Tag: pentagon

Chuck Hagel to the Pentagon: Rough Passage, Welcome Result

By
Doug Bandow

President Barack Obama’s nomination of former Republican senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary forced the GOP to choose between the past—especially a discredited president who blundered disastrously in Iraq—and the future, represented by a Republican who felt more loyalty to his country than his party. Unfortunately, the GOP chose the past.

Ironically, a group of Republicans wrote the president urging him to withdraw the nomination, contending that Hagel’s lackluster performance at his confirmation hearing raised “serious doubts about his basic competence to meet the substantial demands of the office.” Yet it is his critics who failed to demonstrate even a basic interest in military policy and to justify the trust placed in them by voters. 

For instance, the hearings on Hagel’s nomination amounted to a poor imitation of Kabuki Theater, with Republicans more interested in scoring cheap political points than in discussing substantive issues. While GOP members complained that Hagel was ill-prepared for the challenges facing the Pentagon, they failed to ask him serious questions about serious issues—coping with budget cuts, simultaneously engaging and constraining China, dealing with a fading NATO.

That’s too bad, because Hagel probably had answers. Far better answers than would come from the GOP’s permanent war caucus. In fact, Republican senators like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are traditional tax, borrow, and spend liberals when it comes to the military: bigger and more expensive is always better. They have no idea how to cope with the coming end of Washington’s wild debt party.

Hagel offers a sharp contrast that embarrasses his former partisan colleagues. Wrote Michael Hirsh in National Journal: “what has gone largely unnoticed by the punditocracy is that, over the past decade or so, the former Republican senator from Nebraska has distinguished himself with subtle, well-thought-out, and accurate analyses of some of America’s greatest strategic challenges of the 21st century—especially the response to 9/11—while many of his harshest critics got these issues quite wrong.”

Hagel’s tough confirmation battle was but the first of the many troubles he is likely to face in his new job. Recalibrating America’s role in the world to reflect greater foreign influences and fewer domestic resources may pose difficulties nearly as vexing as coping with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 

However, Chuck Hagel has the ability to rise to the challenge. Unfortunately, he isn’t likely to get much help from Capitol Hill. Certainly not from his old GOP colleagues, who appear to be locked in the past. Secretary Hagel will need to look elsewhere to find support for the necessary transformation of America’s foreign and military policies.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Sequestration Will Not Make the United States Less Safe

By
Christopher A. Preble

Will sequestration undermine U.S. national security? Hardly. Today, the Cato Institute released a new infographic putting these minor cuts in perspective.

Military spending will remain at roughly 2006 levels—$603 billion, higher than peak U.S. spending during the Cold War. Meanwhile, we live in a safer world. The Soviet Union has been dead for more than two decades; no other nation, or combination of nations, has emerged since that can pose a comparable threat. We should have a defense budget that reflects this reality.

To be clear, sequestration was no one’s first choice. But the alternative—ever-increasing military spending detached from a legitimate debate over strategy—is worse. We should have had such a debate, one over the roles and missions of the U.S. military, long before this day of reckoning. And politicians could have pursued serious proposals to prudently reduce military spending. Instead, they chose the easy way out, avoiding difficult decisions that would have allowed for smarter cuts.

Until now, there have been few constraints on Washington’s ability to spend what it pleases on the military. As my colleagues Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan put it, Americans “buy defense like rich people shop, ignoring the balances of costs and benefits.”

Policymakers can’t postpone the tradeoffs forever, especially when the public has grown increasingly weary of foreign entanglements. If forced to choose between higher taxes, less military spending, or lower domestic spending, in order to balance the budget, the military fares least well, with solid pluralities favoring cuts in military spending over cuts in other programs.

Which is why it is so important to get the foreign policy debate right. If we are going to give our military less, we need to think about asking it to do less.

A number of experts have done that, rethinking the military’s purpose, and documenting the savings that would flow from a more modest foreign policy. The sequester is a first step, albeit an imperfect one, that could finally compel policymakers to do the same.

Download and share this infographic on your blog, Twitter, or Facebook.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, General, Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

Republicans Go From Daddy Party to Baby Party

By
Doug Bandow

During the Cold War Republicans presented themselves as the Daddy Party, prepared to defend America in a dangerous world. They won an enduring electoral advantage on international issues. 

But the GOP lost that advantage with the end of the Cold War. The world is still dangerous, but not so much to America. Terrorism is a monstrous crime that frightens, but it does not pose an existential threat. And the United States far outranges any other power or group of powers militarily. 

The Republican Party has had trouble adjusting to the new world. Losing its automatic advantage on international issues has shifted the political battle further to economic and domestic issues. George W. Bush’s disastrous tenure further soured Americans on the GOP. Mitt Romney spent most of the campaign doing the Maori Haka in an unsuccessful attempt to portray Barack Obama as weak in foreign policy.  

The dishonest and immature campaign against secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel demonstrates that the Daddy Party has turned into the Baby Party. There are important defense issues that deserve serious debate. But the Republicans are not interested in conducting one. 

The vicious claims of anti-Semitism from some critics were risible, an attempt to foreclose discussion.  Much of the opposition was driven by politics rather than substance:  war-hawks like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) used Hagel’s confirmation hearing to posture rather than discuss serious defense issues. John McCain (R-AZ) spent most of his time attempting to vindicate his awful judgment in having supported the Iraq war, which left thousands of Americans dead and tens of thousands wounded, created carnage in Iraq, and empowered Iran. 

Even worse, though, Sen. McCain admitted that much of the angry opposition, which led Republicans to block a vote on Hagel’s nomination, was personal. Republicans were irritated that Hagel had the temerity to criticize President Bush, who did so much to ruin America’s fiscal future and strategic position. 

Reported the Huffington Post:

“There’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly, at one point said he was the worst president since Herbert Hoover, said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which is nonsense, and was anti his own party and people,” McCain said during a Thursday interview with Fox News. “You can disagree, but if you’re disagreeable, people don’t forget that.” 

At least McCain agreed that the filibuster would end, probably on February 26, when the next vote on Hagel’s nomination is scheduled. But the GOP has wrecked what little remained of its foreign policy reputation. The world may be in flames, but Republicans don’t care. They are upset that Chuck Hagel had the courage to break with neoconservative orthodoxy when it mattered. While he might not be as transformational a defense secretary as some of his supporters hope, he can be expected to bring a fresh and thoughtful perspective to a foreign policy which is largely brain dead. Most important, it would be good to have a Pentagon chief who understands why war truly should be a last resort.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

The Hagel Hearings: Congressional Politics at Its Worst

By
Doug Bandow

The confirmation hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to head the Pentagon are mercifully over. His wobbly performance earned derision among neoconservatives, but he responded as they intended to an interrogation that was all about politics, not policy. 

As I have noted before, Hagel is under fire because he disputed neoconservative nostrums to speak unpleasant truths to the Republican Party. He was an orthodox conservative, including on foreign policy. However, he was an Eisenhower, not a Dubya, Republican: Hagel criticized the debacle in Iraq, urged negotiation to forestall Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and backed reductions in today’s bloated military budget. General turned President Dwight Eisenhower could not have put it better. 

But this enraged a GOP that has turned perpetual war into its most important foreign policy plank. Hence the ludicrous attempt to paint him as an anti-Semite. Only slightly less dishonest was the performance of Hagel’s Republican interlocutors in the Senate, who asked the sort of questions which could not be honestly answered without wrecking the political façade behind which legislators on both sides of the aisle hide. His performance was disappointing, but far more striking is the fact that the uber-hawks who badgered him over every past statement exhibited little interest in exploring the most important challenges facing America. 

Consider the analysis of questions from Rosie Gray and Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed.  They counted 166 questions about Israel—an important ally, but more important than every other ally combined? There were 144 questions about Iran. No one wants Tehran to build nukes, but U.S. intelligence does not believe Iran has an active weapons program and there is no evidence that the Iranian government cannot be deterred, as were Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Surely there are options short of war. And is Iran that much more important than Afghanistan, where Americans continue to die, which rated only 20 questions? Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) fixated on Iraq, an invasion that should never have been launched, irrespective of the impact of the “surge.” And from which, if he hadn’t noticed, U.S. troops have been withdrawn. 

Nothing else received serious attention at the hearings. Not how to adjust America’s foreign policy to reflect inevitable Pentagon budget cuts, since Washington no longer can afford to police the globe. Not China, including the worrisome possibility of war between Japan and China over worthless islands in the Sea of Japan. Not North Korea and the enduring challenge of dealing with the world’s most malign actor.  

Not Europe, which continues to under-invest in the military while relying on America for its defense. Not Africa, where the U.S. is steadily being drawn into more conflicts. Not Russia, which, despite the difficult bilateral relationship, has been helpful in Afghanistan and Iran. Not Venezuela, where the possible death of Hugo Chavez could open up opportunities for reform and engagement with America.

And the neoconservatives claim to be serious about international issues and military capabilities. 

Chuck Hagel is eminently qualified to be Secretary of Defense. As my colleague Chris Preble has noted, Hagel’s thinking is mainstream and noncontroversial. Obviously, one can disagree with him on particular issues, such as the possibility of nuclear disarmament.  However, the president still will make the ultimate decisions. Hagel will bring a fresh perspective to administration discussions of foreign and military policy. That is reason enough to welcome him to the Pentagon. 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics

Chuck Hagel Is Not Controversial

By
Christopher A. Preble

Chuck Hagel’s most vocal and persistent opponents failed to block his nomination to be the next secretary of defense, and most observers predict that he will be confirmed, despite additional unknown persons having spent untold sums to block his path to the Pentagon.

The most outrageous and unsubstantiated charges that were invented against the decorated Vietnam veteran and former senator have been demolished, but not before they crowded out a serious discussion of our national security priorities. 

Reports from his meetings with senators in recent weeks suggest that Hagel’s answers during Thursday’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee will fit well within the boundaries of what the Beltway foreign policy elite deem acceptable. Chuck Hagel is not as controversial as he was made out to be, and the foreign policy consensus is likely to hold. 

I believed—and still believe—that Hagel will be a good secretary of defense, because he seems generally disinclined to support foolish wars. But he is no peacenik and he’s no radical. He may question assumptions here and there, or give President Obama honest advice that he might not want to hear. But the odds are long against Chuck Hagel being a truly transformative SecDef. 

First, the secretary of defense does not set the nation’s foreign policy; the president does. And on almost every subject where Hagel is—or was—viewed as controversial, President Obama has hewed to the establishment line. Obama expanded the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, even though he never seemed to believe that the so-called surge would work. He intervened in Libya, and reserves the right to do so elsewhere, without so much as a wave to the Congress. Obama has proved equally disinterested in congressional oversight (or any other oversight, for that matter), when it comes to assassinating suspected terrorists—including U.S. citizens—at will. On nuclear weapons, Hagel’s past statements in favor of downsizing the arsenal line up with Obama’s—and are similar to almost every other president before him, including Ronald Reagan. Finally, ahead of his hearing Hagel deftly associated himself with the president, and the status-quo, by explaining that the “window is closing” for diplomacy with Iran. 

The second factor in the way of a Hagelian transformation—were he so inclined—is the military-industrial complex. David Ignatius observed that Hagel likes to think of himself as an Eisenhower Republican, but he will have a devil of a time reining in the MIC that Ike warned about. It was difficult enough for Robert Gates to sell modest spending restraint (not actual cuts), and Leon Panetta was disinclined to even pretend, favoring instead the threat of defense cuts to cow Republicans into supporting higher taxes. Hagel has an even greater hill to climb because his predecessors wanted the public to believe that they had already trimmed the fat. By implication, any further reductions will cut into the military’s flesh and bones. 

In other words, additional cuts would require a rethinking of the military’s core missions, and might even force U.S. leaders to embark on a serious effort to shift and shed burdens from U.S. troops and U.S. taxpayers to wealthy, stable allies who benefit from global peace and security, but contribute little to the cause. 

But the president would have to lead such a foreign policy shift, and Barack Obama has shown no enthusiasm for such an undertaking. Given the interests aligned to preserve the status quo, it is clear that it will take much more than one truly committed reformer in the Pentagon to effect meaningful change in our national security strategy. 

All that said, I am happy that Hagel appears to have survived one of the nastiest nomination battles in recent memory, and I hold out hope, as Justin Logan wrote earlier this month, that his ability to prevail will encourage other aspiring leaders to abandon their fear of the small and shrinking pro-war faction. 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Defense Lobby’s Scare Campaign Falls Flat

By
Christopher A. Preble

The defense contractors and their allies and advocates in Washington have been beating the drum against sequestration for over a year. They’ve commissioned studies purporting to show that sequestration will throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work. They’ve embarked on a “stop sequestration” road show, and boosted spending on advertising and gimmicks, including the Countdown to Sequestration clock.

And they’ve held press conferences, including one today at the National Press Club that I attended.

The contractors’ full-court press isn’t working. Polls show that the American people are more interested in cutting defense spending than domestic spending to reduce the deficit. (See, for example, The Economist/YouGov poll, .pdf, Q15) And they, and especially Republicans and independents, are opposed to paying higher taxes to fund a bloated Pentagon (.pdf, Q56).

The public isn’t falling for the lobby’s scare campaign for a few reasons. First, U.S. military spending remains near an all-time high in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. Second, sequestration would reduce the budget to 2007 levels, and reductions along those lines are consistent with other post-war drawdowns. Third, while Americans overwhelmingly support the troops, they appreciate that not every dollar spent on the military is spent wisely.

The United States will retain a state-of-the-art military even if total Pentagon spending declines by 10 to 15 percent. Such reductions might actually induce policymakers to be more responsible when it comes to military intervention abroad. The leading opponents of sequestration are big fans of open-ended, nation-building missions, but they are a small and shrinking minority. Most Americas have learned the painful lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are determined to avoid those sorts of expensive and counterproductive wars in the future.

A smaller U.S. military that costs less money cannot be expected to be everywhere all the time. U.S. troops should not be the first responders to every 911 call. Other countries will have to step forward to take responsibility for their own defense, and contribute their fair share to address common security challenges.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, General

Grover Norquist vs. Bill Kristol on Taxes and Pentagon Spending

By
Christopher A. Preble

Grover Norquist spoke yesterday at the Center for the National Interest, and the event drew a gaggle of skeptics convinced that President Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney might spell the end of Norquist’s vaunted Taxpayer Protection Pledge. He sounded an optimistic tone, pointing to past election cycles when the pledge was prematurely declared dead on arrival.

I was most interested in what he had to say about the tiny number of Congressional Republicans who have tried – and so far failed – to build support for tax increases in order to protect the Pentagon from spending cuts. In his opening remarks, Norquist peered into his crystal ball:

With divided government, I think you get the sequester. The President said he doesn’t want to change the money for the Pentagon; Mitch McConnell has said we’re not raising taxes to ransom the Pentagon budget cuts. And, interestingly,…a lot of the focus has been on the Pentagon. The Ds are a lot more concerned about the $50 billion in domestic discretionary spending restraint every year than the Rs are on the defense budget….And you did see the Republican Study Committee, the conservative caucus within the Republican House, which is a majority of House members (maybe 60 percent), announce the only thing worse than sequestration would be not having the savings. So this stampede that was attempted – the problem with the stampede is that there are only two people trying to start the stampede – and it didn’t take. You didn’t get a demand that the defense budget…remain untouched, either in public opinion or in the House and the Senate.

He’s right. You don’t see a groundswell of public opinion calling for tax increases to fund a still-larger military. On the contrary, most polls actually show more support for Pentagon cuts than for cuts in other spending. This poll (.pdf, Q56) found that 52 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of Independents, are opposed to any increase in taxes in order to maintain the current advantage in military power. In this case, at least, members of Congress are accurately representing the wishes of their constituents.

I invited Norquist to expand on his comments about this failure to mobilize public support for more Pentagon spending in Washington and on Capitol Hill, and whether self-described conservatives risk undermining the GOP’s brand on taxes and spending. What does he think, for example, when Bill Kristol stumps for tax increases, opening the door for major media outlets to spin the story as ”even conservatives like Bill Kristol support tax increases to protect the Pentagon.”

Norquist replied:

Bill Kristol has been on record saying that if the conservatives didn’t want to be the war party that he’d join up with the … Democrat liberal hawks. … It was an odd sort of threat, but it was kind of an explanation that he doesn’t see himself as a mainstream Reagan Republican. Everything is hawkish foreign policy (not a Reaganite foreign policy, but a hawkish foreign policy). So that’s not surprising. That’s … what he does, but it’s not at all transferable. There isn’t a caucus in the House or the Senate that falls in that category.

He closed with a unscripted rant against the GOP’s situational Keynesianism. It’s “intellectually dishonest,” he said, to oppose Obama-Reid-Pelosi’s stimulus, but then embrace Romney’s version in the form of massive military spending. His remarks echo some of what he said a few months ago in a Cato podcast, but here are a few new gems:

I thought that the Romney people ill served the country and themselves when they ran these campaigns that if the defense budget was cut all these jobs would disappear. Now lets see, we just spent four years making fun of Obama’s multiplier that if the federal government spends x number of dollars you create jobs.

That’s like arguing that people who are involved in organ donations are creating additional kidneys. No they’re not, they’re just moving them around….the government creates jobs the way ticks create blood. No it doesn’t….You can move stuff around but you took it from somewhere and then you put it somewhere else. You take a dollar from here and kill a job and put it over there and then you hold a press conference over here….

For the Republicans to talk about how defense spending creates jobs, I think, was unfortunate. You can make an argument that you need this plane or this tank, or “The Canadians are being annoying again. Keep an eye on ‘em.” I’m all for that. We should have a strong national defense. But don’t sell it as a jobs program. It’s intellectually dishonest, and it was a shame that it was done.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, General

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