Topic: Foreign Policy and National Security

The Pentagon as a Jobs Program

By
Tad DeHaven

One of the realizations that helped me to dispense of the neoconish foreign policy views of my youth is that for federal policymakers, the Pentagon is like a giant jobs program. Regardless of need, a military installation or armament factory can generally count on the unwavering support of the member of Congress who represents the district or state where the facility is located. 

On Monday, the Associated Press’s Richard Lardner provided a textbook example: over the past two years Congress has spent almost a half billion taxpayer dollars—and wants to spend another $436 million—upgrading Abrams tanks that experts and the Army itself say aren’t needed.

Who are some of the biggest congressional backers of the tank upgrading? Why, Republican “deficit hawks”! 

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located. 

If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics. 

“The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

Ah, yes, the “national security” excuse—probably the most cited justification by politicians to spend other people’s money since the ink dried on the Constitution.        

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Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Tax and Budget Policy

How to Engage with Cato on Social Media

By
Zach Graves

In case you haven’t been following what the Cato Institute has been doing lately on social media, here’s an accessible list of all of Cato’s current projects across different social media platforms:

Facebook

Twitter

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Topics: 
Cato Publications, Education and Child Policy, Foreign Policy and National Security, General, Government and Politics, Political Philosophy, Tax and Budget Policy

Rand Paul’s “Teachable Moment”

By
Malou Innocent

On the U.S. government’s targeted killing and drone-bombing program, in the past I have harped on the fact that despite the discrete and immediate effects of disrupting terrorist activity, no expert can conclusively answer whether such tactics materially reduce the threat of terrorism. But don’t just take my word for it:

  • General James E. Cartwright, the retired, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said about drones undermining America’s long-term battle against extremism, “We’re seeing that blowback…If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.”
  • General Stanley McChrystal, the retired, former commander in Afghanistan, has said about drones and anti-American sentiment, “The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes … is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level…”
  • And John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser in the George W. Bush administration, has said that one day, drone strikes might “become as internationally maligned as Guantanamo.” 

Today, in a piece for U.S. News and World Report, I write about yet another relevant factor in the drone debate beyond the scope of the aforementioned issues: the Congressional prerogative to limit executive war powers. It explains why Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) should keep fighting the good fight for more transparency over the program:

Today, our commander in chief, through a secretive decision-making process based on classified evidence, has declared the right to use lethal force against anybody, anytime, anywhere on earth. Although Paul’s effort to shine a harsh light on targeted killings has thus far been commendable, he has squandered many opportunities to explain how we get back to the constitution-based system he champions. In this respect, the liberty movement has been right to hold his feet to the fire. Thus, here comes the “teachable moment.”

Check it out! 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Law and Civil Liberties

Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies

By
Christopher A. Preble

How much does the United States spend on the military relative to our allies? A lot. 

A new Cato video, produced by Cato multimedia gurus Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg, puts this comparison in perspective. The data jumps out of the Cato infographic from last week, and shows how we are subsidizing the security of our wealthy allies who can and should defend themselves. Instead, we provide for their security while they free-ride and spend their money on everything else (including bloated welfare states). Your tax dollars at work. 

Check out the video below.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Elite Panic

By
Jim Harper

Prior to the bombing and manhunt in Boston last week, Bruce Schneier pointed to an interesting interview with Rebecca Solnit, author of the book: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. She talks of a concept called elite panic.

The term “elite panic” was coined by Caron Chess and Lee Clarke of Rutgers. From the beginning of the field in the 1950s to the present, the major sociologists of disaster — Charles Fritz, Enrico Quarantelli, Kathleen Tierney, and Lee Clarke — proceeding in the most cautious, methodical, and clearly attempting-to-be-politically-neutral way of social scientists, arrived via their research at this enormous confidence in human nature and deep critique of institutional authority. It’s quite remarkable.

Summarizing her research, Soltis found a portrait elites paint of the public, to which they respond in times of crisis:

Part of the stereotypical image is that we’re either wolves or we’re sheep. We’re either devouring babies raw and tearing up grandmothers with our bare hands, or we’re helpless and we panic and mill around like idiots in need of Charlton Heston men in uniforms with badges to lead us. I think we’re neither, and the evidence bears that out.

There’s no denying the importance and value of investigating and capturing the perpetrators of the bombing, and I do not do so here, but elite panic seems to have been at play in Boston. The lockdown—technically voluntary, but tell that to the guy in the tank (HT: Bovard)—treated the public variously as suspects, sources of interference, or targets for display of governmental authority.

Who are the elites? How does their panic manifest itself? “Elite panic” is not a tight enough concept to declare affirmatively that Boston is its examplar, but the concept is worth having in mind. The resources and resourcefulness of civil society are great and entirely accessible in times of peril. They should not be pushed aside at these times—certainly not at the business end of a gun.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics

Food Aid as Industrial Policy

By
Simon Lester

It’s understandable that Americans would see malnourished people in other countries and want to help. Despite our recent economic woes, we are still relatively wealthy, and our instinct is to make the world a better place if we can.

The role of the government in any such issue is debatable. But not surprisingly, once the government gets involved, the original purpose gets distorted. In practice, after becoming a government program, the idea of giving food to poor people has been turned into an industrial policy tool. Instead of simply giving money to people to buy food from the cheapest source, the U.S. government buys food from U.S. producers and requires that it be sent overseas on U.S. ships.

Thus, government turns aid for the foreign poor into a domestic jobs program. As a result, the percentage of food aid money actually spent on food for the hungry is significantly reduced, as some of that money is now diverted to subsidizing domestic agricultural and other interests. (That, of course, is the problem with all industrial policy: it reduces overall welfare in order to help a favored few.)

Hopefully, that may change soon.  From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration has proposed the first major change in three decades to the way the United States supplies food aid to impoverished nations, significantly scaling back the program that buys commodities from U.S. farmers and ships them to the needy overseas.

Under a proposal in the White House budget released Wednesday, nearly half of $1.4 billion in requested funds for the aid could instead be spent to purchase local bulk food in countries in need or to distribute individual vouchers for local purchases.

Reducing the government’s requirement to purchase U.S. food, most of which by law must be shipped on U.S.-flag vessels, will save enough money to feed an additional 4 million children, according to Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

…

Although the United States is the biggest provider of food assistance in the world, it is the only donor nation that continues to require national purchases and shipment. Government and academic studies in recent years have described the U.S. system as both wasteful and inefficient.

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

The Costs of Our Overseas Military Presence

By
Christopher A. Preble

The AP’s Donna Cassata is reporting today on a study commissioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which purports to calculate the costs of the U.S. military presence overseas. This is a hot topic, but it isn’t exactly a new one. Americans have long been frustrated by inequitable burden sharing, with many of our wealthy allies spending a fraction of what we do on defense. On Monday, Cato published a new infographic on the subject to coincide with tax day (see below).

Unfortunately, the committee’s estimate that the permanent stationing of U.S. troops overseas costs us $10 billion each year is too low–in all likelihood, much too low. I have not yet had a chance to read the entire report, but the DoD’s own estimate of overseas military costs includes the costs of personnel, and is more than twice that amount, $20.9 billion (see p. 207 in the latest budget submission). Even the DoD’s figure, however, understates the true cost of our commitments to defend other countries that can and should defend themselves, because it doesn’t fully account for the additional force structure that is required to maintain a presence many thousands of miles away from the United States. If the U.S. military operated chiefly in the Western Hemisphere, with regular expeditionary operations far afield, we could safely have fewer people on active duty, and mobilize a large and well-trained reserve for genuine emergencies. This smaller military would require ships and planes to take them where they were needed, when they were needed, but not as many planes and ships as we have today. And no report can actually assess the costs and risks when and if our security commitments compel us to become embroiled in a distant war that does not engage vital U.S. interests. 

Other studies have attempted to assess all of the costs of these various global commitments, and the estimates vary widely. Graham Fuller and Ian Lesser of the RAND Corporation, for example, estimated in 1997 that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf cost between $30 and $60 billion per year. A more recent study by Mark Delucchi and James Murphy estimated costs between $47 and $98 billion. Several of us at Cato have been compiling these estimates, and coming up with our own, as part of a comprehensive study of the costs of our global military presence. We will publish our key findings when they become available.

In the meantime, this much is clear: our security commitments, many of them holdovers from the Cold War, induce other countries to spend less than they could on their own defense. And they compel Americans to spend more than we should.  

 

Subsidizing the security of wealthy allies

 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

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