Can Barack Obama afford to keep the Defense Department’s budget at the extraordinary levels of the last seven years? With the spreading recession, the answer is no. Can he make cuts without jeopardizing national security and the safety of our troops? The answer is yes — but only if we demand that contractors, the four services and lawmakers make their own interests a lower priority and build a stronger military based on joint-service cooperation and real innovation.
In 2008, the United States has spent nearly $700 billion on defense. That is more than twice as much as the next five militaries in the world combined. Half-a-trillion dollars went to the Pentagon’s “base budget” and $180 billion more paid for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if both conflicts ended today, we would face continuing war costs, including those to replace equipment and tend to the wounded.
The American war machine that swept away the Saddam Hussein regime was built during the eight years of the Clinton presidency for about $300 billion a year (adjusted for inflation). George W. Bush added more than a trillion dollars over the past eight years, not including money that went to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some may argue defense spending is just what we need in a recession, pointing to how the United States spent itself out of the Great Depression to fight World War II. But our economy has changed fundamentally since then, moving from an industrial base to a service and information base. And unlike in 1942, the American military today is already vastly superior to any other.
The claim that continuing extraordinary military expenditures are good for the economy is false. There are much better Main Street investments to end the recession around (public works and education, to name a couple). There is no need to keep military spending level — the money is going largely to maintain a military that is increasingly less effective in meeting future security challenges, and hundreds of millions of dollars are squandered because of inefficiency, poor budgeting and greed.
The saddest thing about this is that the Pentagon tends to make cuts by trying to stretch and shave existing programs. What President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” is resurgent, this time driven by defense contractors. Their myopic drive to assure quarterly profits stifles innovation. And little changes because they wield inordinate influence through contracts in nearly every Congressional district.
There is a better way, one that turns the necessity of cost reductions into a military more suited to the national security challenges we will face down the road. We need to realize the principles of what military planners called the “revolution of military affairs” of the mid-1990s. To do so calls for innovations in three areas: first, a joint-service perspective that emphasizes the interdependence of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps; second, investment that focuses on cutting-edge information technology systems that allow our forces to work together more effectively, rather than more spending on the complex and expensive major weapons systems of the past; and last, changes in the way the Pentagon goes about assessing its needs and contracting.
“Jointness” can reduce redundancies: by acting separately, the services needlessly duplicate one another’s efforts in logistics, communications, intelligence, medical services and administration — not to mention several areas of war-fighting. Because each service operates its bases independently, we have far too many. Consolidating them into “megabases” would make for greater effectiveness and save tens of billions. Likewise, an emphasis on information technology can increase the strength of the force while it reduces the need for manpower, the single most expensive aspect of today’s military.
We must eliminate the unjustified excesses of the military-industrial complex, the dangerous reticence in meeting the real challenges of the 21st century, and the inertia within the national security establishment. By restarting the revolution in military affairs, we can better support our national security and the men and women in our military, who deserve the very best that money can buy.
William A. Owens, a retired Navy admiral who was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1994 to 1996. He is writing a book on 21st-century security.