DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Weapons come second
By Frida Berrigan
Even saddled with a two-front, budget-busting war and a collapsing economy,
Barack Obama may be able to accomplish a lot as president. With a
friendly Congress and a relieved world, he could make short work of some of the
most egregious overreaches of the George W Bush White House - from Guantanamo
to those presidential signing statements. For all the rolling up of sleeves and
"everything is going to change" exuberance, however, taking on the Pentagon,
with its mega-budget and its mega-power, may be the hardest task he faces.
The mega-Pentagon
Under Bush, military spending increased by about 60%, and that's not including
spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years ago, as Bush prepared
to enter the Oval Office, military spending totaled just over US$300 billion.
When Obama
sets foot in that same office, military spending will total roughly $541
billion, including the Pentagon's basic budget and nuclear warhead work in the
Department of Energy.
And remember, that's before the "war on terror" enters the picture. The
Pentagon now estimates that military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will
cost at least $170 billion in 2009, pushing total military spending for Obama's
first year to about $711 billion (a number that is mind-bogglingly large and at
the same time a relatively conservative estimate that does not, for example,
include intelligence funding, veterans' care, or other security costs).
With such numbers, it's no surprise that the United States is, by a multiple of
nearly six, the biggest military spender in the world. (China's military
budget, the closest competitor, comes in at a "mere" $120 billion.) Still, it
can be startling to confront the simple fact that the US alone accounts for
nearly half of all global military spending - to be as exact as possible in
such a murky area, 48% according to the International Institute for Strategic
Studies. That's more than what the next 45 nations together spend on their
militaries on an annual basis.
Again, keep in mind that war spending for 2009 comes on top of the estimated
$864 billion that lawmakers have, since 2001, appropriated for the Iraq war and
occupation, ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, and other activities
associated with the "war on terror". In fact, according to an October 2008
report by the Congressional Research Service, total war spending, quite apart
from the regular military budget, is already at $922 billion and quickly
closing in on the trillion dollar mark.
Common sense cuts?
Years late, and with budgets everywhere bleeding red, some in Congress and
elsewhere are finally raising questions about whether this level of spending
makes any sense. Unfortunately, the questions are not coming from the inner
circle of the president-elect.
Democratic Representative Barney Frank drew the ire and consternation of
hardline Republicans and military hawks when, in October, he suggested that
Congress should consider cutting defense spending by a quarter. That would mean
shaving $177 billion, leaving $534 billion for the US defense and war budget
and maintaining a significant distance - $413 billion to be exact - between
United States and our next "peer competitor". Frank told a Massachusetts
newspaper editorial board that, in the context of a struggling economy, the
Pentagon will have to start choosing among its many weapons programs. "We don't
need all these fancy new weapons," he told the staff of the New Bedford
Standard Times. Obama did not back him up on that.
Even chairman of the House Appropriations Sub-committee on Defense, Democrat
John Murtha, a Congressman who never saw a weapons program he didn't want to
buy, warned of tough choices on the horizon. While he did not put a number on
it, in a recent interview he did say: "The next president is going to be forced
to decrease defense spending in order to respond to neglected domestic
priorities. Because of this, the Defense Department is going to have to make
tough budget decisions involving trade-offs between personnel, procurement and
future weapons spending."
And now, Obama is hearing a similar message from the Defense Business Board,
established in 2001 by secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to give advice to
the Pentagon. A few weeks ago, in briefing papers prepared for president-elect
Obama's transition team, the board, hardly an outfit unfriendly to the
Pentagon, argued that some of the Defense Department's big weapons projects
needed to be scrapped as the US entered a "period of fiscal constraint in a
tough economy". While not listing the programs they considered knife-worthy,
the board did assert that "business as usual is no longer an option".
Desperate defense
Meanwhile, defense executives and industry analysts are predicting the worst.
Boeing chief executive officer Jim McNerney wrote in a "note" to employees, "No
one really yet knows when or to what extent defense spending could be affected,
but it's unrealistic to think there won't be some measure of impact." Michael
Farage, Sikorsky's director of air force programs, was even more colorful:
"With the economy in the proverbial pooper, defense budgets can only go down."
Kevin G Kroger, president of a company making oil filters for army trucks,
offered a typical reaction: "There's a lot of uncertainty out there. We're not
sure where the budgets are going and what's going to get funded. It leaves us
nervous."
It's no surprise that, despite eight years of glut financing via the "war on
terror", weapons manufacturers, like the automotive Big Three, are now looking
for their own bailout. For them, however, it should probably be thought of as a
bail-up, an assurance of yet more good times. Even though in recent years their
companies have enjoyed strong stock prices, have seen major increases in
Pentagon contracts, and are still looking at boom-time foreign weapons sales,
expect them to push hard for a bottom-line guarantee via their holy grail - a
military budget pegged to the gross domestic product (GDP).
"We advocate 4% of the GDP as a floor for defense spending. No question that
has to be front and center for any new president's agenda," says Marion Blakey,
president of the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group representing
companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Listening to defense industry figures talk, you could get the impression that
the Pentagon's larder was empty and that the pinching of pennies and tightening
of belts was well underway. While the cuts suggested by the Defense Business
Board report got a lot of attention, the Pentagon is already quietly laying the
groundwork to lock the future Obama administration into a possibly slightly
scaled-down version of the over-the-top military spending of the Bush years.
Business as usual?
At the beginning of October, the Pentagon's latest five-year projection of
budget needs was revealed in the Congressional Quarterly. These preliminary
figures - the full request should be released sometime next month - indicate
that the Pentagon's starting point in its bargaining with the new
administration and Congress comes down to one word: more.
The estimates project $450 billion more in spending over those five years than
previously suggested figures. Take fiscal year 2010: the Pentagon is evidently
calling for a military budget of $584 billion, an increase of $57 billion over
what they informed Bush and Congress they would need just a few months ago.
Unfortunately, when it comes to military spending and defense, the record is
reasonably clear - Obama is not about to go toe-to-toe with the
military-industrial-complex.
On the campaign trail, his stump speech included this applause-ready line
suggesting that the costs of the war in Iraq are taking away from important
domestic priorities: "If we're spending $10 billion a month [in Iraq] over the
next four or five years, that's $10 billion a month we're not using to rebuild
the US, or drawing down our national debt, or making sure that families have
health care."
But the "surge" that Obama wants to shift from Iraq to Afghanistan is unlikely
to be a bargain. In addition, he has repeatedly argued for a spike in defense
spending to "reset" a military force worn out by war. He has also called for
the expansion of the size of the army and the marines. On that point, he is in
complete agreement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. [1]
They even use the same numbers, suggesting that the army should be augmented by
65,000 new recruits and the marines by 27,000. The Congressional Budget Office
estimates that these manpower increases alone would add about $10 billion a
year - that same campaign trail $10 billion - to the Pentagon budget over a
five-year period.
The word from Wall Street? In a report entitled "Early Thoughts on Obama and
Defense", a Morgan Stanley researcher wrote on November 5, "As we understand
it, Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend ... In
addition, we believe, based on discussions with industry sources that Obama has
agreed not to cut the defense budget at least until the first 18 months of his
term as the national security situation becomes better understood."
In other words: Don't worry about it. Obama is not about to hand the secretary
of defense a box of brownie mix and order him to hold a bake sale to buy a
bomber.
Smarter, not more, military spending
Sooner rather than later, the new administration will need to think seriously
about how to spend smarter - and significantly less - on the military. Our
nose-diving economy simply will no longer support ever-climbing defense
budgets.
The good news is that the Obama administration won't have to figure it all out
alone. The contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus's new Unified Security
Budget have done a lot of the heavy lifting to demonstrate that some of the
choices that need to be made really aren't so tough. The report makes the case
for reductions in military spending on outdated or unproven weapons systems
totaling $61 billion. The argument is simple and straightforward: these
expensive systems don't keep us safe. Some were designed for a geopolitical
moment that is long gone - like the F-22 meant to counter a Soviet plane that
was never built. Others, like the ballistic missile defense program, are
clearly meant only to perpetuate insecurity and provoke proliferation.
To cut the military budget more deeply, however, means more than canceling
useless, high-tech weapons systems. It means taking on something fundamental
and far-reaching: America's place in the world. It means coming to grips with
how we garrison the planet, with how we use our military to project influence
and power anywhere in the world, with our attitudes towards international
treaties and agreements, with our vast passels of real estate in foreign lands,
and, of course, with our economic and political relationships with clients and
competitors.
As a candidate, Obama stirred our imagination through his calls for a "new era
of international cooperation". The United States cannot, however, cooperate
with other nations from atop our shining Green Zone on the hill; we cannot
cooperate as the world's sole superpower, policeman, cowboy, hyperpower, or
whatever the imperial nom du jour turns out to be. Bottom line: we cannot
genuinely and effectively cooperate while spending more on what we like to call
"security" than the next 45 nations combined.
A new era in Pentagon spending would have to begin with a recognition that
enduring security is not attained by threat or fiat, nor is it bought with
staggering billions of dollars. It is built with other nations. Weapons come
second.
Note
1. According to media reports on Wednesday, Gates on Tuesday night accepted
Obama's offer to remain as defense secretary.
Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the New America
Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative (ASI). She is a columnist for Foreign
Policy in Focus and a contributing editor at In These Times. In early December,
ASI will release "Weapons at War 2008: Beyond the Bush Legacy", co-authored by
Berrigan and William D Hartung, an examination of US weapons sales and military
aid to developing nations, conflict zones and nations where human rights are
not safeguarded. Email berrigan@newamerica.net if you would like a copy
of the executive summary.
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