It’s Time to Make Deep Cuts at the
Pentagon
By William Astore
Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel,
and historian William Astore considers a
military in which the losses are all on the
battlefield and the gains in Congress as
well as in the military-industrial complex.
December 15, 202:
Information Clearing House
-- "TomDispatch"
-Where are you going to get the money?
That question haunts congressional proposals to help
the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay
the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many
other critical domestic matters. And yet — big
surprise! — there’s always plenty
of money for the Pentagon. In fiscal year 2022,
in fact, Congress is being especially generous with $778
billion in funding, roughly $25 billion more
than the Biden administration initially asked for.
Even that staggering sum seriously
undercounts government funding for America’s
vast national security state, which, since it
gobbles up more than half of federal discretionary
spending, is truly this country’s primary, if
unofficial, fourth branch
of government.
Final approval of the latest military budget,
formally known as the 2022 National Defense
Authorization Act, or NDAA, may slip into
January as Congress wrangles over various side
issues. Unlike so much crucial funding for the
direct care of Americans, however, don’t for a
second imagine it won’t pass with supermajorities.
(Yes, the government could indeed be shut
down one of these days, but not — never! — the
U.S. military.)
Some favorites of mine among “defense”
budget side issues now being wrangled over include
whether military members should be able to refuse
Covid-19 vaccines without
being punished, whether young women should be required
to register for the selective service system
when they turn 18 (even though this country hasn’t
had a draft in almost half a century and isn’t
likely to have one in the foreseeable future), or
whether the Iraq War AUMF (Authorization for Use of
Military Force), passed by Congress to disastrous
effect in 2002, should be
repealed after nearly two decades of calamity
and futility.
As debates over these and similar issues,
predictably partisan, grab headlines, the biggest
issue of all eludes serious coverage: Why, despite
decades of disastrous wars, do Pentagon budgets
continue to grow, year after year, like
ever-expanding nuclear mushroom clouds? In other
words, as voices are raised and arms waved in
Congress about vaccine tyranny or a hypothetical
future draft of your 18-year-old daughter, truly
critical issues involving your money (hundreds of
billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars) go
largely uncovered.
What are some of those issues that we should be,
but aren’t, looking at? I’m so glad you asked!
Seven Questions with “Throw-Weight”
Back in my Air Force days, while working in Cheyenne
Mountain (the ultimate bomb shelter of the Cold
War era), we talked about nuclear missiles in terms
of their “throw-weight.”
The bigger their throw-weight, the bigger the
warhead. In that spirit, I’d like to lob seven
throw-weighty questions — some with multiple
“warheads” — in the general direction of the
Pentagon budget. It’s an exercise worth doing
largely because, despite its sheer size, that budget
generally seems impervious to serious oversight, no
less real questions of any sort.
So, here goes and hold on tight (or, in the
nuclear spirit, duck and cover!):
1. Why, with the end of the Afghan War, is the
Pentagon budget still mushrooming upward? Even as
the U.S. war effort there festered and then
collapsed in defeat, the Pentagon, by its own
calculation, was burning through almost $4 billion a
month or $45
billon a year in that conflict and, according to
the Costs of War Project, $2.313
trillion since it began. Now that the madness and
the lying are finally over (at least
theoretically speaking), after two decades of fraud,
waste, and abuses of every sort, shouldn’t the
Pentagon budget for 2022 decrease by at least $45
billion? Again, America lost, but shouldn’t we
taxpayers now be saving a minimum of $4 billion a
month?
2. After a disastrous war on terror costing
upward of $8
trillion, isn’t it finally time to begin to
downsize America’s global imperial presence?
Honestly, for its “defense,” does the U.S. military
need 750
overseas bases in 80 countries on every
continent but Antarctica, maintained at a cost
somewhere north of $100 billion annually? Why, for
example, is that military expanding its bases on
the Pacific
island of Guam at the expense of the environment
and despite the protests of many of the indigenous
people there? One word: China! Isn’t it amazing
how the ever-inflating
threat of China empowers a Pentagon whose
insatiable budgetary demands might be in some
trouble without a self-defined “near-peer”
adversary? It’s almost as if, in some twisted
sense, the Pentagon budget itself were now being
“Made in China.”
3. Speaking of China and its alleged
pursuit of more nuclear weaponry, why is the
U.S. military still angling for $1.7
trillion over the next 30 years for its own set
of “modernized” nuclear weapons? After all, the
Navy’s current strategic force, as represented above
all by Ohio-class submarines with Trident
missiles, is (and will for the foreseeable future
be) capable of destroying the world as we know it. A
“general” nuclear exchange would end the lives of
most of humanity, given the dire impact the ensuing nuclear
winter would have on food production. What’s
the point of Joe Biden’s “Build
Back Better” bill, if America’s leaders are
preparing to destroy it all with a new generation of
holocaust-producing nuclear bombs and missiles?
4. Why is America’s military, allegedly funded
for “defense,” configured instead for force
projection and global strikes of every sort? Think
of the Navy, built around aircraft carrier strike
groups, now taking the fight to the “enemy” in the
South China Sea. Think of Air Force B-52 strategic
bombers, still flying provocatively near the borders
of Russia, as if the movie Dr.
Strangelove had been released not in 1964
but yesterday. Why, in sum, does the U.S. military
refuse to stay home and protect Fortress America?
An old sports cliché, “the best defense is a good
offense,” seems to capture the bankruptcy of what
passes, even after decades of lost wars in distant
lands, for American strategic thinking. It may make
sense on a football field, but, judging by those
wars, it’s been a staggering loss leader for our
military, not to mention the foreign peoples on the
receiving end of lethal weapons very much “Made in
the USA.”
Instead of reveling in shock and awe, this
country should find the wars of choice it’s fought
since 1945 genuinely shocking and awful — and act to
end them for good and defund any future versions of
them.
5. Speaking of global strikes with awful
repercussions, why is the Pentagon working so hard
to encircle
China, while ratcheting up tensions that can
only contribute to nuclear brinksmanship and even
possibly a
new world war as early as 2027? Related
question: Why does the Pentagon continue to claim
that, in its “wargames” with China over a
prospective future battle for the island of Taiwan,
it always loses?
Is it because “losing” is really winning, since that
very possibility can then be cited to justify yet
more requests for funds from Congress so that this
country can “catch up” to the latest Red Menace?
(Bonus question: As America’s generals keep
losing real wars as well as imaginary ones, why
aren’t any of them ever fired?)
6. Speaking of global aggression, why does this
country maintain a vast, costly military within the
military that’s run by Special Operations Command
and operationally geared to facilitating
interventions anywhere and everywhere? (Note that
this country’s special ops forces are bigger than
the full-scale militaries of many countries on this
planet!) When you look back over the last several
decades, Special Operations forces haven’t
proven to be all that special, have they? And it
doesn’t matter whether you’re citing the wars in
Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Put differently, for
every SEAL Team 6 mission that kills a big bad guy,
there are a surprising number of small-scale catastrophes that
only alienate other peoples, thereby generating
blowback (and so, of course, further funding of the
military).
7. Finally, why, oh why, after decades of
military losses, does Congress still defer so
spinelessly to the “experience” of our generals and
admirals? Why issue so many essentially blank
checks to the gang that simply can’t shoot straight,
whether in battle or when they testify before
Congressional committees, as well as to the giant
companies (and congressional
lobbying monsters) that make the very weaponry
that can’t
shoot straight?
It’s a compliment in the military to be called a
straight shooter. I suggest President Biden start
firing a host of generals until he finds a few who
are willing to do exactly that and tell him and the
rest of us some hard truths, especially about malfunctioning
weapons and lost
wars.
Forty years ago, after Ronald Reagan became
president, I started writing in earnest against the
bloating of the Pentagon budget. At that time,
though, I never would have imagined that the budgets
of those years would look modest today, especially
after the big enemy of that era, the Soviet Union,
imploded in 1991.
Why, then, does each year’s NDAA rise ever higher
into the
troposphere, drifting on the wind and poisoning
our culture with militarism?
Because, to state the obvious, Congress would rather
engage in pork-barrel spending than exercise the
slightest real oversight when it comes to the
national security state. It has, of course, been
essentially captured by the military-industrial
complex, a dire fate President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned
us about 60 years ago in his farewell address.
Instead of being a guard dog for America’s money
(not to mention for our rapidly disappearing
democracy), Congress has become a genuine lapdog of
the military brass and their well-heeled weapons
makers.
So, even as Congress puts on a show of debating
the NDAA, it’s really nothing but, at best, a
political Kabuki
dance (a metaphor, by the way, that’s quite
common in the military, which tells you something
about the well-traveled sense of humor of its
members). Sure, our congressional representatives
act as if they’re exercising oversight, even as they
do as they’re told, while the deep-pocketed
contractors make major contributions to the campaign
“war chests” of the very same politicians. It’s a
win for them, of course, but a major loss for this
country — and indeed for the world.
Doing More With Less
What would real oversight look like when it comes
to the defense budget? Again, glad you asked!
It would focus on actual defense, on
preventing wars, and above all, on scaling down our
gigantic military. It would involve cutting that
budget roughly in half over the next few years and
so forcing our generals and admirals to engage in
that rarest of acts for them: making some tough
choices. Maybe then they’d see the folly of
spending $1.7 trillion on the next generation of
world-ending weaponry, or maintaining all those
military bases globally, or maybe even the blazing
stupidity of backing China into a corner in the name
of “deterrence.”
Here’s a radical thought for Congress: Americans,
especially the working class, are constantly being
advised to do more with less. Come on, you workers
out there, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and
put your noses to those grindstones!
To so many of our elected representatives (often
sheltered in grotesquely gerrymandered districts),
less money and fewer benefits for workers are seldom
seen as problems, just challenges. Quit your
whining, apply some elbow grease, and “git-r-done!”
The U.S. military, still proud of its “can-do”
spirit in a warfighting age of can’t-do-ism, should
have plenty of smarts to draw on. Just consider all
those Washington “think tanks” it can call on!
Isn’t it high time, then, for Congress to challenge
the military-industrial complex to focus on how to
do so much less (as in less warfighting) with so
much less (as in lower budgets for prodigal weaponry
and calamitous wars)?
For this and future Pentagon budgets, Congress
should send the strongest of messages by cutting at
least $50 billion a year for the next seven years.
Force the guys (and few gals) wearing the stars to
set priorities and emphasize the actual defense of
this country and its Constitution, which, believe
me, would be a unique experience for us all.
Every year or so, I listen again to Eisenhower’s military-industrial
complex speech. In those final moments of his
presidency, Ike warned Americans of the “grave
implications” of the rise of an “immense military
establishment” and “a permanent armaments industry
of vast proportions,” the combination of which would
constitute a “disastrous rise of misplaced power.”
This country is today suffering from just such a
rise to levels that have warped the very structure
of our society. Ike also spoke then of pursuing
disarmament as a continuous imperative and of the
vital importance of seeking peace through diplomacy.
In his spirit, we should all call on Congress to
stop the madness of ever-mushrooming war budgets and
substitute for them the pursuit of peace through
wisdom and restraint. This time, we truly can’t
allow America’s numerous smoking guns to turn into
so many mushroom clouds above our beleaguered
planet.
William
Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF)
and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular and
a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN),
an organization of critical veteran military and
national security professionals. His personal blog
is Bracing
Views.
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