Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence while Cutting the Defense Budget

1. American Military Strategy and Grand Strategy

American national security strategy is premised on international presence, deterrence, and engagement. Jarred by the world wars into recognizing that its geographic isolation from most of the world’s industrial and resource centers did not allow it to stay out of other nations’ conflicts, the United States chose to stay active internationally after World War II. It developed a network of alliances throughout Western Europe, East Asia, parts of the broader Middle East, and Latin America. At times the United States was arguably not quick enough to form alliances, as when deterrence failed and North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. At other times it forged partnerships with regimes that did not share its values or lacked staying power, as with the Shah’s Iran or the government of South Vietnam. But for the most part, U.S. security partnerships endured. Even after the cold war ended, the United States retained this system of alliances. The rise of new dangers , such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as ongoing threats posed by hostile regimes in North Korea, 1 1 American Military Strategy and Grand Strategy Iran, and Iraq, made American disengagement seem an imprudent option—for the United States and for its security partners as well. Indeed, in playing its worldwide military role, the United States has more than sixty formal allies or other close security partners with whom it teams in one way or another. This set of partnerships and overseas commitments sounds enormously ambitious and costly. In some ways, it surely is. Defending only America’s own territory would be feasible at far less cost, with far fewer forces, than maintenance of this global network—at least for a while. But the costs of war can be far greater, in lives and treasure, than the costs of preparedness and deterrence. As such, the United States has now sustained a standing military at an average annual cost of some $475 billion (expressed in constant or inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars) for more than half a century. At present it spends some $650 billion, though those numbers are gradually declining under current law and policy, as the war in Afghanistan winds down. By mid-decade, national defense budget and spending levels will trend toward $550 billion a year (excluding Veterans Administration expenses, but including most intelligence functions and Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities). Sequestration, as required by the 2011 Budget Control Act unless superseded , or similar plans would reduce that latter annual figure to about $500 billion (again, as expressed in constant 2013 dollars). This book searches for responsible ways to cut defense a bit more. It concludes that sequestration, or plans like the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction proposal, would cut the military too deeply. That said, there is room for further economizing that would allow moderately significant additional cuts in weapons, forces, and compensation levels, as well as administrative reforms and efficiencies—totaling up to $200 billion over a decade in gross terms. Net savings in the overall national security budget might be $100 billion to $150 billion—a modest, but hardly insignificant, contribution toward the $2.5 trillion or so in tenyear federal deficit reduction that many economists consider advisable prior to sequestration. Taken together, these planned and suggested 2 American Military Strategy and Grand Strategy changes would result in an annual national defense spending level of perhaps $525 billion to $535 billion. The Economic Challenge to American Security The recent run of trillion-dollar federal deficits, coupled with the deep recession of 2008–09 and a still-sluggish economy, has contributed to the anxieties Americans have about the future; many lost their homes and jobs, have seen their investment portfolios shrink, and have lost faith in the American dream. For foreign policy strategists, these worries are compounded by a sense that throughout history, great powers with weakening economic foundations cannot stay great powers for long. In a democracy like America’s, the economic problem is compounded by the political risk that as fewer citizens perceive personal benefit from America’s strategy of internationalism, their support for continued engagement abroad can be expected to weaken. Such tendencies are already seen in a number of demographic and socioeconomic groups, including in the attitudes of younger generations today.1 And as great powers decline or fall, others generally seek to fill the resulting power vacuum—resulting not only in diminished influence for the former power...