capability we have now, as I'd rather be safe than sorry. But I do believe some programs could go away.
(Selfishly speaking, I'm against the AF cutting any more people though... I don't want to be one of the ones cut!)
Cut by half seems a bit extreme.
Is it? We'd still be spending twice what China does.
With a HUGE head start. They'd still never catch up.
Justify the spending, right CG?
Defense is one of the few areas of government where I'd prefer to err on the side of having too much military instead of too little. I'm all for cutting the defense budget, but by that much makes me nervous. JMO.
I do admit though that I'm making a finger in the wind judgement here.
Why does it make you nervous?
Consider this:
Arguing that wealth creation should drive defense spending is to attempt to divorce the military from its strategic rationale. That’s an implicit acknowledgement that defense spending is not for safety. High military spending in this worldview is either an end in itself or a partisan or cultural tool.
Even if the US cuts military spending in half, they would still be spending more than the entire European Union (which is number 2 in the list of spending)...
I don't know what to tell you. My gut says half is too much. I know we spend way more than China and the EU do. But I don't think they have as many enemies as we do, nor are they expected to have the global military presence we are. I'm all for cuts. Big cuts. But half just seems like too much in my completely unscientific spur of the moment opinion.
Fair enough. I think the cut by half suggestion was equally finger in the wind.
I wish our defense budget was based more on strategic need than bureaucratic inertia. Quantifying that need would be pretty hard. I agree with you the bias should on the side of too much, but every virtue carried to excess is vicious.
I think that's Cato's point, in a nuts . We have a big military, so the world expects us to take on more. Which leads to us feeling we need more resources to do more, which leads to more requests, etc etc.
That's a fair point. But then the question becomes whether or not those expectations go away if we cut our spending?
But duh military must be big becuze it always bin big.
If we pare back (like that would ever happen), the world can adjust its expectations accordingly. Your point is a good one CG, but I think I'd prefer the rest of the world suffer growing pains than we continue to fight their fights for them.
The military is one of the largest socialist programs around in these here United States.
Im for it only if government cuts itself in half. Let the rest of the world worry about the rest of the world. If all those heads across the pond want to start acquiring nukes and blowing each other apart, at least that will slow down globalization.
I think that given a good plan to cut spending is ok, assuming that we maintain a decent semblence of our current ability to rapidly project our military. Marines, Navy and Air Force shouldn't take huge cuts as they are well prepared to project force upon others rapidly. The Army could have half of it converted to a reserve force.
However, at this time, I don't think its politically feasible.
Sure is! We get paid a set amount, we all can be expected to work overtime if needed without extra pay, and we get health and dental care paid for by the government. Heck, we even get paid vacation!*
*Of course, we make up for that when we deploy and work 12-18 hours, with one or no days off...
I agree, sam. I don't foresee a time when it would be. But it's nice to dream.
12-18 hours? Lucky. I got friends who were working 24-48 hours with no real sleep.
I will never complain about the military spending on individuals as even PFC's deserve more than they get paid, even while saying that they spend to much on some stuff.
Well, I was thinking more in terms of "management" of the economy by Uncle Sam. But you do raise a good point...
What's rather amusing is that we have this allegedly peacnik left wing dove in the White House and he kept Bush's SecDef...
I agree, sam. I don't foresee a time when it would be. But it's nice to dream.
Continuity, not change.
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