America’s great Cold War diplomats—George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, and Lwellyn Thompson—were realists. They had no love for Soviet communism, but they warned repeatedly against Americans’ capacity to see their own actions as righteous and others as evil. They knew that that diplomacy depends on recognizing all parties’ essential interests, as well as allowing them to save face.

When the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, agreed to the reunification of Germany, the West promised him that we would not take advantage of the change to expand NATO. Yet today, Eastern European states are part of NATO. NATO installed missile defenses in Poland and Romania and set up a military outpost in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

American diplomats and American money were involved in the ouster of Ukraine’s corrupt but democratically elected pro-Russian president. The new government, ratified by a rump parliament, includes far right-wing forces. It excluded Russian as a national language, alarming eastern Ukrainians, then reversed the decision.

I believe Kennan would have counseled President Obama not to take advantage of the conflict to threaten Russia, specifically through NATO membership, military integration, or deployments and to beware of using American money to support opposition groups, above all in Russia itself. Washington would insist on no less of Moscow if there were a socialist revolution in Mexico.

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)