(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the RealClearDefense. Budgets, National Priorities and the Radicalism)

In the last year, the country has seen the election and nomination of candidates who are Democratic Socialists of America. These include the Mayor of New York and Seattle, but most importantly a number of Senate candidates in Maine and Michigan. Some of the candidate views are controversial.

But former New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio says don’t worry about the often looney views held by some. They will not have sufficient support from Senate democratic colleagues to even get a vote on the Senate floor let along get a bill to the desk of the current President. Getting rid of prisons, the police and the border patrol, or seizing private property are not serious ideas (although being proposed) but most importantly says DeBlasio it’s not what people voted for.

DeBlasio tells Sean Hannity that people did vote for abolishing deportations, having universal government run health care and free college education, while eliminating carbon and greenhouse gases from energy production.

And such ideas are not new and have been pushed by the democratic party for many years.

For example, Medicare for all was first introduced in the House in 1993. And most Americans embrace Medicare for 65 million Americans, most of them over 65.

Free college education also sounds enticing given the multiple stories of graduating students carrying with them debt of $100,000 or more.

Open borders ideas are not new. We had that from 2021-4, and anywhere from 12-20 million illegal, unvetted migrants came to America. These people were welcomed by an administration seemingly unconcerned with the health, safety, security and economic impact of such a mass influx of unknown people into the country, often justifying such a strategy with a glib “we need more workers” while repeatedly assuring Congress and the country “the border is secure.”

And a carbon free energy world was first proposed in 1977 by Italian scientist Ceasar Marchetti.

What is surprising is the lack of a serious look at the U.S. federal budget impacts of such proposals.

Let’s begin by looking at some numbers.

Medicare costs $1.1 trillion yet Medicare premiums are only $440 billion annually. To support 350 million Americans would be costly. The average non-Medicare recipient uses $9000 in medical care compared to an average of $15,000 for a Medicare recipient. Since FY2014, Medicaid has risen 41% in costs and costs $894 billion in federal and state support, especially since the program was expanded to include all low-income adults. To cover all Americans under Medicare implies an annual additional cost of $2.6 trillion plus those currently under Medicare or $3.7 trillion. However, all annual health insurance premiums for government and private sector programs comes to $1.1 trillion so “Medicare for all” would send a new tax bill to all 166 million working Americans of $22,300 each, compared to the average Medicare tax of $6,600 now paid. The current Federal government is spending at a $7.1 trillion annual pace, so Medicare for all jacks that up to $9.7 trillion.

But there is more. Current U.S. government “college” outstanding loans are $1.9 trillion, which gives one an idea of what “free college education” would cost. This is not an annual cost but the U.S. government currently spends $126 billion each year even after the reforms implemented starting in 2025. To pay the current outstanding loans would require each of the 166 million working Americans to shell out another $11,400 each. So federal spending goes up to $11.6 trillion.

No internal U.S. deportations, the latter the idea of Senator Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would at least cost the U.S. $350 billion a year. Warner says once you get by the border patrol or get a visa to come to America, you are home free, working off the books, receiving universal health care and free education. So that costs very working American another $2200 a year. That puts Federal spending at $11.950 trillion.

Finally, estimates for the cost of eliminating carbon from energy production, now at 41 billion tons a year out of 61 billion tons of greenhouse gases, vary but on average would be $6 trillion a year. Given the U.S. produces 16% of energy worldwide, the U.S. would implicitly be required to spend some $960 billion a year to meet the goals of the Paris “climate accords.” However, as former Secretary of State Kerry has acknowledged, China and India produce together 5.8 billion tons of coal, or 70% of all coal worldwide. And India and China together are constructing 95% of all new coal based energy production worldwide. Given these policies, the greenhouse gas (GHG) and carbon reduction goals cannot be met. So Federal spending is now estimated to be $12.910 trillion.

So, the Mamdani wing of the Democratic party would have the Federal government annually spend an extra $2.6 trillion for health care; $126 billion for free college; another $350 billion as a consequence of no deportations; and another $960 billion for no carbon energy, or a grand total of $4.036 trillion annually to meet just the top four socialist party objectives. And push overall annual U.S. government spending to $11 trillion.

The revenue required would be eighty percent of the current $5.3 trillion now collected by the Federal government.

All 166 million working Americans would each see their tax burden jump $24,300.

If you stole the entire $9 trillion wealth of every billionaire in America, they could pay the added bill for 2 years.

Apart from doubling the Federal tax burden of every working American, the only offsetting budget cuts proposed have been defense cuts especially nuclear deterrent cuts. Senators Sanders, Warren and Markey, and Representatives Khanna and Garamendi support unilaterally cutting our nuclear deterrent from 400 to 150 ICBMs, from 60 to zero strategic bombers, and from 12 to 4 submarines, reducing U.S. nuclear capability from 640 to 214 ICBMs and SLBMs and from 1550 warheads to 400. The savings would be minor as the cost of making our strategic bombers nuclear capability is 3%. Currently we only produce one SSBN annually so budget cuts would be in the outyears as they would be for the new Sentinel missile. Reducing Minuteman from 400 to 150 could implicitly eliminate two operating ICBM bases and overtime save annually some hundreds of millions and overall, no more than $1.3 billion annually, (as previous assessments often show base closings do not provide immediate cost savings but only in the very long run.)

True, Sentinel, Columbia and an upgraded D-5 will cost some $325 billion. But the proposed cuts will save funds only in the outyears when production will end. The savings of roughly $200 billion over some 20 years or $10 billion a year have to compared to $4 trillion in additional annual costs which are some 40-fold greater.

Spend $4 trillion more and save $10 billion makes no sense. It doesn’t matter what you call these ideas–socialist, communist, democratic socialist, or progressive. To repeat, the spending doesn’t make sense. And the budget cuts harm our national security and begin a process of disarmament.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Nuclear Choices Ahead: What Road to Take?)

With the expiration of the START series of arms control agreements, the U.S. now faces serious choices particularly how to respond to the emergence of two peer nuclear adversaries. Especially when the current nuclear modernization program of record was agreed to in 2010 when the nuclear balance was far more benign. Projected into the future, people across the political spectrum see a nuclear environment with storm clouds ahead. However, there is a serious divide as to what the U.S. should do. As a result, the U.S. will soon have some difficult choices to make.

In 1981 the U.S. faced a similar crossroad. Would détente continue along with a nuclear freeze of very large nuclear arsenals, modernized in the USSR but lacking in the U.S.? Or alternatively, would the U.S. and the West secure major nuclear reductions while modernizing, and adopt a peace through strength strategy as a pathway to dismantle the Soviet empire?

By 1991, the latter option won out. Strategic long range nuclear forces were projected to come down by over 80% through a series of START arms agreements. Miraculously, the Soviet Union collapsed and all of Eastern Europe was freed. But despite this extraordinary victory, the U.S. assumed it was the end of history, and all enemies were gone and would not emerge. And consequently, we took a subsequent interim forty year holiday from nuclear sustainment.

The U.S. now faces the challenge of simultaneously sustaining and modernizing the entirety of the nuclear deterrent.

So, like 1981, the U.S. and the West face another crossroads: either seek further nuclear reductions toward zero or abolition, while significantly curtailing nuclear modernization; or alternatively, accelerate and enhance both nuclear modernization and sustainment, while once again adopting a strategy of peace through strength but now to take down the hegemonic aspirations of the Chinese communist party.

Both options are relatively well spelled out by proponents, but they rely on very different assumptions.

Like the advocates of the nuclear freeze, abolitionists think nuclear deterrence is bound to fail. And while nuclear deterrence has worked since the dawn of the nuclear age, it will not be useful if deterrence breaks down. A key assumption underlines this new belief: if one or even a few nuclear weapons are used in retaliation, the odds are that nearly all other nuclear weapons will subsequently be used as escalation will take over. Thus, there is no capability to “use” nuclear weapons and survive.

Since the 2023 movie “Oppenheimer,” the abolition folks have brought forward a new twist on what is or is not possible for deterrence. As Annie Jacobsen in her book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” and the 2024 movie “A House of Dynamite” conclude, nuclear deterrence will someday not work and war will break out. And the assumption is that the U.S. military will “jam up” the American President to retaliate “all in.” The only alternative is nuclear abolition.

To get there HASC members Representators Mo Khanna and Jim Garamendi (both D-CA) and SASC members Senators Markey (D-MA) and Warren, (D-MA), have joined with Senator Sanders (I-VT) to propose a unilateral cut of U.S. nuclear forces from 400 to 150 ICBMs, from 12 to 4 strategic submarines and from 60 to zero nuclear capable bombers. The implied force is between 300-500 strategic warheads compared to the New START allowed 1550-1850 warheads which is the current force of choice.

On the other hand, there is an option one might describe as “Record Plus.” In 2010 the U.S. Congress strongly supported a modernized force of 12 submarines, 400 ICBMs, and 60 B2 and B52 strategic bombers for the U.S. strategic nuclear force. Funding for such modernization has generally been approved and is projected to cost $450 billion over the next decade. This was a force consistent with the limits of the 2010 New START nuclear treaty that expired earlier this year. What has yet to be decided is how much more nuclear capability the United States needs as generally recommended by the 2023 Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

The choices are relatively straight forward. The U.S. needs theater or shortrange, nuclear forces such as sea and land-launched cruise missiles, and such development funding has now been approved. The U.S. could add to the existing silo based and submarine-based missiles we already have in the legacy nuclear forces or add to the planned new nuclear forces.

Each silo-based ICBM can add upwards of two warheads. The upload process allows 3 missiles per ICBM wing per month or 44 months, while sub warheads can be added much faster. Other buildups could be an additional 3-4 submarines but that could probably only be done at the end of the current acquisition schedule, with such submarines being acquired 2041-4. The new B21 Raider is now undergoing flight testing and there is general consensus that the U.S. needs not 100 but 175-200 more nuclear capable strategic bombers, with Northrop Grumman having committed to accelerate such new acquisition.

There is however a major new concern as the U.S. moves forward on modernization. In April 1999 Russian President Yeltsin in a secret decree ordered the development of thousands of short-range, low yield, “battlefield” nuclear weapons that Russia could use to win a nuclear conflict.” One recent study determined that Russian micro-testing of very low yield strategic long-range weapons could attack all 400 U.S. silo-based ICBMs and cause less than 10,000 casualties, making a U.S. retaliatory response less than certain.

Now the current U.S. retaliatory deterrent strategy is to destroy an enemy’s leadership and their supportive security forces along with their remaining nuclear weapons and industry support. The rationale is simple: threaten to take away those things the bad guys value. Mao Tse Tung once casually dismissed the consequences of nuclear war with the United States, declaring that Chinese women would in a generation make up for the loss of a few hundred million people. He hardly cared for his own people having killed some 65 million to sustain power.

To abolitionists such a U.S. strategy is illogical as they assume such a strategy is “warfighting” and not winnable. In the two movies and one book referenced earlier, some of the abolitionists are pushing to jettison current U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy altogether as unworkable. But what does the U.S. do for deterrent strategy on the long road toward nuclear abolition? How does one deter bad guys brandishing nuclear weapons prior to their hoped for abolition? How do you still deter on the way toward abolition?

Author Annie Jacobsen was asked just this question, but she explained she would drop her explicit support for abolition but let other “experts” figure it out. The movie “Dynamite” took both deterrence by retaliation off the table and missile defense to intercept an attack in the first place. The movie assumed missile defense—even against a single warhead—would not work. And not knowing where the missile originated, the U.S. had to guess— retaliate against everyone as one military officer proposed or do nothing.

Yeltsin’s 1999 decree is being implemented. And since the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Moscow has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its allies dozens of times. Many have assumed such nuclear strikes would involve the very battlefield nuclear forces called for in Yeltsin’s 1999 decree.

Critics of such weapons say there is no consequential difference between using a regional/theater/battlefield nuclear weapon with a minimal yield and a long-range strategic nuclear warhead of many hundreds of kilotons. Any such weapon use will result in Armageddon.

That may indeed be true.

But Moscow and Beijing may not believe so and thus would be reckless enough to use such weapons. That the U.S. and its allies must defend against and deter such use. That may take a sea-launched nuclear armed cruise missile. And a robust missile defense such as Golden Dome. Or any number of new technologies and strategies. But probably not unilateral restraint that does not take such threats seriously in the first place.

Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis and a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrent Studies & the Gold Institute for International Strategy.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Blaming America First: Dangerous Waters Ahead)

When Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick explained in 1984 that America’s severest foreign policy critics “always blame America first” she identified a narrative that continues some four decades later. At the time, there was often what appeared to be a reflexive anti-American bias in the criticism of President Reagan’s security policy. But critics had to sustain such a narrative as it enabled them to avoid a serious reflection on the security threats to the U.S., and wrongfully claim the threats were much of our own doing. Today, the false campaign to blame Israel for the Iranian conflict is a tragic repeat of what the Ambassador warned us to avoid.

Kirkpatrick knew the always blame America narrative was wrong and dangerous. With the dawn of the Reagan Presidency the United States faced major threats, all of which had grown significantly in the previous decade. Let’s review.

First was a reckless Soviet Union, often partnered with Communist China, engaging in major across-the-board arming of guerilla wars aimed at regime change. Although the Soviet conquest campaign centered in the third world started with the North Korean cross border invasion of 1950, it did not succeed. Thus, the switch to guerilla war in Indochina from 1959, Central America from 1958, and ironically culminating in the return to cross border invasion with Afghanistan in 1979.

Under Soviet direction, centers of state sponsorship of terrorism grew in Syria, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran, along with terror agents such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hezbollah, the FMLN, FARC, the Red Brigades, and Bidar Meinhoff gangs.

And during the decade of détente, nearly two dozen American allied governments fell to or were attacked by communist subversion.

After the 1980 election, the U.S. turned the tables. The U.S. went after Soviet terror states in Afghanistan, Grenada and Nicaragua and worked to defeat terror proxies in Columbia and El Salvador, as part of an economic war on Moscow that aimed to make the cost of the Soviet empire unsustainable. And for the first time since 1917, the free world took back territory from the communist empire with the liberation of Grenada in 1983.

The second major threat President Reagan faced was a massive Soviet theater nuclear buildup, including the deployment of thousands of nuclear armed SS 20 medium range ballistic missile in Europe and Asia, targeting both the Atlantic and Pacific allies of the United States.

The third major threat President Reagan faced was a parallel Soviet nuclear buildup of deployed strategic nuclear weapons from a few thousand in 1972 to over 10,000 by the 1980s, all under the SALT treaties of 1972 and 1979.

Treaties that gave the good arms control housekeeping seal of approval to Moscow’s buildup that had as its key purpose to coercively blackmail the United States and our allies to stand down in the face of Soviet aggression.

Nuclear weapons were the umbrella under which Russian third world aggression would remain in a sanctuary.

Here is where we come back to Jean Kirkpatrick’s 1984 remarks. How did the United States reverse the Soviet buildup of nuclear weapons and end the Soviet empire, including reversing its third world campaign of subversion?

Kirkpatrick explained that too many critics of U.S. policy blamed the United States for Soviet aggression and nuclear building. We supported dictators in Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Cuba, so why was it a surprise guerilla campaigns emerged to change governments? The U.S. funded NATO on the doorsteps of the USSR so why should we be surprised Moscow responded with the deployment of SS-20 missiles?

When the USSR empire came crashing down, there were three common explanations.

One was that the Kennan policy of restrained “containment” practiced by nine successive American Presidents brought down the Soviets, but nothing special from the Reagan White House. The idea of containment of Soviet aggression was originated by State department official George Kennan who coined the term in a long telegram from Moscow and in a subsequent essay in Foreign Affairs signed by “X.”

But Kennan himself disliked the term containment and often declared it did not describe what Kennan had advocated after the end of World War II. He opposed Truman sending American troops to defend Korea, and repeatedly opposed most of Reagan’s security agenda, most particularly the administration’s nuclear and missile defense modernization agenda.

The second narrative was that the collapse of the Soviet empire was inevitable, and again nothing special from President Reagan had any serious effect on the outcome. Again, the common narrative was that nothing America did had much to do with the outcome of the Cold War.

The third narrative was much the same but with a twist. It was not America but the Soviets themselves that ended the Cold War. The reforms of General Secretary Gorbachev ended the Cold War, and all that Reagan did was as one recent President claimed was to allow those reforms to take place without trying to extend the Cold War. In fact, critics often complained the Soviet Union would have collapsed even faster if the United Stats had not been so aggressive.

Reagan’s political opponents held that his aggressive foreign policy harmed U.S. security, particularly with respect to describing the USSR as an “evil empire, developing SDI and deploying MX missiles, arming the Contras and Mujahadeen Northern Alliance while saving Solidarity. To the blame American firsters, our adversaries had to take defensive actions to protect their own security. It was America that was at fault—having caused the outbreak of the Cold War and perpetuated its continuance.

This acute tendency too, as the Ambassador explained, always blames America as the key ingredient to carrying out an alternative strategy. If the United States and it’s supposed aggressive security policy was responsible for triggering bad Soviet behavior, then of course the removal of such U.S. security policy and its architect (Reagan) would magically change Moscow security policy to one far more benign. In short, detente would work.

The pillars of former Vice President Mondale’s 1984 campaign were to stop SDI, freeze the deployment of America’s Pershing and GLCM missiles in Europe, kill the MX missile, and end all military aid to the contras in Nicaragua and the government of El Salvador.

Hear the ironies are too delicious to ignore. A frequent object of leftist or progressive scorn during the decade of the 1970s was Henry Kissinger, who was in fact the author of the SALT nuclear agreement, the ABM treaty that eliminated missile defenses, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and the entire edifice of the strategy of detente. All which President Reagan would seriously oppose.

But as Kirkpatrick pointed out, for the progressive left, if the origin of Soviet behavior was intrinsic to the very nature of Russian culture then of course a peaceful American security policy would be an invitation to the expansion of Soviet aggression, which is precisely what occurred during détente, from 1969 through the decade following.

In reality, when a dozen and a half nations slipped behind the Iron Curtain in little more than a decade, it hardly makes sense to then pretend at the end of the subsequent decade the USA and its allies abject failure to actually “contain” the Soviets led somehow to victory ending the USSR empire.

It is true that in 1980 after the invasion of Afghanistan the Carter administration announced that it had misinterpreted the Soviet embrace of detente and indeed had been mistaken by claiming the U.S. had to get rid of its inordinate fear of communism.

If simply changing U.S. foreign policy back to détente and restraint would induce a benign Soviet subsequent conciliatory security policy, then of course, progressive critics of President Reagan could justify their opposition to peace through strength, SDI, the full up modernization of American nuclear forces, the arming of the resistance in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the take down of Grenada, and the arming of our nation state allies in El Salvador the Republic of Korea and NATO.

Similarly if today the turmoil in the Middle East was caused by America’s ally Israel, just as progressives assumed an aggressive USA policy caused the Cold War, then it’s simply a matter of preventing Israel from securing arms necessary to carry on its apparent too aggressive security policy. Stop Israel, stop the war. Peace blossoms!

Senator Sanders (I-Vt) thus can blame Israel for “genocide” in Gaza and pretend Hamas and Hezbollah are on the side of the angels. And consequently, Sanders can offer an amendment in the Senate to stop all USA arms sales to Israel, that received 40 votes, 39 of which were from the 45 member democratic caucus.

How simple Middle East security policy could be if we all simply “blamed Israel first” for “tricking” us into war against Iran. Like the make believe Cold War and the Soviet empire, ending the Iranian nuclear program, stopping the deployment of long range missiles, keeping open Hormuz, and ending proxy terrorism can be simply a matter of changing U.S. administrations.

We can all be for “peace,” need not take up arms against the genocidal regime in Tehran, because as critics claim, it is Israel and the USA that “chose this war” not an Iran that for nearly half a century has been at war with Western civilization.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written By Peter Huessy and Stephen Blank and appeared in the RealClearDefense. What the Arms Control Community Gets Wrong About Arms Control – RealClearDefense)

In an ideal world a binding arms control treaty governing numbers and types of deployed and stored nuclear weapons, proclaiming, and enforcing strictly agreed to mutual verification procedures would be a wonderful thing.  But we do not live in that world nor is it likely to appear anytime soon.  The New START Treaty expired on February 5 and there is not even a negotiation in sight let alone a viable treaty.  Predictably the arms control community blames the Administration for this.  Angela Kane, the former UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and Under-Secretary-General for Management in the United Nations, wrote that, civil society urged the Trump administration to accept Vladimir Putin’s proposal to continue observing the numerical limits of that treaty after expiration.

That may be true in Europe and among the arms control lobby here.  But they assuredly do not speak for whatever she means by the term civil society here and in Europe. Indeed, treaty extension is a bad idea, and the Administration rightly refused Putin’s offer. Washington got it right. Putin’s offer was a typical Russian ruse.  Notably it said nothing about verification, and it came from a government that has systematically broken every arms control treaty that it has ever signed.  It is an axion of successful arms control that unless both sides can verify a treaty’s observance that treaty is worthless.

In the meantime Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine, provided them to the Assad government, conducted biological warfare against opponents at home and abroad – most recently – Alexei Navalny – and probably against U.S. diplomats abroad, the notorious Havana Syndrome being a case in point.  Russia violated the Budapest accords on Ukrainian nuclear disarmament by seizing Crimea in 2014 and then invading again in 2022, actions that violated eight solemn international treaties.

As Dr. Blank wrote in 2023, Russia’s post-2014 aggression does not merely target Ukraine. Instead, it deliberately assaults the very idea of international order, particularly that of a European security order.  Indeed, Putin, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proclaim the collective West is at war with Russia.  Russian nationalist political scientist Sergei Karaganov openly says that “We are at war with the West. The European security order is illegitimate.”

As part of its assault on international order Russia violated the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) by conducting nuclear weapons tests in 2019.  At the same time, Russia’s Oreshnik missile, a prototype of which appeared approximately 15 years ago, was developed in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Furthermore, the Oreshnik prototype, the Rubezh missile, was developed in violation of the New START Treaty, since, given its range, it can be classified as an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Russia is also seeking to deploy a nuclear weapon in space in violation of previous treaties.  Apart from all these treaty violations for which no penalty was exacted, Moscow regularly threatens Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. with nuclear strikes for supporting Ukraine.  The latest such threat against. Estonia occurred on February 22.  Finally by moving nuclear weapons to Belarus, funding North Korean nuclear programs, and transferring missile, satellite, and nuclear submarine technology to Pyongyang Moscow has violated the Non-Proliferation treaty and a host of UN resolutions.

Neither is Russia alone, China’s breathtaking and utterly unconstrained nuclear buildup represents a growing threat to both the U.S. and Russia not to mention India, Japan, Australia, and virtually every other state in Asia.  China now has a nuclear triad but because no treaty constrains it, it is also apparently developing a new generation of low-yield “mini-nukes” to give it the future option of limited nuclear warfare.  It violated the CTBT in 2020 despite being a signatory to the treaty.  Thus, it too cannot be counted on to uphold a treaty without strict verification and enforcement mechanisms.

It is hard to imagine either American or European governments let alone civil society, however it is defined, resuming an unverifiable treaty with Russia and/or China under such conditions of intolerable disadvantage,  a phrase coined in 1999 by members of the Clinton Administration.  As Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin wrote in 1960-61, “the aims of arms control and the aims of a national military strategy should be substantially the same.”  And a more recent commentary observes, “This principle established national security as the dominant goal of arms control, not the reduction of arms per se.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Kane and the arms control community have evidently forgotten this crucial distinction.  Arms control is not and cannot be a moral crusade for unilateral disarmament or global zero.  Experience shows that Moscow negotiates only when it fears a U.S. technology buildup or when one, as is now beginning, takes place.  Neither will China be moved by moralism and what amounts to American self-deterrence.  But it might be moved by a genuine American buildup to parry its threats.  Otherwise, nuclear proliferation will inevitably become a more realistic option as China pushed in a secret 1982 Politburo meeting.  Indeed, at the first sign of the fraying of our alliances in Asia and Europe those countries’ nuclearization  instantly returns to their agendas as is now happening. Regardless of claims made on behalf of a nebulous civil society, Western populations expect their governments to defend them against threats and history shows us that only when we build do our enemies negotiate.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in the Geostrategic Analysis.)

America’s fourth wave of neglect of its military since the end of World War II may have very serious negative geostrategic consequences.*

While Congress has passed a temporary slowdown in the decline in American defense spending with a two-year budget framework, the Ryan-Murray budget agreement, which restores $32 billion to the Department of Defense, the projected defense resources available for the next eight years will not allow the United States to protect its own security, let alone that of its allies.

Taken together, as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned,(1) [FN1: “Chairman Outlines Sequestration’s Dangers,” by Claudette Roulo, American Forces Press Service, Washington, Feb. 13, 2013], previous and projected cuts to military budgets from 2009-2023 threaten dangerously to undermine the stability required for both economic prosperity and relative peace among the world’s major military powers, as well as America’s global standing.

One of the nation’s top defense analysts sums it up: “The reality is, for all its promise, the Ryan-Murray budget agreement still only addresses less than 7 percent of the defense sequester. Much more work needs to be done to lift the specter of sequestration once and for all …” (2)[FN2: “Punting on the Pentagon Budget”, by Mackenzie Eaglen, US News and World Report, December 13, 2013].

THE FIRST WAVE OF NEGLECT, 1945-50

After World War II, U.S. security suffered. The decline in defense spending after 1945 was large, $90 billion down to $14 billion at the beginning of the first year after the war’s end (FY1947 or July 1, 1946). With the end of World War II, support for a strong US military was not a sure thing.

It is true the Marshall Plan, or European Economic Recovery Plan, did stop a significant portion of the planned expansion of the Soviets into Europe (3)[FN3: NY Times, April 1, 2010, “Harry S. Truman, Decisive President.”] These efforts, however, consisted primarily of significant American economic assistance and the transfer of surplus military equipment to designated countries, with some American personnel transferred for training purposes as well, but not the deployment of American soldiers. (4) [FN4: “Truman Acts to Save Nations From Red Rule”, by Felix Belair, Jr., New York Times, March 12, 1947].

But despite the success of the Marshall Plan, serious security threats remained in the post-WWII period. The communists threatened to come to power in Turkey and Greece and succeeded in taking power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, imperiling it was feared the freedom of other states of Europe.

A few months later, on May 15, 1948, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, after rejecting the UN supported partition plan, invaded Israel, an attack that set off what is now 75 years of continued attempts to destroy the Jewish state.

The next month, on June 24, 1948, the Soviets imposed a blockade on West Berlin. According to Lucius Clay, the military governor of the American zone of occupied Germany: “When the order of the Soviet Military Administration to close all rail traffic from the western zones went into effect at 6:00AM on the morning of June 24, 1948, the three western sectors of Berlin, with a civilian population of about 2,500,000 people, became dependent on reserve stocks and airlift replacements. It was one of the most ruthless efforts in modern times to use mass starvation for political coercion…” A top secret document at the time describe the Soviet action as the first act of the new Cold War (5)[FN5: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/].

Many observers believe the Soviet action actually backfired and speeded up the establishment of the new Federal Republic of Germany and helped spur the April 4, 1949 creation of NATO. A month later, in May, the Soviets lifted the Berlin blockade.

But elsewhere things did not improve. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear weapon. A little more than a month later, on October 1, 1949, China fell to the communists under Mao Zedong.

Despite the creation of NATO, the emerging Cold War, and the Soviets explosion of a nuclear weapon, American defense spending continued to be neglected, dropping to $13.5 billion by July of 1950, — a full 7% cut from the year before. During 1947-49, the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, continually fought the Truman administration’s interest in cutting defense to as low as $7 billion annually, a number supported by strong isolationist elements in Congress.

As a result of opposition within the Truman administration to Forrestal’s support for a strong defense, he resigned March 1, 1949. The new Defense Secretary, Louis Johnson, was, unlike Forrestal, all for cutting defense. Under his watch, 80% of the “needed equipment” purchases for the Army were postponed — a delay which, as the administration [without evidence] testified to Congress, “would make the Army force levels…more effective.(6) [FN6: See LaFeber, Walter, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1980, 7th edition New York: McGraw-Hill 1993].

In an echo of subsequent American political debates over the next half century, the new Secretary of Defense and the Truman administration saw excessive government spending–including defense spending– as bad for the US economy. After all the 1945 recession caused GDP to drop a whopping 10.6% and even by 1949 another recession hit while that same year unemployment reached 7.9% and GDP fell 0.5%.

In December 1949 for example, in order to justify further defense budget cuts, then Defense Secretary Louis Johnson told the commander of the U.S. Atlantic and Mediterranean fleet, Admiral Richard Conolly: “Admiral, the Navy is on its way out. There’s no reason for having a Navy and a Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do, so that does away with the Navy. (7) [FN7: See Vincent Davis, “The Post-Imperial Presidency”; “The Anti-Defense Secretary”, by Mackubin Thomas Owens, The Weekly Standard, January 28, 2013 and Krulak, Victor H. (Lt. Gen.), First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps, Naval Institute Press (1999)]

Unwilling to strengthen the U.S. military even in anticipation of the need to help its new NATO allies, the Truman administration tried a different tact. It asked Congress to provide economic security funding for its friends in Greece, Turkey and, early in 1950, South Korea, rather than to reinforce our own military forces to provide these allies a stronger security umbrella.

Although Greece and Turkey were successfully helped with approval of assistance by the Congress, passage of similar but much smaller legislation to help Korea failed in the House by one vote, leaving America’s Korean allies without U.S. help. (8) [FN8: SparkNotesEditors, The Korean War 1950-1953.]

This failed effort to secure help for the Republic of Korea was followed by remarks delivered by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in early 1950. He said that for American purposes, South Korea was beyond its security perimeter, what many later would interpret as a careless and implicit invitation for would be aggressors to invade South Korea. (9) [FN9: Speech by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, National Press Club, January 12, 1950].

To be fair, Acheson did add that the UN could be relied upon “to protect a nation’s security” but then compounded his original mistaken comments by asserting that whatever problems were faced by East Asia, “any guarantee against military attack is hardly sensible.” (10) [FN10: Ibid]

This assessment followed an intelligence report to the President that concluded North Korea might invade the Republic of Korea, but that it had no capability to invade its southern neighbor without the assistance of the Soviets. That assessment, in turn, led to the further conclusion among members of the intelligence community that no such threat existed for some number of years because Moscow was not going to sanction such aggression.(See Intelligence Memos #302-06 referenced below).

But America’s problems were not limited to just intelligence failures. By 1950, Defense Secretary Johnson “had established a policy of faithfully following President Truman’s defense economization policy, and had aggressively attempted to implement it even in the face of steadily increasing external threats posed by the Soviet Union and its allied Communist regimes. He consequently received much of the blame for the initial setbacks in Korea and the widespread reports of ill-equipped and inadequately trained U.S. forces.” 11) [FN11: Blair, Clay, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953, Naval Institute Press, 2003].

Further, Secretary Johnson’s “failure to adequately plan for U.S. conventional force commitments, to adequately train and equip current forces, or even to budget funds for storage of surplus Army and Navy war-fighting materiel for future use in the event of conflict would prove fateful after war broke out on the Korean Peninsula” (12) FN12: Ibid).

Compounding our problems was that the Truman administration assumed the US monopoly on atomic weaponry would preserve American and allied security and not require a major increase in conventional military investments.

What the U.S. intelligence community did not know was the Soviets had received critical help to build an atomic weapon because Julius Rosenberg had delivered American atomic secrets to Moscow.

Thus, long before our intelligence community thought possible, the Soviets successfully tested a nuclear weapon in August 1949, an accomplishment that was most certainly a factor in the decision of the Soviet Premier, Josef Stalin, to support the invasion of the Republic of Korea by the North which our intelligence community was convinced the Soviets would not do. (13) [FN13: “The Korea Times”, May 16, 2012, essay by Professor Andre Lankov, “Soviet Leader Approved Invasion Proposal”].

Apparently, as archival material implies, Stalin was also convinced the U.S. would not respond to help the Republic of Korea [ROK]. And, like the leader of North Korea, Stalin saw the “liberation” of China as simply a prelude to the “liberation of South Korea.” (14) [FN14: See for example “Mao, Stalin and the Korean War” by Shen Zhihua, June 12, 2012, which analyzes all these issues in some detail.]

In short, the U.S. intelligence community knew that Moscow had exploded an atomic device, but, even after the outbreak of the Korean war, did not seem to integrate the new circumstances into their intelligence assessments.

For example, on July 8, 1950, some two weeks after the North Korean invasion, (15) [FN15: See “Intelligence Memorandum, #302-06”, www.cia.org/library/center for the study of intelligence] the Truman White House received an intelligence brief which concluded that “Soviet intentions in supporting the Korean invasion were unknown.”

As for possible future Chinese involvement in the war, the memo concluded that, “…movements of large troop formations from South and Central China toward [North Korea] are largely discounted.”

It appears likely, therefore, that the post-World War II defense neglect, coupled with erroneous intelligence assessments, played a key role in the lack of readiness of U.S. forces as they came to the rescue of the ROK in 1950.

It is also likely that the excessive draw down U.S. military spending within the Truman administration in the immediate post World War II period sent the wrong signals to America’s adversaries, as well as harming U.S. military readiness.

Further, the less-than-stellar Truman administration’s verbal support for the Republic of Korea, as well as the failure of Congress to supply the ROK with even a small amount of economic assistance may also have led Stalin to conclude that an invasion of the ROK would not be contested by the United States.

Yet, despite massive shortages of equipment and serious readiness deficiencies, the US eventually saved the ROK from communist tyranny, but at a cost of 35,000 American lives and those of an estimated 5 million Koreans.

Ironically, parallel to this policy of neglect, pro-military forces within the Truman administration sought to put together for America’s role in the world a strategic vision and plan that would confront the threat of a nuclear armed Soviet Union. This objective became an imperative for these administration people, particularly after the Soviet test-explosion of a nuclear weapon in August, 1949.

Even then, the then Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson attempted to dismiss the nuclear radiation from the explosion as the result of an industrial accident not a real weapons test. (16) [FN16: See for example “Fulcrum of Power: Essays on the USAF and National Security: Part V” by Herman Wolk].

This vision was codified in a new national security defense directive (NSDD 28), which recognized the extraordinary threat to America and its allies from a nuclear armed Soviet Union — no longer the partner with which the allied forces had won World War II.

The primary author of the report was Paul Nitze, later the founder of the Committee on the Present Danger, which, in three separate instances (1950, 1976 and 2004) would warn Americans that the threats it then faced were deadly and could not continually be ignored.

Shortly after Nitze’s NSDD was formally adopted by the Truman administration in April 1950, President Harry S, Truman was told that such a national security policy would also require an estimated $41 billion a year in DOD spending for its implementation.

When contrasted to the then $13-14 billion defense budget, the implications were serious. How could the Truman administration support a security policy that implied the need for a defense budget 300% higher than its own supported defense program?

On June 25, 1950, North Korea’s invasion of the ROK ended the debate. By mid-1951, defense spending reached $24 billion a year, peaking at $44 billion in 1953. After the Korean War ended, the war effort spending-level was significantly cut and the defense budget fell from $44 billion to $36 billion.

Despite the defense budget gradually increasing to $43.1 billion by the end of the decade, (FY61 budget), President Dwight Eisenhower, (1953-61) was routinely criticized for shortchanging defense by both Democrats on Capitol Hill and the defense industry. However, the final defense budget passed under the Eisenhower administration at $43.1 billion was just $2 billion or 5% below the $41 billion budget (adjusted for inflation) recommended by the Truman administration’s NSDD28 for 1950.

The Eisenhower administration did rely on American nuclear weapons for a policy of nuclear massive retaliation in the event of Soviet aggression, a policy thought to be considerably cheaper to implement than an alternative emphasizing conventional capabilities.

So, to that extent the critics were right that US conventional military strength did not match that of the Soviets. But to increase American and allied conventional weapons and match the Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional forces tank for tank, and artillery piece for artillery piece would have cost the United States and its allies tens of billions in additional annual defense expenditures which the Eisenhower administration and its allies were unwilling to support.

THE SECOND WAVE OF NEGLECT, 1970-1980

The communists in the Kremlin, evidently deciding that, given America’s and its allied forces’ commitment to “contain” Soviet-led aggression, cross-border wars such as Korea were not likely to succeed, adopted, instead, supporting smaller, more containable guerilla wars, popularly known as “wars of national liberation.”

According to William P. Bundy, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East, Cuba, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America became targets for subversion (17) [FN 17: Dallas Council on World Affairs, May 13, 1965, “Reality and Myth Concerning South Vietnam”].

To counter, in part, this Soviet campaign, American military spending increased from $43 billion when President John Kennedy was elected to $51 billion in the 1964 election year, to a peak of $83 billion in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. Tragically, the war was especially divisive, partly due to its length but primarily because of the high casualties the US sustained without any compensatory sense that the war was being won.

Although many experts believe the South Vietnamese and Americans had won the war by 1969, the American withdrawal — followed by the abandonment of our Saigon allies by Congress in 1975 — led to the fall of the South Vietnamese government and the imposition of communist rule there and throughout Indochina.

After the United States disengaged from the Vietnam War, and war costs came to an end, defense spending declined and remained relatively flat for half a decade. Fueled by an intense anti-military sentiment in Congress and among the public at large, so began the second major period of U.S. neglect of its armed services since the end of World War II.

Ironically, after 1975 defense budgets increased by nearly 60% over its 1969 peak. But in real terms, even these increasing defense budgets were still significantly underfunding the country’s defense needs.

There were three important reasons for this.

First was the cost of paying our soldiers. Although the U.S. moved to an all-volunteer military in 1973 under the assumption that absent a draft, future “unpopular” wars such as Vietnam would be impossible to fight, as few would volunteer for such wars, (thus reducing defense costs significantly), the proponents of an all volunteer force failed to anticipate the high personnel costs required to attract such recruits. (18) [FN18: “CSBA: “Military Manpower for the Long Haul”, 2008]

Thus, basic military pay doubled in real term costs between 1971-5 just as the country transitioned to an all volunteer military. In addition, there were significant costs associated with attracting sufficient soldier volunteers to join the military.

The second key reason was inflation. The Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations all sought to monetize the debt by first taking the country off the gold standard and then printing money to pay for our deficit spending. On top of that, the inflation, which hit 14% a year by 1980, required a nearly $20 billion increase in defense spending for that year alone to just keep pace with increased costs.

And the third reason was dramatically higher oil prices. The proximate cause was the 1983 oil embargo and then the fall of the Shah of Iran and subsequent downturn in Iran oil production. This caused two recessions (1974-5 and 1980-1), with retail gasoline prices climbing from $0.36 cents a gallon in 1973 to $0.62 cents in 1978 to $1.18 by 1981.

Thus, at the same time inflation accelerated, the country fell into two recessions, a combination that came to be known as “stagflation”. This had the effect of increasing the cost to our military for the fuel it used; increasing the cost of military hardware and personnel due to higher inflation; fueling international tensions particularly in the Middle East which further stretched U.S. military requirements; and finally, reducing U.S. economic growth and subsequent revenue to the Treasury, which in turn increased budget pressures on defense resources just as requirements for our defense capabilities was on the rise. (19) [FN19: WTPG Economics, 1996-2011 by James C. Williams, and “The Recessions of 1973 and 1980 Caused by High Oil Prices”, by Robert Lenzer, Forbes, September 1, 2013].

As a result, during the 1970s this combination of factors serially delayed major weapons system acquisition, including for example needed airlift, fighter aircraft, space, nuclear deterrent and army ground combat assets. Research and development funding also failed to keep pace with modernization needs. In short, just as costs to maintain the military were going up, (personnel, hardware and fuel), the surge in inflation wiped out any real purchasing power of the modest defense budget increases that finally were adopted in the last five years of the decade.

In addition to these cost pressures, the armed services were also suffering from expansive drug and alcohol abuse, desertions and bad morale. Former Secretary of State and retired General Alexander Haig told this author during his time as commander of all allied forces in Europe (SACEUR 1974-1979), as a result of these negative pressures, he had to struggle to keep the military from falling apart.

When added together, these factors all came to create within our armed services what came to be described as the “hollow army”.

The resultant cost to American security was high. Modernization was delayed, deferred or abandoned including tactical aircraft, airlift, nuclear forces and ground combat force technologies.

The current Army Chief of Staff, General Raymond Odierno, warned earlier this year we might be repeating the same mistake: “I know what is required to send soldiers into combat. And I’ve seen firsthand the consequences when they are sent unprepared…I began my career [referring to the 1970’s] in a hollow Army. I do not want to end my career in a hollow Army.”(20) [FN20: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/12/army-faces-troop-reduction-amid-budget-cuts/#ixzz2nlQb30lP].

As United States military spending in the 1970’s failed to keep pace with our nation’s security needs, nation after nation fell to communism or totalitarianism, including South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Angola, Bangladesh, Chile, and Iran.

Soviet sponsored terrorism grew rapidly as Moscow joined forces with Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and other terrorism-sponsoring states, as well as their new terrorist creations such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO]; the communist guerillas in El Salvador, known as the FMLN, and terror groups such as Italy’s Red Brigades and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang in Europe.

American military action in Cambodia to rescue the freighter Mayaguez (May 1975) and the loss of soldiers in Desert One during the attempted rescue of U.S. diplomats in Iran (April 1980) were less than exemplary bookends to the neglect of America’s military in the post-Vietnam era. According to the Soviets the “correlation of forces” (COF) in the decade of the 1970s had decidedly moved in their direction.

Explains Mackubin Owen: “Indeed, the Soviet military press during this decade was filled with numerous references to the COF. For instance, in 1975, General Yevdokim Yeogovich Mal’Tsev wrote that “the correlation of world forces has changed fundamentally in favor of socialism and to the detriment of capitalism.”(21) [FN21: February 2004, Mackubin Owens, “The Correlation of Forces”, Ashland University, Ashbrook Center]. An insight onto the thinking of the time is illustrated by former President James Carter’s boast that at the end of his Presidency (1981) his proudest accomplishment was never having used American military forces in combat. As the former President himself put it: “We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war”.(22) [FN22: Carole Cadwalladr, “Jimmy Carter: ‘We Never Dropped A Bomb”, The Observer, September 10, 2011].

THE THIRD WAVE OF NEGLECT, 1991-2000

The third wave of neglect came at the end of the Cold War, and, ironically, after the success of the American military in Desert Storm. But the country and many of its leaders appeared to have decided that peace had broken out, threats were gone, and we could all safely go to the beach. Some described this period as “the end of history,” or, as Charles Krauthammer more accurately put it, “a holiday from history.”(23) [FN23: Charles Krauthammer, “Holiday From History”, The Washington Post, February 14, 2003]

In the National Interest, Summer 1989, “The End of History,” Francis Fukuyama wrote: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”(24) [FN24: Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History, The National Interest, Summer 1989].

It is not that such an outcome would certainly be preferable to the Cold War. What made Fukuyama’s essay terribly flawed was the assumption that even should “totalitarianism return,” as he noted, he assumed democracy would somehow still become more prevalent.

What was missing was an acknowledgment that each generation, if unwilling to protect its freedom, could in fact readily lose its freedom, as President Reagan warned us on January 11, 1989 in his farewell address to the nation:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Thus, after the end of the Cold War, and coincidentally right after the U.S. and coalition victory in Desert Storm, U.S. defense spending declined between 1989-2000 by a cumulative $1 trillion according to former Senator Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,1987-95.

This decline after the end of the Cold War was most serious in the procurement accounts where the U.S. apparently decided to go on a holiday and “forget the farm,” so to speak.

According to remarks made in December 2000, former top Department of Defense official John Hamre, currently the highly regarded President of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the overall decline in the acquisition accounts meant that fully 40% of the equipment that the Clinton administration committed to buy during its two terms was never purchased.

Purchases were also deferred or cancelled for much of the nuclear deterrent accounts, in which the U.S. neglected key sustainment and modernization efforts across the board. One bright spot was that all 500 Minuteman missiles underwent a service life extension effort, which is now just concluding.

The serial delay in weapons purchases, however, pushed modernization efforts well into the future. This resulted in enormous cumulative modernization requirements coming due simultaneously, just at a time when the U.S. ended up fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and as it pursued the “global war against terror” — while leaving to it to the future to determine if funds would be available to carry out all these tasks.

This second wave of neglect in the 1990s was somewhat ameliorated, starting in 1995, by defense supporters in Congress. Each year from 1995-2000, they added between $8-15 billion to the defense accounts beyond the administration’s budget requests which helped keep the defense acquisition accounts from cratering.

As a result, the defense budget was nominally at the same level of spending in 2001 as it was in 1991, thus avoiding a prolonged “defense trough” in which modernization would have been even more greatly affected. The very modest “mini-defense-buildup” from 1996-2000 was done, ironically, even while Congress also cut capital gains taxes, reformed welfare, balanced the budget and paid down the U.S. national debt by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Although the Cold War ended in 1991, dangers did not disappear: America was repeatedly attacked by terrorists throughout the 1990s, culminating in the attacks of September 2001.

As historians Donald and Frederick W. Kagan argued in their book, “While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today,” the policies of the previous administrations had left the U.S. in a position “where we cannot avoid war and keep the peace in areas vital to our security.”

One excellent review put it this way:

“Neither have the post-Cold War policies sent clear signals to would-be aggressors that the U.S. can and will resist them. Tensions in the Middle East, instability in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, the development of nuclear weapons and missiles by North Korea, and the menacing threats and actions of China, with its immense population, resentful sense of grievance and years of military build-up, all hint that the current peaceful era will not last…are we prepared to face its collapse? 25 [FN25: McMillan Press Review, November 2001].

The new administration under President George W. Bush had been hopeful that new technologies could help enhance our defense capabilities and make them more effective but without necessitating a huge build-up in defense spending (26). [FN26: Professor Norman Imler, “How Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld Sought to Assert Civilian Control Over the Military, National Defense University Press, 2002].

But the previous decade of neglect was taking its toll: personnel costs were starting to balloon — as were operations and maintenance accounts — just when cumulative modernization costs were starting to escalate having accumulated from over a decade of delay and “kicking the can down the road”.

With the attack of 9/11 and the subsequent liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban and Iraq from the Baathist Saddam regime, U.S. defense spending for these overseas deployments dramatically increased the overall defense budget just as average personnel costs climbed and modernization needs mounted. The defense budget did double from 2001-8, but so did personnel costs. And while much modernization did take place, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the general toll on American forces deployed in the global war against terrorist threats, left the modernization job undone.

THE FOURTH WAVE OF NEGLECT 2009–?

With new administration in 2009, the paramount effort was directed at ending the war in Iraq as soon as possible, and to begin a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan. But beyond these two top goals, the country did not really have an extended debate as to what the future size of the U.S. military should be.

The country did not have any serious debate about America’s proper role in the world. Nor what alliances needed strengthening. America’s focus turned almost entirely to getting American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan — popularly termed “ending our wars” — and stopping “Al Qaeda and its affiliates” — again without debate as to what that meant beyond finding and killing Osama Bin Laden.

Once the current U.S. administration decided to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of simply cutting the funding from these “overseas contingency operations,” as the administration labels overseas military deployments, it made significant additional cuts in America’s defense spending. These cuts have been and are very large and have continually been described by the nation’s senior military and civilian leadership as inconsistent with maintaining America’s security.

Starting in 2009, the current administration cut hundreds of billions from future defense spending accounts known as five year defense plans, which every administration submits and updates annually. That number has now reached in excess of $2.5 trillion or fully 30% less than the projected spending laid out in the last defense plan of the previous administration and the initial 2009 plan of the current administration.

For example, not counting war costs, the administration cut $300 billion in its first budget compared to the plan it inherited from the previous administration. This was followed by an additional $175 billion in “efficiency” cuts from its own 2009 budget, cuts to be initiated in 2010-11. This was followed by another $487 billion in defense spending cuts as part of the ten year deficit reduction agreement of 2011.

Finally, the current sequestration law requires another $550 billion in cumulative defense spending reductions by 2022. Although that has now been slightly reduced by $32 billion over the next two years (by virtue of the Senator Patty Murray-Congressman Paul Ryan budget agreement of December 18, 2013 the President has now signed into law).(27) [FN27: All these budget numbers are from www.usgovernmentspending.com, a private website with the finest compilation of government budget, tax and spending data available anywhere.]

At the same time that these budget cuts were being implemented, the US was also withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq. The costs of these wars declined sharply (and are kept in a separate budget category known as “overseas contingency operations” or OCO’s.)

Many observers believe the budget cuts to which I am referencing refer to these reductions. Their reaction is often quite reasonable–the defense budget is going to be reduced as we withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. So, what is the problem?

When the administration came into office such OCO costs were $158 billion annually. They are now at $90 billion. That is a $68 billion annual cut. Over the next decade, the cuts are projected to reach another cumulative $550 billion as US military counter terrorism operations overseas greatly diminish. But all of the cuts discussed above are over and in addition to the reductions in the OCO war costs.

Thus, when taken together, the defense budget and OCO spending reductions since 2009 and projected through 2022 will reach $2.5 trillion, (including the interest saved by not otherwise borrowing the funds).

Why is this important?

This rather lengthy assessment of the defense budget is very important to better explain the full context of the changes made to the defense budget of the United States since 2009 and to fully understand the growing opposition to the ten-year automatic across-the-board sequestration of defense spending required by the 2011 budget agreement.

First, no other part of the Federal budget has undergone such reductions which in the case of defense will approach 30% since 2009. In fact, all other Federal budget areas have grown and often grown dramatically, especially means tested poverty programs and entitlements.

Second, the OCO spending reductions cannot be counted toward the required automatic sequestration defense cuts of $1 trillion agreed to in the 2011 budget agreement.

And third, most worrisome, there is no defense strategy document from the administration that connects the defense budget spending levels required by sequestration and our security needs. [The administration will be issuing a new defense strategy in the spring of 2014 that may make this connection].

Although wars are not won or crises averted by just throwing money at defense spending, our national security leaders have repeatedly underscored that these required cuts will undermine and dismantle key defense capabilities required for our security.

For example, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, noted on February 14, 2012 in discussing the budget cuts with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, “You concluded, General Dempsey, that this new strategy would, and I quote, ‘not meet the needs of the nation in 2020 because the world is not getting any more stable.’” (28) [FN28: Transcript of the February 14, 2012 House Armed Services Committee Hearing, “Impact of Sequestration on the Defense Department”].

The Department of Defense website contains dozens of articles detailing the same problems. For example, “Acquisitions chiefs from each of the military services described the devastation being wreaked upon their branches by [defense sequestration cuts]” while “The nation’s service chiefs have told Congress if budget sequestration extends into fiscal year 2014, forces, capabilities and readiness will all be slashed, reducing the security of Americans”(29). [FN29: “Service Chiefs Detail 2014 Sequestration Effects”, By Cheryl Pellerin, September 19, 2013, American Forces Press Service and “Acquisitions Chiefs Describe Effects of Budget Uncertainty”, by Claudette Roulo, American Forces Press Service, October 24, 2013.]

Defense experts have emphasized that when you calculate the numbers, should all the defense budget cuts materialize through 2022, the US will field at the end of this decade the smallest Navy since World War I, the smallest USAF in history and an Army smaller than that just before World War II.

According to very recent DOD testimony, only two Army brigades are combat ready at this time, flying hours for our Air Force are being dramatically reduced, and our ships are less combat ready than at any time in the past 40 years. (30)[FN30: “The Peril of Sequestration”, By Frederick W. Kagan, National Review Online, April 19, 2013]

In an echo of the 1970s, Frank Kendall, the acquisition chief of the US Department of Defense, warned on November 7, 2013 that the budget cuts imposed by the automatic sequestration of $550 billion in defense cuts over the next ten years will “leave the Defense Department with a hollow force and debilitating shortfalls”. (31) (FN31: Frank Kendall, “Sequestration Will Make Hollow Force Inevitable”, November 7, 2013, American Forces Press Service].

Specifically, key modernization elements such as nuclear missiles, tactical aircraft, strategic bombers, ship building, space reconnaissance, counter cyber warfare, and missile defense will be cancelled or seriously reduced in scope.

The budget deal as passed by Congress December 18, 2013 the House and now the Senate restores some $32 billion of roughly $100 billion in cuts over the next two years. Other spending and revenue reforms, including small cuts to mandatory entitlements, make up the difference. [Provisions to trim cost-of-living adjustments for veterans will be repealed I believe in the next Congress perhaps as part of a military and defense personnel reform package].

Whatever one may think of the admittedly very modest Murray-Ryan budget agreement, it avoided the $1 trillion in both new taxes and spending proposed by and approved by the Senate budget committee while keeping 70% of the sequester cuts. The agreement also traded some of the defense spending increases with cuts in other spending including a small portion of mandatory or entitlement spending.

True, there are of course major required additions such as tax and entitlement reform that need to be completed that were not included in the relatively modest budget agreement between Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray. Tax reform—like the 1986 tax reform agreement– that generates more federal revenue because of greater economic growth could offset defense cuts required by sequestration and generate revenue to bring the budget into balance.

The defense hawks in Congress have been clear that the projected defense spending cuts are seriously going to harm our security as we have noted in detail above. There is widespread but by no means unanimous agreement on both sides of the political aisle that defense will be seriously harmed by such continued budget cuts as outlined here.

Much of the argument on the other side is that tax revenue is simply not adequate to sustain defense spending at the level defense leaders want, especially in light of opposition in the House of Representatives to tax rate increases that are assumed to generate more revenue to help pay for national defense spending increases.

And so, the conclusion becomes that defense spending must continue to be sharply cut whether a wise idea or not because one, the deficit has to be narrowed and two, there is no agreement to reduce the bulk of government spending elsewhere which is in the entitlement and poverty program accounts.

However, I think a different perspective is in order. Tax revenue has been increasing very dramatically, and for the first time since the end of the previous Bush administration.

For example, tax revenue this year alone has risen dramatically by close to $300 billion, although some significant amount of this increase is due to “one time” elements such as the end of the payroll tax holiday, TARP repayments and mortgage related fees.

But with a growing economy, revenue growth can be very significant. Between 2003-7, annual revenue to the government grew from $1.7 trillion to $2.56 trillion, a total increase of $850 billion or $212 billion a year. This had never previously been achieved. And the 2004-7 increases were for an economy 10% smaller than today but with faster GDP growth (and lower tax rates).

So why can’t a larger economy with faster economic growth than today raise sufficient revenue to pay our bills, especially if entitlement and welfare reform significantly cut annual spending? To claim as many have that somehow Republicans are “against revenue increases” and thus unwilling to compromise on a budget deal misses by a wide mark that there is common ground.

A year ago, the administration was adamant that Republicans must raise tax rates to raise revenue, rather than to expand the economy.(32) [FN32: Yahoo News, December 4, 2012, “Republicans Must Raise Rates”, by Rachel Rose Hartman]. In a hopeful sign, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia acknowledged as much in a discussion on Fox News Bret Baier’s Special Report, December 17, 2013. Senator Manchin said one could raise revenue by expanding the economy and putting people to work, rather than by raising tax rates and that such a framework could be used to put together an agreement. Exactly!

CONCLUSION

This is the fifth year of the fourth wave of neglect since World War II. Extending it further risks significantly undermining American security, as a review of these recent headlines can attest:

Russia is deploying nuclear armed Iskander missiles near the Baltic’s and Poland.(33) [FN33: New York Times, “Deployment of Missiles Is Confirmed by Russia”, December 16, 2013].

China continues to expand its military presence in the South China Sea seeking to intimidate its neighbors as well as the United States. (34)[FN34: www.cfr.org/world/armed-clash-south-china-sea] while adding to its military capability long range nuclear capable bombers, ICBMs and SLBMs.

Egypt is now seeking billions in military equipment from Russia which would be the biggest arms sale since the 1970’s, part of an effort by Russia, in their words, to “Clearly exploit the waning power of the United States”,(35) [FN35: UPI, “Russia Offers Egypt MidG-29s in $2B arms deal”, November 15, 2013].

And, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Chairman, General Martin Dempsey “Iran is a threat to national security in many ways. We have been very clear as a nation we are determined to prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapon because it would be so destabilizing to the region. But they are also active in cyber. They’ve got surrogates all over the region and all over the world. The proliferate arms.”(36)[FN34: The Tower Magazine, June 12, 2013, “Iran A Threat to National Security”].

These threats are increasingly serious. To counter them, the U.S. needs to reverse the sequester which threatens to cut an additional half trillion dollars from America’s security resources over the next decade. To do so would require finding $50 billion annually to offset annual defense spending cuts from an annual Federal Budget now close to $3.7 trillion and reaching $5.5 trillion in ten years.

We are talking about 0.0135% of all Federal spending or $1 out of every $74 the U.S. now spends each year.

Or the equivalent of 0.0094% of all Federal spending 10 years from now ($1 out of every $104 we would spend at that time).

Three previous waves of neglect ended first with the Korean war and 35,000 dead Americans; second with the Soviet Union on the march convinced the “correlation of forces” were moving their way; and the third, with the rise of Islamist state sponsored terrorism which culminated in 9/11, which in the future may be armed with nuclear weapons.

If an additional $50 billion a year still seems like a lot, how much will it cost the U.S., in a variety of circumstances, if adversarial nations continue to chip away at the free world until the U.S. finds itself either isolated or impotent to effect a reversal, facing rogue terrorist states armed with the deadliest of dangerous weapons?

*The mid-term elections may switch control of Congress which also would presage dramatic reductions in defense spending and support for missile defense, nuclear modernization, space, cyber and other critical defense requirements. Although not now an issue, defense spending and security requirements should be high on the list of important policy matters up for debate for the mid-terms. Defense spending may be expensive, but war costs a lot more. Although this assessment was written in early 2014, it contains many lessons of history.