Robbing the Pentagon to Pay Foggy Bottom

Robbing the Pentagon to Pay Foggy Bottom, by Jamie Fly
The Weekly Standard Blog, March 23, 2009 12:16 PM

After initially falling for the administration’s rhetoric that the $533 billion they were allocating for the Defense Department in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget represented an increase over the Bush administration’s final budget (an argument skillfully deconstructed by Tom Donnelly), the press now seems to have woken up to the fact that the administration has something different in mind. Recent press reports provide a rather disturbing preview of the administration’s plans for the defense budget and preparations to use Secretary Gates as a human shield of sorts to counter expected criticism from defense contractors and Republicans in Congress. It seems Gates’ role in the ongoing Pentagon review is so key that he has decided to skip the NATO summit in early April so he can devote himself to his “efforts to strategically rebalance the department’s budget.”

The administration’s plan to get us to European levels of defense spending by 2016 comes at the same time as reports that the Chinese government stated that its official defense budget will jump by 14.9 percent this year (who knows how high the actual amounts are) and an announcement by Russian President Medvedev that Russia will undertake a “large-scale rearming” by 2011 given that “there are a range of regions where there remains serious potential for conflicts.”

There are a multitude of reasons that cutting defense at this juncture is a bad idea. The systems reportedly on the chopping block include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force’s F-22, Army ground-combat vehicles, and possibly aircraft carriers, all integral elements of our ability to project power and defend our allies. Missile defense, now out of favor because it is unpopular in Moscow, is expected to take a significant hit as well. One can debate the merits of each of these systems or programs, but these cuts will result in thousands of job losses -- an inconvenient fact that may wake up some Democratic members of Congress who seem willing to throw money at failing banks and insurance companies but not at the Pentagon.

But beyond the programs and systems, the administration’s budget offers insight into its mentality about national security. Listen to some Democratic budget experts and you hear phrases like a “return to normalcy” used to describe the administration’s plans for defense spending. In this “normal” world, there is no mention of 9/11, or of the fact that countries such as Russia and China still threaten our allies and our interests. Military commitments in the Middle East or South Asia 5-10 years from now, what military commitments?

The difficulty for Republicans who wish to oppose these cuts is that for the last four years, key figures in the Bush administration helped set the stage for the Obama defense budget we now have in front of us. It became a fad during the second Bush term to deliver speeches in front of the foreign policy establishment or delivery testimony and warn about the “militarization” of U.S. foreign policy. Secretaries Rice and Gates and eventually Chairman Mullen all participated in this group therapy session played out in public. Many on the left pounced on these comments and today use them to justify cuts to defense to help pay for an increase in funding for a supposedly struggling State Department.

It is true that in recent years the U.S. military has all too often been asked to conduct missions they have not been trained for and probably should not be doing, but that is not a reason to cut defense spending. Nor is it a reason to expand the Foreign Service at the cost of the F-22 or missile defense. Our allies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia want American boots on the ground as a sign of our commitment to their defense, not more diplomats in pinstripes and wingtips.

While Secretary Gates is meeting with the green eyeshade crowd at the Pentagon in early April instead of enjoying a glass of Riesling in Strasbourg-Kehl at the NATO Summit, he may want to think long and hard about whether he wants to become the chief advocate for a defense budget that will undermine, not strengthen our long term security.