The bipartisan agreement to increase the Pentagon’s budget by $81 billion lets the U.S defense establishment fatten current programs and continue to do business as usual while avoiding questions about how to win wars. Such disconnection between ends and means puts bureaucratic interests over strategic success in war. Increasing the budget should be conditioned upon making sure that each increase actually contributes to victory in any theater of operations where the U.S is committed. And this means evaluating which missions—and in what ways—the dysfunctional parts of fiscal year 2019’s $678 billion should be reallocated
It would be difficult to argue that today’s budget does not contain at least $81 billion in waste. A few examples.
Since 2001, the U.S government has spent $2 trillion to $4 trillion—depending on whose estimates you believe—waging the “War on Terror.” The fight has been less than a shining success and, as currently conceived, is supposed go on forever. Why continue this hemorrhage of blood and treasure? Why not aim at ending it? What would it take to do that?
The Afghan war alone this year will cost at least $45.1 billion. Our military operations have no strategic objective, and no strategy for reaching any objective. Even continuing to prop up an unnatural, dysfunctional, Afghan central government seems less feasible by the day. America won’t be in Afghanistan forever. Figure out now how to leave advantageously.
Development of the F-35 fighter plane has cost at least $400 billion. The Pentagon says it needs another $1 billion to finish the plane’s development, and each fighter will cost $100 million. What does that contribute to prevailing in East Asia or anywhere else?
China’s J-20, roughly on the same technical level as the F-35, costs one-fifth as much. Quantity has its own winning quality. To achieve this unhappy balance, the U.S. government gave up on the best fighter in the sky, the F-22. If you cannot show how the number of F-35s you are planning to build before they bankrupt America can prevail in what theater of operations, stop pouring money into them, and figure out a way actually to prevail without them.