| Rebalancing Security Spending for 21st Century Challenges |
In November 2008, shortly after winning the election, President-elect Obama committed to making budget review a centerpiece of his policymaking. Obama said, "A nation's budget reflects its values and priorities." What does our nation's security spending say about our values and priorities? Military spending – not even including the cost of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – has increased by 60% since 2001. The increase in Department of Defense (DOD) funding including the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the decade separating 1998 and 2008 is a staggering ninety percent.1 A close look at this spending reveals a country that puts a very high priority on high-tech weapons systems and the capacity to fight major conventional wars. The budget reveals that those military programs are heavily funded (or valued) while our diplomatic corps and effective homeland security programs are woefully underfunded. Are the tools of high-tech war-fighting the most effective for actually keeping Americans safe in the 21st century? Or are we funding the strategies of yesterday instead of the strategies that can bring our country real security in today's world? Two forces are calling for significant reform and budget review for military spending. The first is the nation's current economic challenge and a federal budget under great pressure. The second is the recognition that an emphasis on Cold War-style military hardware and strategies may not be the savviest, most effective approach to the task of keeping Americans safe in the post-Cold War era. Even the Pentagon's own internal oversight body, the Defense Business Board, has pointed out that defense spending is "not sustainable" and that in the midst of the nation's economic downturn, wasteful weapons systems and expenses must be eliminated.2 Perhaps more importantly, there is a growing recognition that security spending across the federal budget is woefully out of balance. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it in 2007: "Funding for non-military foreign affairs programs… remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military. Consider that this year's budget for the Department of Defense—not counting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan—is nearly half a trillion dollars. The total foreign affairs budget request for the State Department is $36 billion … [T]here is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security."3 In order to rebalance security spending we also need to recognize that an overreliance on military force has had non-economic costs. Using military tools when other less costly and less bellicose tools are more appropriate has backfired. Terrorism around the world has increased. Anti-Americanism is at an all time high. Countries such as Russia and China have responded to our focus on military tools with their own military build-ups. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been a recruitment pretext for our adversaries and have led to a perception of the US as a bellicose nation who seeks to control and occupy other countries. We do need to increase the emphasis on diplomacy, intelligence, and preventive tools, but we also need to recognize that US military tools have a narrow utility that should truly only be used as a "last resort".
Footnotes 1. Forceful Engagement, Carl Conetta Project on Defense Alternatives, December 2008. Pg. 11. |