This week yet another report calling for more Pentagon spending was released. This time it’s the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a Congressionally mandated, bipartisan body appointed pursuant to a provision in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The commission’s conclusions were far from surprising, as an article by my Quincy Institute colleague Eli Clifton pointed out when the commission members were first appointed. Clifton found that a majority of commission members have close ties to the arms industry, and could well profit from their own recommendations.
Mark Thompson, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), gave Clifton his take on the implications of the commissioner’s ties to the weapons sector: “These folks have a vested interest in spending more. In Washington’s national security community, the way you get credibility is to work at think tanks funded by defense contractors or serving on boards of defense contractors.”
But the commission’s proposal for a new Pentagon spending spree isn’t just about lining the pockets of weapons contractors and their lobbyists, consultants, executives and shareholders. It is grounded in the misguided belief that a large military armed with high tech weapons is the key to ensuring U.S. global dominance. The commission states flatly that the United States is “not prepared” to fight the wars it might face in the years to come. And amazingly, the report claims that the Pentagon is not spending enough, even though its current budget is among the highest since World War II, far higher than at the peaks of the Korean and Vietnam wars or the height of the Cold War.
The obvious question that must be answered before arguing that the United States is spending too little on the military is what we expect U.S. forces to be able to do. The Commission report suggests that the current range of U.S. commitments – being able to win a war with Russia or China while maintaining to defeat regional adversaries like Iran or North Korea, all the while waging a global war on terror, is not ambitious enough.
The historical record suggests otherwise, as evidenced by the disastrous outcomes of U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which not only led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and consumed trillions of dollars in scarce resources — as documented by the Costs of War Project at Brown University — but also led to a series of strategic disasters.
First came the installation of a sectarian regime in Iraq that helped create conditions that allowed ISIS to sweep in and take over large parts of the country, until they were pushed back in a brutal, multi-year military campaign. Then came the failure of a 20-year war to prevent the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Last but not least came the war in Libya, which sparked a civil war and led to the dispersal of that country’s considerable weapons stockpiles to terrorist groups and militias in Africa.
Unfortunately, the dismal record of America’s military-first approach to foreign policy has had almost no impact on how policy makers and their allies in the think tank world conceive of what a “new” U.S. approach to national security should look like. The commission is proposing that the federal government double down on precisely the tactics that have been the most counterproductive in addressing the challenges posed by terrorism, human rights abuses, and aggressive regional powers. The commission’s report calls for spending more on virtually every component of the U.S. arsenal, from ships to combat aircraft to nuclear weapons to emerging technologies controlled by artificial intelligence.
The fundamental concept driving the obsession on spending more on the Pentagon, which is already approaching $1 trillion per year, is threat inflation. In this case, it is tied to the notion that every potential U.S. adversary has the power and the intention to pose a grave – and perhaps even existential – threat. This approach ignores the fact that even the most repressive governments have a will to survive, and are not necessarily spoiling for a war with the United States and its allies – nor do some of them even have the capability of launching a viable attack on America.
Rather than narrowly focusing on how to fight a multi-front war, the most important element of U.S. policy should be to take steps to prevent such confrontations from happening in the first place. Trying to intimidate other countries through a massive military buildup and regular shows of force is not the best way to keep the peace.
“Peace through Strength” – a term that is back in vogue among current day military hawks – still has a certain amount of popular resonance. After all, isn’t overmatching other nations the best way to keep them from messing with us?
The answer is no. Military buildups do not happen in a vacuum. They often provoke adversaries to build up as well, leading to arms racing, which can take on a life of its own and increase the risks of war.
The United States needs a more balanced approach that sets priorities among missions, transforms the U.S. military into a defensive force that isn’t seeking to fight and win wars in every corner of the globe, and uses the funds saved by shifting to a less interventionist policy to address the risks posed by non-traditional security challenges like climate change, disease, poverty and hunger.
The new commission’s tenuous grasp on the reality of issues of war and peace is displayed in capsule form in the following, sweeping assessment of what is needed to keep America safe:
“[t]he U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare” [for a global conflict]. “A bipartisan ‘call to arms’ is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11.”
Neither Pearl Harbor nor 9/11 occurred because the United States wasn’t spending enough on its military. For example, the 9/11 attacks were low tech, albeit with horrifying human consequences. But buying more fighter planes, or bombers, or aircraft carriers or nuclear weapons would have had no effect in staving them off.
It’s time to take a fresh look at national security policy with an eye towards breaking away from current dogma. Because of its serious conflicts of interest and its addiction to outmoded views on the effectiveness of military force, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy fails to provide that fresh look. Instead, it is out of touch with current realities, devaluing diplomacy at the very moment when it is essential for navigating a complex international security environment. If Congress is truly looking for a new approach, they should set aside this commissio’s report and start again.
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