Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 18 April 2012.
http://defensealt.org/Ifat2Q

Excerpt:

There’s an overwhelming case for removing these archaic and unnecessary weapons from the European continent. Ideally, we would do this as part of a bilateral deal with Russia, but we ought to do it even if Russia isn’t interested.

Editor’s Comment:

Couldn’t agree more!

Charles Knight, commentary, 24 February 2012.

The Pentagon, the Obama administration, and many members of Congress hope that cuts to the defense budget stop with those mandated in the first stage caps of the 2011 Budget Control Act and made more specific in the President’s recently announced FY13 budget plan. As Reuters has reported the Obama FY13 budget shifts away from an austerity frame, partially adopted in 2012, to instead emphasize a program of higher taxes on the rich, a continuing tax cut for wage earners, and public investments in infrastructure, education and police services.

It is safe to predict that most all Republicans and some Democrats in Congress will join to block the President’s tax/revenue enhancement programs and domestic economic investments. The political stalemate on further deficit/debt reduction that followed passage of the BCA last year will remain in place through the remainder of 2012.

Even if we assume that after this year’s election Congress will find a way to avoid the particulars in the so-called “sequester” (second-stage) provision of the 2011 Budget Control Act, the pressure for deeper cuts will remain.

To see why the pressure for more defense cuts will continue into next year we need look no further than a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called Primary Numbers: The GOP Candidates and the National Debt. Their analysis shows that in 2021 the fiscal plans the GOP candidates will yield the following national debt levels as percentages of GDP:

Gingrich – 114%

Santorum – 104%

Romney – 86%

Paul – 76%

By odd coincidence Ron Paul’s plan and President Obama’s plan both end up at a debt level of 76% of GDP in 2021. Of course, the two plans get there by very different mechanisms. Obama’s plan relies substantially on increased revenue (including tax increases) and Paul’s mostly on spending cuts, including deeper cuts in the defense budget.

What makes the Pentagon budget vulnerable after the election is that the centrist Democratic president and the libertarian Republican candidate have positioned themselves as the most fiscally conservative, while the leading Republican contenders are looking like spend and don’t tax radicals.

Gingrich grabs for the mantel of Reagonomic fiscal policy by favoring an increase of national debt to 114% of GDP. Santorum is a close second at 104% of GDP. By comparison, Romney appears moderate at 86% of GDP, 13% higher than Obama or Paul. Romney is in favor of increasing military spending.

The problem for the Pentagon is that both Obama’s and Romney’s plans are politically unrealistic and very unlikely to be implemented. Obama keeps the debt low largely through tax increases — which will not happen if Congress remains controlled by Republicans. A failure to raise new revenues will be critical. If the Administration were able to get higher taxes on the rich it would facilitate holding DoD cuts to the level of the FY13 plan. Failure to achieve these tax increases will mean two things: 1) it will be much harder to get a domestic investment program (even if the Democrats do better than expected in November) and 2) the attractiveness to a significant portion of liberals and conservatives of additional DoD cuts will continue.

Romney, on the other hand, plans to keep taxes low and increases defense spending — therefore his fiscal plan depends on deeper cuts in domestic spending and substantial cuts to entitlements. Given that domestic spending has been cut to the bone in most accounts and entitlement programs have survived all conservative assaults to date, Romney’s plan seems equally unlikely. For more on the limits of the Romney plan see Ezra Klein here.

So there is every reason to believe that after this year’s election powerful fiscal conservatives who can see beyond the partisan nonsense will look hard again at the Pentagon’s budget to find things to cut. This condition means that the nation will remain open to strategic adjustment for some years to come.

Projected National Debt from GOP Candidates' Fiscal Plans

Christopher Preble and Charles Knight. Huffington Post, 20 January 2012.
http://defensealt.org/ysCbHQ

Excerpt:

Balance depends on what you are standing on. With respect to our physical security, the United States is blessed with continental peace and a dearth of powerful enemies. Our military is the best-trained, best-led, and best-equipped in the world. It is our unstable finances and our sluggish economy that make us vulnerable to stumbling.

Unfortunately, the new strategy does not fully appreciate our strengths, nor does it fully address our weaknesses. In the end, it does not achieve Eisenhower’s vaunted balance.

__________________________________________________

Paula G. Thornhill. CNN, 23 November 2011.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/opinion/thornhill-defense-cuts/index.html

Excerpt:

The nation’s leadership needs a Plan B so that a heroic assumption — or hope — about the unlikelihood of future wars does not inadvertently lead to strategic disaster. This is harder than it seems. Plan B would allow more flexibility to meet what could go wrong in the strategic environment rather than just making budget cuts.

Editor’s Comment:

Plan B is to maintain a good ‘strategic reserve.’ As neo-conservatives like to point out the United States spends only 4.5% of its GDP on its military. If new threats pinch, the U.S. can easily ramp up spending and engage its still considerable industrial and knowledge base. The problem this country faces with a reconstitution strategy is lack of political will. Civilian leaders are loathe to ask the American people to sacrifice. A robust National Guard and Reserve force that is not abused by frequent deployments to unnecessary wars and a societal expectation to pay a tax surcharge in times of national emergency are the fundamentals of what this country needs to be strategically prepared while maintaining a small standing peacetime force. With such a strategic plan the U.S. can be well provisioned for any threat.

Ethan Pollack, The Economic Policy Institute Blog, 20 September 2011. http://www.epi.org/blog/militaristic-foreign-policy-saves-money/

One of the persistent criticisms of President Obama’s fiscal plan is that it counts war spending reductions as savings. Basically, the Congressional Budget Office calculates its defense baseline in part by taking the most recent war supplemental (technically called Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO) and assuming that amount—adjusted for inflation—will be spent each year over the foreseeable horizon. This adds up to about $1.73 trillion over 10 years. The president’s proposal, however, includes only $653 billion in OCO spending over 10 years, for a savings of about $1.1 trillion.

Some critics, however, allege that these savings cannot be counted because the CBO OCO baseline itself isn’t realistic, therefore the savings are not “real.” For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) argues that counting these savings is a “budget gimmick” that the president uses to “inflate his savings.” According to this critique, another baseline for OCO expenditures should be used—either the president’s budget request or the CBO’s drawdown policy option—which would lower the baseline and make it practically impossible to generate budget savings from reducing war spending.

All due respect to CRFB and the other critics, but this criticism is silly. The CBO OCO baseline isn’t “unrealistic”—rather, it represents the costs of President Bush’s aggressive invasion-centered approach to foreign policy extended into perpetuity. President Obama is, thankfully, in the process of trying to change America’s approach to foreign policy, drawing down troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and moving toward a more multilateral, patient, diplomatic, and most importantly, less expensive approach. Furthermore, the fiscal plan proposes to cap OCO spending, thereby making sure those savings are realized.

President Obama’s foreign policy approach costs less money than President Bush’s, and the budget outlook should reflect those savings.

Editor’s Comment:

It must be a sign of just how bad things are for progressives that EPI now celebrates a big puff of smoke from the Obama administration sent to divert attention from real budget reductions and, in particular, to protect the Pentagon from further cuts in the fiscal battles. Ethan Pollack has worked for OMB, so he surely understands the accounting distortion built into the CBO baseline projections based on current law. Not one person in the world (including those at CBO who prepare the baseline) believes that OCO expenditures will continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same level as 2011. That’s why the CBO did a “draw down policy option” – to estimate likely OCO costs. That latter exercise is not “silly”, nor the suggestions that such estimates be the basis for considering budget reduction plans.

Mr. Pollack must also know that President Obama’s FY12 budget submission to Congress contains only $50 billion a year for OCO for future years. Which is it? $118 billion forever or $50 billion forever? You can’t have it both ways.

CBO’s draw down option is surely better for budget (and deficit
reduction) planning that either the unrealistic “placeholder” (which
is simply irresponsible budgeting) or the CBO baseline artifact of
$118 billion forever.

If President Obama wishes to announce a plan to save meaningful
amounts from OCO he would need to announce more rapid withdrawals from Afghanistan… but then no one really believes he is leaving
Afghanistan in 2014. So this is all smoke and mirrors…and progressives should feel terrible about it, not celebrate.

It is disingenuous to claim that the CBO’s baseline OCO is somehow a Bush responsibility. It is simply a methodological artifact of how CBO does its baseline.

President Obama has been in charge for nearly three years and has not brought all the troops home from Iraq and has hardly begun a draw down in Afghanistan. The current year OCO of $118 billion is his responsibility as is the phoney-ness of projecting it forward ten years and then claiming savings from spending “$653 billion…over ten years.” If he was really willing to end the war in Afghanistan soon he might be able to cut that OCO in half and offer $325 billion from reduced future war costs to deficit reduction.

And until this year’s budget imbroglio in Congress forced his hand he
has continued to feed the Pentagon with higher and higher base budgets every year. There is no evidence that President Obama’s “approach to foreign policy…[is] less expensive”… not as far as the largesse offered up to the Pentagon is concerned.

We must not base progressive policy on smoke and mirrors. Such
politics only hurts us in the long run.

Another critique of this budget gimmick can be found at: http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/gordon-adams/2369/how-about-those-defense-savings.

___________________________________________________________

Jeff Jacoby. Boston Globe, 22 June 2011.
http://defensealt.org/HzhtEB

Excerpt:

…with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.

Our world needs a policeman. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.

Editor’s Comment:

When three-quarters of Americans reject a role of global policeman for the U.S. perhaps they understand something fundamental about policing that Jeff Jacoby doesn’t. A police force without oversight by a judiciary and a guiding body of law is surely a formula for tyranny.

Jacoby would never endorse tyranny, but the avocation to be global policemen by White House occupants who are elected by and responsible to only 10% of the world’s people is a decision to be a vigilante on the global stage. Consider that Americans would be up in arms if China or Russia took it upon themselves to be global vigilantes.

For the leaders of the U.S. to so gladly to take up this role only serves to delay the day when we have capable international judicial and policing institutions. If our leaders attempt to think even a few years into the future it should be clear to them that the practice of vigilantism does not serve American interests.

[A version of this comment was published as a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe, 28 June 2011.]

Pentagon’s Phantom Savings: $330B Claim Erodes as Programs Reappear
Marcus Weisgerber. Defense News, 16 May 2011.
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2011/05/pentagons-phantom-savings-330b-claim.html

Excerpt:

Nearly 40 percent of that sum [$330 billion] is going straight back into U.S. military programs that replicate the canceled ones, and it’s unclear where another 10 percent came from at all, according to a Defense News analysis and to several analysts.

…many of the military services’ capability requirements remained in place. More than $130 billion is back on the books, or will be soon, for follow-on or replacement programs. Of the programs canceled in 2010, at least five have already been relaunched, or are in the planning stages to begin again.

Editor’s Comment:

When President Obama addressed the nation about the Federal deficit on April 13th he said, “Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.” A number of us military budget analysts looked at each other and said, “Huh, did we miss something?” We hadn’t notice any significant cuts in Pentagon spending that could count toward reducing the Federal deficit. Where did the President get that big number?

Of course, we had taken notice when Defense Secretary Gates had announced $78 billion in budget cuts for the FY12 five year defense plan. We noted that the DoD budget would still continue to grow, that some of these cuts were fairly soft (dependent on assumptions about future inflation rates) and most savings would be generated in the out-years. (See: Pentagon Resists Deficit Reduction)

And we had noted that Secretary Gates had cancelled a number of programs in 2009. But we also noted that many of the cancelled programs were being replaced by others substantially reducing the putative savings (see Gordon Adams, Defense Budgets: Still Need to Get it Right!)

In the days following the President’s speech we commented on how there was much less real savings than the President attributed to Secretary Gates’ “courageous” efforts. I pointed out that $68 billion of the January $78 billion in savings had been consumed when 2012 war costs appeared in the budget released in February, replacing small placeholder numbers.

Benjamin Friedman observed that “current ‘savings’ consist entirely of spending that the Pentagon reprogrammed and kept, and the future ‘savings’ come by reducing planned spending growth, rather than reducing actual spending.”

Carl Conetta reviewed the history of these supposed cuts going back to 2009 and compared successive Obama budgets, 2010 through 2012, finding no more than $233 billion in “maybe” DoD reductions in projected out years.

The collective skepticism of independent analysts about the $400 billion no doubt reached the attention of the editors of Defense News, the leading defense industry weekly, where Marcus Weisgerber sought to justify Secretary Gates’ claim of $330 billion in savings from the 2009 program cancellations. When DoD officials refused a request to give a program-by-program breakdown of the figure Defense News “used budget justification documents, DoD officials’ public statements, annual acquisition reports and Government Accountability Office estimates to project program costs. For classified and far-term programs not on the books – but factored into DoD’s projections – think tank and analysts’ estimates were used.” The Weisgerber article title, “Pentagon’s Phantom Savings“, sums up the results of Defense News’ effort to justify Secretary Gates’ claim of savings.

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Note, 12 May 2011.

Word is that two principals in the production of 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will be charged with producing the “fundamental” defense review President Obama ordered in his April 13th speech on the deficit. They are Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning, who was the lead 2010 QDR author and David Ochmanek, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development, who headed the “analysis and integration cell” which pulled together all the analytical aspects of the last QDR.

Update

Defense News reports (23 May 2011) that “The missions and capabilities review will be led by Christine Fox, director of cost assessment and program evaluations [and formerly the President of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)]; Michele Flournoy, defense undersecretary for policy [and the Pentagon official in charge of the 2010 QDR]; and Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Editor’s Comment:

Putting the same people who did the 2010 review in charge of producing the new review raises an obvious question of whether we should expect anything much “new” or “fundamental” from this review. QDRs in the past have certainly failed to be “fundamental” in any meaningful sense of the word.

One suspects that the foregone sub-text of what Ms. Hicks writes into the new review will be, “We got this pretty much right when we did it last year. Now, of course, if you are willing to take greater security risks you can cut some pieces out of the force posture, but that is a political decision…”

If the new review makes such a smug presentation it will serve the President and the nation poorly. The 2010 QDR did not make any real effort to set clear priorities among the many military requirements it listed, failing one of the principles of strategy development which is to set a practical path within resource constraints. A new fundamental review must present a variety of low-risk options that can be achieved at various resource investment levels. Its authors should not be allowed to simply push the matter of security risk into the political domain.

President Obama would be smart to solicit ideas from a wide variety of sources, reaching far beyond the Pentagon’s strategy, policy and force planning staff. If a fundamental review is needed, it is wise to hear and consider diverse voices.

Editor’s Commentary

13 April 2011 (revised and updated 16 April 2011)

In President Obama’s April 13th “deficit speech” he says:

Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.

What might “do that again” mean?

Actually contribute $400 billion from projected Pentagon budgets to deficit reduction?

That would require the Pentagon to take in and spend $400 billion less. But it is very difficult to identify much actual contribution to deficit reduction in the first $400 billion in Pentagon savings President Obama refers to and believes can be repeated.

Let’s take a quick look at the components of that first $400 billion working backward through time.

This past January Secretary Gates announced $78 billion in cuts over five years. In February when the President’s FY12 budget appeared all but $70 billion of this as regards deficit reduction evaporated. $68 billion was consumed by the special Overseas Contingency Operations (war) budgeting as the FY11 projected placeholder of $50 billion was replaced by the FY12 real OCO budget of $118 billion. Another $2 billion in the savings appears to have simply vanished in the five year budget projections, perhaps due to those pesky “rounding errors” that plague Pentagon budgets.

In 2010 Secretary Gates announced $100 billion in “efficiency” savings. He was quite forthright at the time, saying that he was keeping all the savings within the Pentagon to pay for other requirements. So we can’t legitimately count those toward deficit reduction, and presumably the President did not count those toward the $400 billion that has been saved.

So that leaves about $322 billion in Pentagon savings the White House needs to account for.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 17 February 2011 Secretary Gates said:

…over the last two defense budgets submitted by President Obama, we have curtailed or canceled troubled or excess programs that would have cost more than $330 billion if seen through to completion.

Connecting this to President Obama’s speech Defense News reports (13 April 2011) that:

Of the $400 billion already saved, $330 billion is supposed to come from Gates’ cuts to weapons programs – for example the cancellation of the Army’s Future Combat Systems program and the Air Force’s Next-Generation Bomber, both of which Gates terminated in the 2010 budget. However, those two programs have been replaced: The Army is developing the Ground Combat Vehicle, and the Air Force has launched a scaled-back bomber program.

“Supposed” and “However” are the key words in the preceding paragraph. To be real savings that contribute in any meaningful way to deficit reduction the the program cancellations would have to lead to a declining Pentagon budget topline… and not be replaced by some other expenditure.

Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center assesses the $330 billion savings claim in a 5 November 2010 post this way:

Gates has not cut $330 billion from defense. When he announced hardware cuts, he said the out-year savings were estimated at $330 billion, but he didn’t cut a nickel from the projected defense budgets; he wants, as he has clearly said, to use those savings for other investments, not give them back to the taxpayer. And the figure is way too big, anyway, because he terminated the F-22 and the C-17 cargo plane when neither one of them was in the long-term budget (he has been trying to let both programs arrive at a normal death, as planned, and Congress keeps getting in the way.) It is even more too big because his savings figure did not net out the alternative investments he proposed for the same missions, like replacing the terminated Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicle with a new Army vehicle R&D program. So a big kerfuffle over a non-number, but no big cut in defense here.

To date the Pentagon or OMB have not produced any accounting of these supposed savings from Secretary Gates’ program cancellations which indicate where they come out of the topline. Meanwhile it would be wise to substantially discount their value when thinking about overall Federal spending.

What we know for sure is that Pentagon budgets continue to rise despite the “savings.” The Pentagon and the Administration might argue that the Pentagon budget would have grown faster if Secretary Gates had not made those “courageous” program cuts. Possibly. But that “would have been” is simply not the same as actually contributing to deficit reduction which requires real cuts in the topline of the Pentagon budget.

In terms of cutting the topline of the Pentagon budget, when we remove the long-awaited reductions in war costs, we can count just $8 billion that Secretary Gates has given up to deficit reduction in the five year defense plan (FYDP) through FY16.

Looking out ten years there are more savings in the President’s projections. My colleague Carl Conetta finds $164 billion less Pentagon spending in the overlapping four “out years” (FY17-20) when comparing the President’s FY11 and Fy12 budget submissions.

We might speculate that this is where we realize some of Secretary Gates’ $330 billion in savings, but it would be only speculation…

So far no one in the Administration has demonstrated in sufficient detail how the Pentagon will contribute much of anything toward reducing the Federal deficit, rounding errors notwithstanding.

Editor’s Commentary

There are at least as many reasons to think that significant real reductions in defense spending will be hard to achieve as there are reasons to doubt that significant revenue increases will be found or that substantial reductions in entitlement spending will happen. “Political realities” are indeed daunting for any of the options the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will consider. If there were quick, easy and obvious decisions to be had there would be no need for the Commission.

Political realities change over time in part because underlying realities eventually change political calculation. Such is the case with defense spending. After more than a decade of rapid growth there is likely to be some retrenchment in the middle of this decade, notably by 2015.

The likely path of defense spending this decade was recently forecast by the high-tech industry association Tech America Foundation in their DoD Topline Forecast 2011-2020.

Tech America’s forecast is for a real reduction in the base Pentagon budget (not including Overseas Contingency Operation war supplemental funding) of 9% or $45 billion (USD 2011) in 2015 relative to the 2011 base budget.

When taking into account the Pentagon’s preferred budget path this decade of at least 1% real annual growth, Tech America forecasts a reduction in defense spending by 2015 of 16%.

Tech America’s forecast of Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) war supplemental spending during the decade is also important to consider. Since FY10 (President Obama’s first budget) there has been an OCO war supplemental DoD budget line for FY12-FY15 of $50 billion per year. The OCO war supplemental in the FY11 budget is $159 billion.

Although the actual OCO war supplemental might come down in FY12, with the military operational demands in Afghanistan remaining elevated it is unlikely the OCO war supplemental will come down even $50 billion, let alone $109 billion in FY12. Tech America forecasts OCO war expenditures of $122 billion in FY12.

These likely under-budgeted OCO war supplemental costs should be counted as probable additions to the national debt beyond those already projected by the government.

Tech America’s forecast is for the OCO supplemental to be $122 billion in FY12, $102 billion in FY13, $69 billion in FY14 and $57 billion in FY15. That adds up to $150 billion more than is budgeted in the Five Year Defense Plan… an un-budgeted addition to the national debt.

For the target year of the federal budget reaching “primary balance” in FY15, the forecast OCO war supplemental will add $7 billion to the problem that the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform faces in attempting to balance the budget in that year.

Adam J. Hebert. Air Force Magazine, November, 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HqU73L

Excerpt:

…ill-advised calls to cut the Pentagon budget follow as predictably as the tides. Without credible analysis of strategy or requirements, critics are once again declaring defense spending to be out of control.

Editor’s Comment:

In his editorial Security Isn’t Cheap Adam J. Herbert cites the work of the Sustainable Defense Task Force as a case in point of critics of Pentagon spending recommending cuts “without credible analysis of strategy or requirements.” As a member of the task force I differ over the credibility of our analysis. But let me speak to where I agree with Mr. Herbert:

• “Security is not cheap.” In fact it is extremely expensive. When the country is hit with a financial disaster we owe it to the country and our military to reexamine our national security strategy and make sure priorities are clear and that our military investments are cost-effective. In the last twelve years of Pentagon budgets the planning has proceeded as though there is no resource constraint. Unfortunately, that is true of the last QDR as well. Those days are clearly over – Secretary Gates has said as much.

• “A well-trained, well-equipped, professional military is not cheap. If the nation wants it to cost less, the nation will probably have to ask it to do less.” Exactly. Since the end of the Cold War the U.S. military has steadily advanced its global reach and engagement. Missions have proliferated, including many that should be done by civilians in the State Department and other agencies. Significant numbers of U.S. troops still remain in Europe, even though there is no military threat to Europe that allies can’t handle. The most important take-away lesson from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that long low-intensity land wars are not cost-effective uses of U.S. military power and should be avoided whenever possible. Hopefully we can all agree there should never again be such a “war of choice.”

• “There are certainly ways to reduce defense spending…” Yes, and one that will save around $45 billion in Air Force modernization accounts is available in a choice about how to modernize the fighter fleet. The Air Force has decided to replace its aging F-16s with just about the most expensive new fighter one can dream up, the F-35. In today’s fiscal environment either the Air Force will end up with a lot fewer of these planes than planned, or they will choose to get ahead of the budget crunch and modernize with new block versions of the still best of class F-16s and limit the buy of F-35s this decade to a few squadrons for high-intensity air-superiority missions. If serious air competition emerges a decade from now we can then roll out production of F-35s (or perhaps a less costly follow-on to the F-16), planes presumably much improved with ten years or more of further fighter technology development.

Michael Krepon. Arms Control Wonk, 08 April 2010.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2690/treaty-signings

Excerpt:

Despite claims to the contrary, New START does not inhibit the growth of U.S. conventional power projection capabilities that, unlike nuclear weapons, are militarily useful on battlefields. Nor will New START impede ballistic missile defense programs…

Editor’s Comment:
… and that is why, despite the rhetoric of the moment, this treaty doesn’t do much to advance us toward the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons. Unbounded conventional military power and missile defenses for Western rich nations are not compatible with the establishment of a global international security regime sufficiently reliable to support the abolition of nuclear weapons.

For more on this problem see my comments on Vice President Biden’s speech at the National Defense University, 18 February 2010.

as delivered by Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas Wednesday, 03 March 2010.
http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?ID=1336

Excerpt:

I’ve come to three conclusions – three principles – about the proper use of modern military forces:

1) … military power should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state. Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools to policymakers. We can, merely by our presence, help alter certain behavior. Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy. We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake. We can help gather intelligence, support reconnaissance and provide security.

And we can do so on little or no notice. That ease of use is critical for deterrence. An expeditionary force that provides immediate, tangible effects. It is also vital when innocent lives are at risk. So yes, the military may be the best and sometimes the first tool; it should never be the only tool.

2) Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way.

3) Policy and strategy should constantly struggle with one another. Some in the military no doubt would prefer political leadership that lays out a specific strategy and then gets out of the way, leaving the balance of the implementation to commanders in the field. But the experience of the last nine years tells us two things: A clear strategy for military operations is essential; and that strategy will have to change as those operations evolve. In other words, success in these types of wars is iterative; it is not decisive.

Editor’s Comment:

Mullen’s first principle is dangerous in the extreme. It is a sad reminder of the militarization of the American state. Mullen suffers from an inexplicable amnesia of the horrors of war in the 20th Century.

America will likely be paying a high price for decades to come in what comes around from the quick and easy resort to war in 2002-2003 by policy-makers enthralled with their military instrument. If war is not a last resort, then policy-makers are abject failures as leaders.

by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. Defense News, 21 February 2010.

During the past decade, the U.S. Defense Department has enjoyed a rise in its budget unprecedented since the Korean War. With President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request, it is up nearly 100 percent in real terms from its post-Cold War low. But few observers believe that this level of spending can continue in light of the mounting national debt. So it is wise to think now about options for savings.

A way to begin is to ask, what has driven budgets so high? Obviously, the wars are part of the answer. But they account for only 20 percent of today’s expenditures. And they are the least likely targets for economizing.

It is more fruitful to reflect on the shortcomings in past efforts at defense reform. Can we do it better? It is also worth thinking about the practice of force modernization during the post-Cold War period, which has been distinctly undisciplined.

The end of the Cold War presented a unique opportunity – as well as a manifest need – for the structural reform of our defense posture. The force reductions of the 1990s necessarily risked decreased efficiency, due to the loss of economies of scale affecting support activities and equipment acquisition. The standard solution to such problems is to restructure as one gets smaller, matching reductions in size with a reduction in complexity – a practice the DoD did not, for the most part, follow.

Although smaller, DoD and the services have largely retained or even increased their complexity. For instance, there are today 50 major commands either one step above or below the service level – not much different from during the Cold War.

In our recent study of budget trends, we identify a dozen areas where significant changes had been proposed in the 1990s. These involved service roles and missions, consolidation of various support and training functions, and recentering budget and acquisition planning at the joint level.

In addition, the need to reform DoD’s acquisition, logistics and financial management systems has been evident for a long, long time. However, only two reform initiatives – competitive sourcing and military base closures – were pursued far enough to yield significant annual savings, and these have not amounted to more than 4 percent of the defense budget.

There also was hope in the mid-1990s that a “revolution in military affairs” might lead to new efficiencies. We would reap more bang for the buck by means of increased battlefield awareness, improved logistics, increased capacities for standoff precision attack, and the networking of units within and across services.

In some areas, such as precision attack, capability has dramatically increased. Theater logistics also have improved. But nowhere has the revolution in information technology led to manifest and substantial savings. Rather than supplant-ing legacy capabilities and platforms, the new technology has mostly just supplemented them.

In prospect, the evolution of net-centric warfare might reduce the need for redundant capabilities. But progress toward the services sharing a common nervous system has been slow and mostly involved special operations units and precision ground attack. Generally, net-centric capabilities exist as an anemic overlay to traditional service-centric structures and assets.

DoD and the services have faced little pressure to economize or transform during the past decade. This is also evident in equipment acquisition.

We can discern three distinct acquisition trends at work in recent decades. First, there are legacy programs that came forward from the Cold War period with considerable institutional momentum. Second, there are programs reflecting the revolutionary potential of new information technologies. Finally, there are adaptive programs, such as the recent mass purchase of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, that correspond to new mission requirements.

In an ideal world, the imperative to adapt to new missions and circumstances would draw on the revolutionary potential of new technologies to rewrite or supplant legacy programs. But this has not happened.

Too much of the $2.5 trillion in modernization funding since 1990 perpetuated the status quo circa 1990. Transformational acquisition was mostly restricted to producing supplements, such as Predator drones, to the legacy arsenal. And adaptive acquisition was largely delayed until field experiences forced a flurry of ad hoc efforts beginning six years ago.

The Pentagon’s central authorities have done too little, too late to compel the integration of modernization efforts along adaptive lines. Legacy, transformational and adaptive modernization have lurched forward together, but poorly integrated and competing for resources. And yet, even though modernization spending now surpasses that of the Reagan era, no one is happy with the result.

For 10 years, Congress and the White House have been permissive when it comes to defense spending; this has undercut any impetus for reform and prioritization. Obama’s decision to further boost the defense budget suggests that this dysfunction will persist for a while, but this, too, is a bubble that will burst. Preparing for that eventuality means revisiting options for structural reform and getting clearer on our strategic priorities.

Remarks of Vice President Biden at National Defense University – As Prepared for Delivery, 18 February 2010.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-vice-president-biden-national-defense-university

Excerpt:

Now, as our technology improves, we are developing non-nuclear ways to accomplish that same objective. The Quadrennial Defense Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which Secretary Gates released two weeks ago, present a plan to further strengthen our preeminent conventional forces to defend our nation and our allies.

Capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield, conventional warheads with worldwide reach, and others that we are developing enable us to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, as other nuclear powers join us in drawing down. With these modern capabilities, even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.

Editor’s Comment:

When Vice President Biden speaks of plans to “further strengthen … preeminent conventional forces” with “capabilities like an adaptive missile defense shield” and “conventional warheads with worldwide reach” he seeks to reassure his domestic audience that nuclear disarmament will not make America less secure. His words, however, do not reassure other nuclear powers or potential future nuclear powers such as Iran who will perceive these enhanced American conventional capabilities as strategic threats to their national security.

Biden surely understands that he is not really offering us a pathway to nuclear abolition. We will not get there if other nations are expected to relinquish their nuclear arsenals to face “undeniable” conventional power from the U.S.

If Biden’s speech truly represents the elaboration of the “President’s Prague Agenda” it leaves us with a very big gap (conceptually and practically) between the near term goal Biden articulates (“We will work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”) and the longer term goal (“We are working both to stop [nuclear weapons] proliferation and eventually to eliminate them.”) which President Obama confirmed in Prague.

Barry Blechman. New York Times, 18 February 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/opinion/19blechman.html

Excerpt:

Here’s how a global nuclear disarmament treaty could work. First, it would spell out a decades-long schedule for the verified destruction of all weapons, materials and facilities. Those possessing the largest arsenals — the United States and Russia — would make deep cuts first. Those with smaller arsenals would join at specified dates and levels. To ensure that no state gained an advantage, the treaty would incorporate “rest stops”: if a state refused to comply with a scheduled measure, other nations’ reductions would be suspended until the violation was corrected. This dynamic would generate momentum, but also ensure that if the effort collapsed, the signatories would be no less secure than before.

Editor’s Comment:
There is something missing in this measured disarmament scheme which invalidates it as a path to full nuclear disarmament. Blechman makes an erroneous assumption shared by too many nuclear disarmament advocates. He assumes that nuclear weapons are a class of weapons that can be dealt with in isolation from the problems of international security and insecurity. Nuclear weapons cannot be separated strategically from the context of the conventional military power they supplement.

Note the following phrase in the above excerpt from Blechman: “To ensure that no state gained an advantage…” His prescription applies only to nuclear weapons and presumes no adjustments to conventional military power. In those conditions some states stand to gain considerable advantage from nuclear disarmament.

Imagine the case of Russia in Blechman’s staged draw down of nuclear forces with the U.S. As Russia approaches zero nuclear weapons they become more and more vulnerable to superior U.S. conventional military power.

Without parallel and compensatory reductions and adjustments in conventional forces and strong political assurances weaker nations such as Russia will never agree to give up all their nuclear weapons.

Careful schemes of balanced nuclear weapons disarmament of the type that Blechman argues for cannot by themselves get us to zero nuclear weapons. Compensating for the national insecurities arising from imbalances in conventional military power must be part of any formula for full nuclear disarmament. We need to work toward an international security regime that delivers the reassurance of fifty years without international aggression and military intervention. After that period of peace nuclear nations might be ready to go to zero.

Greg Mello. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10 February 2010.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/the-obama-disarmament-paradox
Greg Mello is the executive director and co-founder of the Los Alamos Study Group.

______________

Last April in Prague, President Barack Obama gave a speech that many have interpreted as a commitment to significant nuclear disarmament.

Now, however, the White House is requesting one of the larger increases in warhead spending history. If its request is fully funded, warhead spending would rise 10 percent in a single year, with further increases promised for the future. Los Alamos National Laboratory, the biggest target of the Obama largesse, would see a 22 percent budget increase, its largest since 1944. In particular, funding for a new plutonium “pit” factory complex there would more than double, signaling a commitment to produce new nuclear weapons a decade hence.

So how is the president’s budget compatible with his disarmament vision?

The answer is simple: There is no evidence that Obama has, or ever had, any such vision. He said nothing to that effect in Prague. There, he merely spoke of his commitment “to seek . . . a world without nuclear weapons,” a vague aspiration and hardly a novel one at that level of abstraction. He said that in the meantime the United States “will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”

Since nuclear weapons don’t, and won’t ever, “deter any adversary,” this too was highly aspirational, if not futile. The vain search for an “effective” arsenal that can deter “any” adversary requires unending innovation and continuous real investment, including investment in the extended deterrent to which Obama referred. The promise of such investments, and not disarmament, was the operative message in Prague as far as the U.S. stockpile was concerned. In fact, proposed new investments in extended deterrence were already being packaged for Congress when Obama spoke.

To fulfill his supposed “disarmament vision,” Obama offered just two approaches in Prague, both indefinite. First, he spoke vaguely of reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.” It’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean. Most likely it refers to official discourse–what officials say about nuclear doctrine–as opposed to actual facts on the ground. Second, Obama promised to negotiate “a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START] with the Russians.” As far as nuclear disarmament went in the speech, that was it.

Of course, Obama also said his administration would promptly pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an action not yet taken and one entirely unrelated to U.S. disarmament. The rest of the speech was devoted to various nonproliferation initiatives that his administration planned to seek.

On July 8, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced their Joint Understanding, committing their respective countries to somewhere between 500 to 1,100 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,500 to 1,675 deployed strategic warheads, very modest goals to be achieved a full seven years after the treaty entered into force. Total arsenal numbers wouldn’t change, so strategic warheads could be taken from deployment and placed in a reserve–de-alerted, in effect. The treaty wouldn’t affect nonstrategic warheads. It wouldn’t require dismantlement. As Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists has explained, the delivery vehicle limits require little, if any, change from U.S. and Russian expected deployments.

Ironically, it’s possible that the retirement PDF of 4,000 or more U.S. warheads under the Moscow Treaty and other retirements ordered by George W. Bush may exceed anything Obama does in terms of disarmament. As for the stockpile and weapons complex, Bush’s aspirations were far more hawkish than Congress ultimately allowed. Real budgets for warheads fell during his last three years in office. Now, with the Democrats controlling the executive branch and both houses of Congress, congressional restraint is notable by its absence. What Obama mainly seems to be “disarming” is congressional resistance to variations of some of the same proposals Bush found it difficult to authorize and fund.

Last May Obama sent his first budget to Congress, calling for flat warhead spending. At that time, the administration was still displaying a measured approach toward replacement and expansion of warhead capabilities.

That said, in last year’s budget the White House did acquiesce to a Pentagon demand to request funding for a major upgrade to four B61 nuclear bomb variants–one of which had just completed a 20-year-plus life-extension program. Just one day before that budget was released a grand nuclear strategy review previously requested by the armed services committees was unveiled. It was chaired by William Perry, a member of the governing board of the corporation that manages Los Alamos, and recurrent Cold War fixture James Schlesinger. [Full disclosure: Perry is also a member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors.]

The report’s recommendations for increased spending and weapons development quickly began to serve as a rallying point for defense hawks–surely the point of the exercise. Overall, it was largely a conclusory pastiche of recycled Cold War notions, entirely lacking in analysis and often factually wrong. But neither the White House nor leading congressional Democrats offered any public resistance or rebuttal to its conclusions.

More largely, opposition to nuclear restraint within the administration quickly emerged from its usual redoubts at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Pentagon, STRATCOM, and interested players in both parties in Congress. Plus, Obama left key Bush appointees in place at NNSA while the Pentagon added some familiar faces from the Clinton administration, leaving serious questions about the ability of the White House to develop an independent understanding of the issues, let alone present one to Congress.

Either way, potential treaty ratification is surely a major factor in White House thinking. Senate Republicans, as expected, are demanding significant nuclear investments prior to considering ratification of any START follow-on treaty. Democratic hawks, especially powerful ones with pork-barrel interests at stake such as New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, also must be satisfied in the ratification process. All in all this makes the latest Obama budget request a kind of “preemptive surrender” to nuclear hawks. So whether or not the president has a disarmament “vision” is irrelevant. What is important are the policy commitments embodied in the budget request and whether Congress will endorse them.

Investments on the scale requested should be flatly unacceptable to all of us. The country and the world face truly apocalyptic security challenges from climate change and looming shortages of transportation fuels. Our economy is very weak and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The proposed increases in nuclear weapons spending, embedded as they are in an overall military budget bigger than any since the 1940s, should be a clarion call for renewed political commitment in service of the fundamental values that uphold this, or any, society.

Those values are now gravely threatened–not least by a White House uncertain about, or unwilling or unable to fight for, what is right.

Editor’s Comment:

Mello does a good job of explaining why there will be little progress toward nuclear abolition during the Obama administration. Further he makes a good case that the current administration seems to be headed towards feeding the nuclear weapons complex to a greater degree than Bush was able. Who’d of thought!

But Mello misses on a couple points. One is that he dismisses too quickly the nuclear abolition aspiration Obama stated in Prague. Those few words may have little affect on policy, but they do mark a return to the rhetoric of all atomic age administrations up until George W. Bush markedly abandoned such aspirations. What is the value of that rhetoric? Mostly it gives credence to those who organize around abolition — something of value, but not much.

Secondly, Mello states that when Obama spoke of…

…reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy” it’s far from clear what that might actually mean, or even what it could mean.

Actually, this statement of Obama’s refers to something quite specific and important. The U.S. has been advancing for several decades to an unprecedented level of conventional force dominance over all other nations (see Bernard I. Finel on strategic meaning of U.S. conventional military power). At this point the U.S. can anticipate gaining even more strategic advantage if it can convince other nations to join in disposing of nuclear weaponry (for an official statement of this strategic formula see Vice President Biden’s speech at the National Defense University on 18 February 2010.) This is indeed quite an aspiration!

This connection of conventional dominance to nuclear dominance brings me to the other shortcoming of Mello’s article. Nuclear abolition will be impossible without a significant restructuring of the international (in-)security system. Why would Russia or China eschew nuclear weapons or N. Korea and Iran abandon efforts to obtain them while these nations remain utterly vulnerable to U.S. conventional strike?

Leaders of popular efforts for nuclear disarmament almost never acknowledge this strategic problem. That’s a disservice to their cause, because it leaves a major obstacle to disarmament in place with no plan (or even awareness of the need for a plan) to remove it.

The eventuality of an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons will require the U.S. to first draw down its conventional military power. And concurrent to a deep draw down of US conventional military power there must be a build up of international structures which can take up more and more of the responsibility for global security.

Such a transfer of power and responsibility will probably happen someday, but we are certainly not presently on that path. That is one more “change” that Obama is not pursuing, not even aspirationally.

Greg Mello responds to the editor’s comments:

I think your comments are excellent. Let me begin with the second one, with which I wholly agree. Our work here at the [Los Alamos] Study Group has emphasized nuclear weapons issues in part because of our geographic, and hence political, locus adjacent to the two largest nuclear weapons laboratories.

The barrier to nuclear disarmament posed by military policies and investments that express an aspiration for “full spectrum dominance” on a global scale is almost certainly insuperable. Nuclear disarmament is only consistent with a quite different conception of national security than we now have and with a quite different economic structure internally as well. The good news — and I think we have to make it good where it may not appear so at first glance, since we have no other choice — is that our empire is failing.

Your first point, which relates to the symbolic value of Obama’s disarmament statements, is also sound, but here I think that symbolic value is greatly outweighed by the passivity and compliance which his statements have engendered in civil society. The actors and forces which could and should be forcefully working for disarmament have been themselves disarmed by what amounts to propaganda.

Hypocrisy may be the homage paid to the ideal by the real, but it is not leadership, it is not honest, and it will not produce anything of value in this case. At the moment, it is allowing the nuclear weapons establishment to do what it could not accomplish previously: increase production capacity and provide greater, not lesser, endorsement of nuclear weapons in all their aspects, both materially and symbolically.

Obama’s disarmament aspiration, so called, is a faint echo compared to the full-throated endorsement of nuclear weapons it is enabling.

Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley. Center for American Progress, 04 February 2010.
http://defensealt.org/HdrBYh

Excerpt:

The QDR … does not prioritize the missions that the military must be prepared for. The document states that “successfully balancing [DOD’s priorities] requires that the Department make hard choices on the level of resources required as well as accepting and managing risk in a way that favors success in today’s wars,” yet it also notes that “U.S. forces must be prepared to conduct a wide variety of missions under a range of different circumstances.” In other words, the QDR promises to make tradeoffs but asserts that DOD must be capable of confronting every contingency.

Editor’s Comment:

Follow the money. The priorities are reflected in where the money goes. A few changes, per usual, at the margins. Mostly the same ol’ same ol’ division of spoils.