It seems to me the US faces two major military issues, one
strategic and one tactical. This note explores the strategic issue.
The strategic issue, it seems to me, is how to maintain a military
adequate to insure the safety of the US without driving the nation into
bankruptcy. Military spending isn’t the only thing driving the federal debt to
dangerous levels, but it is certainly one of the contributors. We spend more on
our military (about $700-750 billion next year, depending on how Congress comes
out on the next budged deal) than the next 10 nations combined, including Russia
and China. That is more than all the rest of the federal government’s
discretionary spending (ie – not including mandated spending like Social
Security, Medicare and interest on the federal debt). For more detail use the
archive in the sidebar to see my series on priorities posted in April of 2017.
As I argued in a previous posting, distance is the issue that
makes forward posting of US military assets highly expensive, but some in
government feel the strong need to have US troops and equipment pre-positioned throughout
the world to overcome the distance problem, the inevitable delay in responding
to aggression in distant nations.
The common military argument is that the US needs to have a
large enough military to be able to fight and win a two front war, or at least
win one and stalemate the second. It’s not clear our current military could
do that even with the current massive spending levels, and so achieving that goal
would require even higher rates of spending, and debt. I would argue instead that
what we need is a strong enough military that we WITH OUR ALLIES could fight
and win a two front war. That was
certainly the strategy during the Cold War, and it would be just as applicable
today.
So it seems to me the focus ought NOT to be on building US
military might to be able to win two simultaneous wars ALONE, but rather on working
with our allies to share the load, and to be sure their forces are adequate and
properly equipped and trained to do their share in any conflict, and that we
have designed and tested the interoperability, not just of our combat forces, but
also of our logistics, intelligence, and command systems. Of course we do some
of that now, but not nearly as much as we would do if we and our allies were
serious about a true shared responsibility.
In that respect I think president Trump has done the right
thing in bluntly and forcefully pressing our NATO allies to step up to their
pledge to spend at least 2% of their GDP on military forces (only 8 of the 28 NATO
members did so in 2018, but that is better than it has been). And despite the withering scorn of the media
and Washington foreign policy elite directed at Trump’s decision to withdraw
troops from Syria and Afghanistan and let the local regional allies (Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, and Israel) handle the matter, I think that is the right
direction to be taking in the Middle East; it is consistent with sharing the
load rather than bankrupting ourselves trying to do it alone.
Posts
