Senator Richard Russell once observed: “If we can go anywhere and do anything, we’ll be going everywhere and doing everything.” What mission do hawks propose: Invade Iran, a nation of 70 million? Fight in Ukraine, on the border of Russia? Join an increasingly militarist Japan to fight China over disputed islands that are bits of rock? Put American ground troops in the middle of Africa’s tragic civil wars?

If we have learned anything from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is that hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and massively superior military hardware often fail to produce a favorable long term political solution. In 2011, the United States spent more on the military than the next 13 countries combined, and 20 times more than we spent on diplomacy. We maintain nuclear forces of apocalyptic destructiveness. The military and the CIA are deploying drones and developing offensive cyberwar.

A rethink is long overdue. Today’s global problems—from terrorism to inequality to climate change—will be solved by cooperation or not at all. We need to work with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals, with China to combat global warming, and with Iran for Middle East peace. Saber rattling on behalf of the military industrial complex is archaic and dangerous.

Sources

U.S. Defense Spending vs. Global Defense Spending (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation)

“America’s Orphaned Diplomacy” (Foreign Policy In Focus)

Former Senator Sam Nunn, in a conversation with former Senator Richard Lugar, moderated by Steve Inskeep. University of Indianapolis, February 25, 2014.

National Intelligence director, James Clapper, testified last month that in his 50-year career in intelligence, he had not “experienced a time when we’ve been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.”

Yet, in its new budget, the Obama Administration is proposing deep cuts in defense spending. Not since before World War 2 will the Army be as small. The number of Navy ships will drop to World War 1 levels. The Air Force is slated to lose several aircraft, including the famous spy plane, the U-2.

Congress is unlikely to approve all these proposals. But with the world in such a mess, why are they even being considered?

The across-the-board spending cuts Congress enacted in 2012, when it could not agree on how to trim the Federal budget, are one reason. While many worried about their impact on social programs and public services, defense programs were targeted for half the reductions. The results are now evident.

In addition, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates notes in his memoir, Duty, the military itself has long resisted modernizing its forces. The President and his staff, he also writes, have little background or interest in defense policy. Other than as a source of money for their districts, neither do many members of Congress. The result: sharp cutbacks.

Nonetheless, the world is still a dangerous place. And if the United States is not prepared to respond to crises, who will be?

Sources

“Worldwide Threat Assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

“Winners, Losers in Pentagon’s New Budget” (NBC News)

Gates, Robert M. Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War. (Knopf, 2014)