Budget Tactics vs. Budget Strategy
But it seems clear, given the Pentagon’s near-term budget projections, that military spending is not going to increase significantly anytime soon. The military is about to get smaller.
U.S. Army soldiers from Regional Command South stand in formation during an award and re-enlistment ceremony hosted by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan Dec. 21, 2011. Odierno was in Afghanistan conducting a holiday troop visit. Reductions in force as part of the administration’s new defense strategy are at least as much a function of budget concerns as a rebalancing of the nation’s defense. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Teddy Wade
Neither Harrison nor Rumbaugh seems to think, however, that a smaller defense budget will necessarily mean the United States is doomed to have a “cheaper, weaker” military, as the architects of the Defending Defense Project have charged. Harrison pointed out that the military, while much more expensive, hasn’t become stronger or more capable over the last decade, which he has described as “… a period of hollow growth: personnel costs grew while end strength remained relatively flat, the cost of peacetime operations grew while the pace of peacetime operations declined, and acquisition costs increased while the inventory of equipment grew smaller and older. In short, the department is now spending more but not getting more.”
The current drawdown is a stark reality; it seems pointless to mourn it. It’s a worn-out truism – but what choice is there? – to view leaner economic times as an opportunity to hone and strengthen the armed forces and cut bloat from the budget. Unfortunately, this isn’t historically the way defense budgets have been reduced.
To examine the cuts imposed by congressional conferees in the 2012 budget is to see, for the most part, columns of numbers comparing the administration’s proposal, on the left, with a slightly smaller number on the right. In this unusual year, the tactic of trimming off the top of each account may have been exaggerated by Budget Control Act caps, but it’s a familiar tactic. It’s rare – because it requires willingness for a long, drawn-out fight – to make reductions targeting programs and personnel that no longer serve projected national security needs.
But tradeoffs, Rumbaugh noted, are already happening within the defense budget; the numbers require it. “But they’re not being made in any structural or systemic way,” he said. “You can deal with these declining budgets year by year in a tactical sense – you can find a little bit more there, cut a program you didn’t care that much about over there, stretch out a procurement program and meet each year’s new numbers . . . [But] I think it’s fairly obvious that if we actually said, ‘In ten years this defense budget is going to be 30 percent lower than it is today. What would we like that defense force structure to look like?’ we would have a better defense. It’s incredibly hard to take the pain now when you don’t have to. The pain isn’t here yet.”
Sgt. Donald Christensen, an explosive ordinance disposal technician with Company C., Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, moves into position as helicopters prepare to land during Marine Expeditionary Unit Exercise (MEUEX), Jan. 12, 2012. MEUEX, is a multi-week training exercise conducted prior to every 31st MEU deployment. The 31st MEU is the only continually forward-deployed MEU, and remains the nation’s force-in-readiness in the Asia-Pacific region. A focus on the Asia-Pacific region may mean a boost in future years for the Nacy and Air Force departments. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Vernon T. Meekins
But it may be on its way. On Jan. 5, 2012, Obama and Panetta unveiled a broad outline for how they intended to accommodate the $487 billion in cuts the Budget Control Act required of their planned defense spending over the next ten years. While short on specifics, the 16-page document, titled “Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for a 21st Century Defense” (www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf) identifies primary mission areas that the military will target for “selective investments” in the coming years. In their public remarks, the president and defense secretary both left no doubt that the drawdown would continue, but vowed that it would be a different kind of drawdown.
“As we reduce the overall defense budget,” Panetta said, “we will protect, and in some cases increase, our investments in special operations forces, in new technologies like ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] and unmanned systems, in space – and in particular in cyberspace – capabilities, and also our capacity to quickly mobilize if necessary,” he said.
“I firmly believe,” said Obama, “and I think the American people understand, that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.”
As expected, the release of the document sparked an immediate firestorm. Representative Buck McKeown (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, described the strategy as a “retreat from the world” that “ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs.”
The gloves are off, and the fight has begun. Discussions over the coming 2013 defense budget promise to be some of the most interesting in recent times.
This article was first published in Defense: Winter 2012 Review Edition.