McGovern: We could defend ourselves with a military budget half the current size

My Advice for Obama. By George McGovern
We could defend ourselves with a military budget half the current size.
WSJ, Jun 01, 2009

Most Americans probably agree that we have elected a highly articulate, talented president in Barack Obama. He has also given us a potentially great Secretary of State in Hillary Clinton. It makes me proud to witness these two recent political rivals working together to strengthen and enrich America at home and abroad. Recognizing the major economic crisis our new leader has inherited, we must hope his proposed economic plan will be helpful.

I think it will. But as someone on the sidelines, may I suggest a few other steps?

First, why not order all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Thanksgiving? They should be greeted at home with a duplication of the GI Bill of Rights that I enjoyed as a combat bomber pilot following World War II.

This means offering each soldier a college education at any school of his or her choice. In 1945, after completing my few remaining months for a Bachelor's degree at Dakota Wesleyan, I enrolled at Northwestern University and went all the way to a Ph.D. in history without any cost to me except hard work. Other veterans chose to buy a farm or start a business with low-cost, government-guaranteed loans.

We now spend $12 billion a month on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- two mistaken invasions that have increased violence and terrorism in the Middle East. For a fraction of what we are spending on these badly conceived interventions, we could fund a new GI Bill with full medical care for the tens of thousands of veterans who have lost legs or arms or suffered lasting nerve or brain damage.

The second step I would take is to ask Congress to shift half of our military budget to other sources of national security. For almost 50 years, American foreign and national-security policy were believed to require a military budget big enough to win wars against Russia, China and a smaller country such as North Korea simultaneously. We waged what was called a Cold War against an alleged "Sino-Soviet bloc."

As we now know there was no such thing as a bloc involving Russia and China. The relations between these two large communist nations could have better been described as a rivalry.
In his second term, Ronald Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who proposed that the two countries end the Cold War and the arms race. Reagan agreed, and the danger of war between the two nuclear giants has since subsided. As for China, no one any longer fears war with this most-populous, fast-developing country to which we have extended "most favored nation" trading status. It would seem that no nation now threatens us.

There is the terrorist danger, but this is not a military problem. Terrorism is a by-product of military weakness. The terrorist has no battleships, bombers, missiles, tanks, organized armies or heavy artillery.

The only significant terrorist attack on the U.S., on Sept. 11, 2001, was carried out by 19 young men from Saudi Arabia and Egypt armed only with boxcutters. They used these devices to intimidate the crews of four airplanes into surrendering control of their planes. The terrorists then suicidally flew the planes into buildings.

This event, which took place nearly a decade ago, dramatized the limitation of a huge military budget in assuring national security. Nonetheless, our military budget is higher than ever -- $515 billion annually, not including the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This figure is greater than the combined military budgets of the rest of the world. We could defend ourselves with an arms budget half that size. If we directed the $250 billion we could save annually into national health care, improved education, a better environment and restoring our infrastructure, the nation would be more secure, better employed and have a higher standard of life. Or the savings might be used for annual reductions in the national debt.

To cut spending for more and more costly armaments and these two wars would require both common sense and a measure of political courage on the part of the president and Congress. Why? Because all 50 states have either a military installation or a defense contract or both. These create payrolls and jobs.

That is a major reason for investing an equal sum in the public programs suggested here, which should provide as many or more jobs than are now offered by surplus military spending. Much of the arms spending is for things that are capital-intensive but low on job creation. The reverse is true for public investment in such things as upgrading our decaying infrastructure, protecting the environment, providing quality teachers and schools, and improved health care.

Finally, I would like to see America build the fastest, safest and cleanest-powered railway system in the world. This nationwide system of passenger and freight rail service should be integrated with equally superior public transit facilities in our cities.

Very few Americans are in the market for a tank or aircraft carrier. There are many eager consumers for the world's best, fastest and safest rail and transit systems.

All aboard!

Mr. McGovern is a former senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.