Sen. Ted Cruz strutted out onto the deck of the U.S.S. Yorktown in South Carolina Monday to talk about giving our nation’s bloated war budget a big boost if he becomes president.
As if spending more than the next 14 countries combined isn’t enough.
Added to the strut was the bluster:
“Starting next year our sailors won’t be on their knees with their hands on their heads,” Cruz said, referring to the U.S. sailors who were held in Iranian custody after their [riverine boat] entered that country’s waters. “Our secretary of State will not be apologizing and thanking their Iranian captors. Instead, they will be standing on the decks of the mightiest ships the world has ever known with their heads held high, confident that the great country that they volunteered to serve has their back."
Tough talk. Gunslinger talk.
But there’s no focus in Cruz’s proposal to shovel a bunch more money onto the giant pile that the U.S. Department of Defense already spends, no specific enemy. Just more spending in every category except, Cruz says, the Pentagon bureaucracy—the latter being a common promise of politicians that is never fulfilled.
The Texas senator wants to increase the Air Force to 6,000 planes, lift the number of military personnel to 1.4 million from 1.34 million, and build more battleships as part of growing the Navy to at least 350 ships. His proposal to increase the Pentagon’s budget—including the slush fund known as Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO)—to 4.1 percent of gross domestic product during his first two years in office would raise the 2017 fiscal year budget to $738 billion, a 26 percent increase from what President Obama has proposed. That compares with the peak war budget of $699 billion in 2011.
Cruz doesn’t want to raise taxes to accomplish this—golly, no. Rather, he wants to pay for it by dumping the Internal Revenue Service and four Cabinet-level departments: Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Commerce. Great idea, huh? Cruz, by the way, seems to be unaware that the largest single item in the Department of Energy’s $32.5 billion budget for 2017 is the $12.9 billion for nuclear weapons security.
In his quest for the GOP presidential nomination, Cruz—who has been climbing in the polls—has been pushing the 67-year-old “Democrats are weak on defense” theme. At the January 28 Republican debate, for instance, where he reiterated his support for World War II-style carpet-bombing of ISIS/Daesh, the senator also bellowed that "Barack Obama right now, No. 1, over seven years, has dramatically degraded our military. You know, just two weeks ago was the 25th anniversary of the first Persian Gulf war. When that war began, we had 8,000 planes. Today, we have about 4,000. When that war began, we had 529 ships. Today, we have 272."
In fact, the Air Force is on schedule to have 5,472 planes. And the United States currently has more than 13,500 military aircraft in all branches of the services, far more than any other country in every category.
In World War II, when the Yorktown—that Cruz podium now anchored as a National Historic Landmark—was commissioned, the United States peaked at nearly 6,800 ships. But together, today’s 272 Navy ships have vastly more fire power than all those thousands on the roster three-quarters of a century ago.
Three big problems afflict the Cruz critique and that of other Republicans bellyaching that Obama’s war budgets put Americans at risk.
First, they’re just plain wrong about the money.
As Gordon Adams points out in Foreign Policy magazine, “the campaign whiners have missed the reality: the Pentagon is now rolling in dough.” In fact, average Pentagon spending in the Obama years has been about $100 billion a year above Cold War levels.
It’s true that there have been cuts. These came from two sources: The withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and budget caps imposed since 2011 by sequestration. Even so, the administration has put $4.1 trillion into the Pentagon’s base budget during Obama’s tenure, which is more than $400 billion higher than the cumulative war budgets during the Bush administration—well above inflation. Moreover, the base war budget, which fell modestly in 2011 and 2012, has been on the rise again ever since. The 2016 budget is up 7.8 percent over 2015 and, if approved, Obama’s proposal would raise it another 6 percent in 2017. In fact, Congress is likely to add $20 billion or so Obama’s proposal.
Second, they’re wrong about a military that Cruz called “anemic” and “debilitated,” Donald Trump labeled a “disaster,” Chris Christie nicked as “not ready,” and Jeb Bush said is “gutted.” Hard to believe these candidates for the highest office in the land can say any of this with a straight face when the United States has 70,000 Special Operations Forces in 80 countries, at least 700 overseas bases and the capacity, as Adams says, to “deploy forces anywhere, fly anywhere, and sail anywhere.”
Don’t take it from me—listen to four-star Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who testified earlier this month:
“I won’t be argumentative but I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted … I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.”
In an essay titled “Republicans Won’t Stop Saying Our Military Is Weak,” Micah Zenko writes:
The consequence of politicians constantly telling Americans that its military is crippled and ineffective is that they eventually believe such claims to be true, despite their lack of basis in reality. The United States spends more on defense than any potential peer competitors, $610 billion compared to $84 billion for Russia and $216 billion for China, according to the latest data collected [in 2014] by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It also has the only truly global logistics architecture that allows it to conduct the full spectrum of military operations virtually anywhere in the world.
It’s sad that allegedly “patriotic” politicians are so willing to downplay the strength and effectiveness of the military and its 1.34 million active-duty service members merely to obtain some political advantage. Moreover, if Republican presidential candidates are truly concerned about demonstrating strength and resolve toward America’s adversaries and allies, then bad-mouthing the government institution most responsible for projecting that strength and resolve is a puzzling strategy.
And then there’s the third problem: Our resources are being misallocated. Too many guns, not enough butter.
Every year we’re told that we don’t have enough money for essential social programs.
Thus do we have a $3.6 trillion deficit in infrastructure repairs and upgrades, schools crumbling and understaffed, neighborhoods neglected, a critical need to accelerate the ongoing transition to green energy, underfunded research and development, and cutbacks even in programs as essential as providing heating assistance to our nation’s poor. We have a social services system that is unmatched in the developed nations, but it’s unmatched because all the rest of them are better than ours. We’re told we cannot afford what those other nations have.
As you can see in the chart atop this essay, 54 percent of federal discretionary spending now flows to the military. But that’s only so when a narrow view is taken regarding what comprises military spending. The overall Veterans Affairs budget including benefits and health care adds another 7 percent in discretionary spending. There is also national security spending for international FBI activities, Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile, and other miscellaneous defense-related activities that add another 4 percent. An additional 5 percent goes to Homeland Security functions that are not part of the Department of Defense or Department of Energy. So federal discretionary spending that actually goes for national security purposes is 70 percent.
Typically, what we are told is the total is just the base Pentagon budget plus those OCO add-ons: $583 billion proposed for 2017. But the actual figure appropriated to pay for past, present, and future wars, and dealing with the impacts on those who fight them—plus other national security measures—is closer to $1 trillion a year, as you can see here for the 2014 budget year.
Proposing an expansion of the war budget makes perfect sense for some candidates on the campaign trail. After all, even after the disaster of Iraq and Afghanistan, a large proportion of Americans buy into the chest-thumping braggadocio of would-be leaders who promise to enforce a “make my day” style of foreign policy.
On the other hand, cutting the war budget significantly is a much tougher sell to the public and would encounter huge obstacles in Congress on both sides of the aisle.
What we spend on the military is determined by what we, as a nation, view the role of the military to be. Cutting back will be difficult if Americans continue to accept the military-industrial-congressional complex’s propaganda about the United States being indispensable to the maintenance of global order.
Barry R. Posen, director of MIT's Security Studies Program, argued in his 2014 book Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy against indispensability and the post-Soviet strategy he labels “liberal hegemony.” He summarizes in the preface to that book:
Restraint advises us to look first at the elemental strengths of the United States, which make it an easy country to defend. The United States thus has the luxury to be very discriminate in the commitments it makes and the wars it fights. Although the United States has been much at war since the end of the Cold War, only one fight was forced on us—the Afghan War. And even there, the United States was not forced to fight that war in the naïve and profligate fashion that it chose. [...]
The United States should invest its scarce military power in the maintenance of an ability to access the rest of the world. It should reduce, however, its regular military presence in the rest of the world. The United States should avoid certain missions altogether, especially coercive state and nation building. Thus the United States can radically cut the ground forces that seem most apt for garrison duties and counterinsurgency. Major force structure cuts should allow the United States to save significant amounts of money, cutting the defense budget to perhaps 2.5 percent of GDP.
Unless the United States begins to recognize the limitations of its power and its resources—as well as the uncertain effects that such decisions can have—it will forever overreach, overspend, and overcommit.
So, how do we avoid the overspending part of that admonition?
We know where not to cut: Pay and benefits for servicemen and women, veterans health care and benefits, and protective gear for active duty personnel.
Some relatively easy targets for the ax are various rip-offs. Top of the list is the friggin’ boondoggle of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 Lightning II. The Pentagon wants to buy 2,443 of these fifth-generation aircraft, a replacement for the nation’s aging fighter fleet. Hundreds are also slated for sale to various allies. The planes were projected in 2001 to be built for $81 million apiece. Cost overruns have sent that cost per plane to $135 million, according to the GAO two years ago, and $160 million apiece based on more recent estimates.
That might not be so bad if the plane could perform its assigned tasks. But it can’t. Critics complain that despite all the hype, it’s not as capable in ways that matter as the upgraded F-16, a 42-year-old design. In fact, they say, it’s not as capable as existing Russian and Chinese fighters.
Late last month Anthony Cappacio at Bloomberg News reported that Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s top weapons tester, said the F-35s “require a still-to-be-determined list of modifications [and] may be unaffordable for the (service branches) as they consider the cost of upgrading these early lots of aircraft while the program continues to increase production rates in a fiscally constrained environment.”
Last summer, the memo of an F-35 test pilot was leaked. It said the plane was outmatched by a 30-year-old F-16. Then there was the news that the Air Force had grounded F-35 pilots weighing less than 136 pounds when it was revealed the ejection seat design combined with a heavy new helmet could snap the neck of a lighter pilot who ejects from a crashing plane.
Surely, as Sen. John McCain (who’s no dove) has argued, production of the F-35 ought to be stopped.
Where else could cuts come from?
One good place to look is nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Between now and 2026, maintaining and modernizing our nuclear arsenal is projected to cost $1 trillion dollars. The 2016 budget includes $80 billion over 10 years to develop a long-range bomber, $90 billion for new nuclear submarines, $30 billion for a new nuclear-armed cruise missile, $11 billion to upgrade the B-61 nuclear warhead, and funding for new nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities. Such programs will hurt non-proliferation efforts and spur other nations to modernize their own nuclear forces.
The United States could save tens of billions of dollars by shifting to a “minimum deterrence” approach, cutting its arsenal to 300 to 500 nukes—on the way to future zero. That many warheads would still be enough to devastate any nation thinking of attacking the United States.
Last year, Sen. Ed Markey, joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Al Franken, introduced S. 831 to reduce future spending for the nuclear arsenal substantially.
Instead of adding another sitting-duck aircraft carrier to make an even dozen, that fleet could be reduced to seven or eight, saving $35-$40 billion over a decade.
Ending the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program would make sense as well. Cost overruns have boosted the cost of the 24-ship program to three times the original estimates, and design changes have made it less flexible in carrying out the missions it was designed to undertake. Three LCS have already been built, but instead of building out the fleet, other ships could be refitted to take on the LCS mission. Savings estimate: $11 billion over 10 years.
Reducing the number of military personnel would not only cut costs in the short run, but reduce them over the long haul when veterans benefits and health care are included. Fewer veterans would obviously mean fewer benefits.
About now, some self-identified “realists” will step up to say that the military isn’t gutted now, but it would be if my suggestions were followed. That’s simply not the case.
A robust but smaller military can be built around a policy of restraint. But building a military fit for the 21st century will be an extremely difficult task as long as the arms makers pour millions into campaign contributions, they and other propagandists for war spread fear and confusion, the media fail to examine the foundation and agenda and profiteering of the military-industrial-congressional complex, and too many voters buy into the “weak on defense” epithet.
There are massive obstacles in the way of reducing the political clout of the MICC. But that doesn’t mean those of us who are certain we would be better off with a still tough but smaller military should surrender in our efforts to make that happen.