RUTHFULLY YOURS

DEFENSE CUTS WILL HARM THE UNITED STATES AND ITS ALLIES:EVAN MOORE

Posted By Ruth King on December 1st, 2011

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/687/america_s_moment_of_truth_reverse_defence_cuts_that_will_harm_the_united_states_and_its_allies_

The Super Committee’s failure to find $1.2 trillion in long-term deficit cuts should not surprise anyone. The prospect of an ad hoc panel of lawmakers, equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, finding sufficient common ground to recommend serious spending reductions was always slight.

However, extreme danger still remains with the so-called “sequestration” cuts now mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 that would slash as much as $1 trillion from what the Pentagon had planned to spend over the next decade. If allowed to stand, these deep spending cuts will cripple America’s military and reduce its presence and influence around the world precisely at a time when US leadership is essential for international peace and stability.

There is an extraordinarily wide range of agreement among current and former administration officials, Congressmen and Senators, military leaders, and presidential candidates that these cuts will devastate our military. While the endeavour to control America’s overall spending should continue, Congress must recognize, at the same time, that the Pentagon’s budget has already borne its share of cuts, and instead do the responsible thing: repeal the Budget Control Act’s sequestration cuts to defence.

Accomplishing this will certainly require an extraordinary amount of leadership and political will from Washington. Yet with 82 percent of respondents to a recent Politico-George Washington University-Battleground poll strongly or somewhat opposed to the Super Committee “cutting spending on defence programs, including programs for soldiers and veterans” to meet its deficit-reduction goal, there will likely be strong backing for such action.

Nonetheless, this is also a moment of profound choice for America’s Tea Party. Born and sustained by righteous fury over profligate Washington spending, grassroots activists led the way as congressional candidates sympathetic to the Tea Party emerged victorious in the 2010 mid-term election, and then held lawmakers accountable for their promise to cut spending.

However, the recent Tea Party Budget put forward by FreedomWorks uncritically accepts proposals from Senator Tom Coburn’s so-called “Back in Black” proposal that would halt our military’s badly-needed modernization and cut our capabilities.

When President Obama took office, the military was already a peacetime-sized force that had been through years of fierce fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, three rounds of cuts prior to the Budget Control Act eliminated key modernization programs and reduced the size of US ground forces.

Further cuts pursuant to the Budget Control Act’s sequestration trigger–which could include eliminating the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, an aircraft carrier, and a Naval Air wing; delaying the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle; reducing purchases of the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey; and enacting deep cuts in America’s strategic nuclear triad (ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines, and bombers), among other proposals—will completely stall our military’s modernization at a time when the US military’s major platforms are already Cold War-era derivatives.

It is precisely these sorts of programme cuts that Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey; and other high-ranking Pentagon officials have called “devastating” and “very high risk”. And for good reason too.

Osama bin Laden has been killed, but the US and its European and Asian allies still face the threat of international Islamist terrorism. Pakistan today is an unstable state, but may become a failed state that cannot control its nuclear arsenal. As the situation in Syria continues to deteriorate, the United States could find itself involved in another Libya-style intervention very soon. North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal, and Iran is breathlessly close to achieving full nuclear weapons capability. China has poured billions into its own military modernization program, and now threatens to pull the western Pacific into its hegemony.

While Americans are naturally war-weary after a decade of protracted conflicts, US capabilities to project power remain critical to the success of any international effort against rogue states, as the recent Libya mission demonstrably proved. And though former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates infamously remarked that anyone recommending another mission like Iraq and Afghanistan in the near future should “have his head examined,” policymakers are sometimes not blessed with the choice to intervene—sometimes the decision is forced upon us, as was the mission in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

America’s defence spending is not just another federal outlay, it is the bedrock of US national security and allied peace and prosperity; we cut it at our peril.

The Tea Party and other fiscal reform-minded Americans now must decide what, truly, their movement means. Is it so undiscerning–so penny-wise and pound-foolish—that it will gut and hollow the US Armed Forces in order to enact marginal reductions in the federal budget? Are the men and women who proudly sing patriotic anthems, wave the flag, and dress as Revolutionary War heroes really willing to blindly accept the designs of libertarian Washington establishment figures, for whom America’s exceptional nature and role in the world is seen as the source of its fiscal woes?

If they truly wish to save the United States from complete financial ruin, then should they not instead follow the leadership of men like Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), and push for deep and binding structural reforms in America’s bloated entitlement system?

This is a moment of truth for America. Both Washington and the Tea Party must do the right thing, and stop the sequestration cuts that will gut our military. As William Kristol, a member of the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Board of Directors, remarked when the Budget Control Act was announced, “This deal embodies a vision of America in decline.” Yet American leadership in the world is needed now more than ever.

Washington’s leaders in the White House and Congress should recognise this, and move quickly to stop the devastating defence cuts that will surely erode not just the security of the United States and its allies abroad, but also America’s global standing.

Evan Moore is a Policy Analyst at the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C. Follow the Foreign Policy Initiative on Twitter a @ForeignPolicyI

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