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Defense & Deficits: How to Trim the Pentagon’s Budget-Carefully

Friday, October 14th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Getting America’s exploding deficits and debt under control isn’t just an economic and political imperative, it’s also vital for U.S. national security. America’s military strength and leading role in international affairs rest on the foundation of a dynamic, growing economy. To the extent that runaway public debt undermines prospects for growth and compromises America’s economic sovereignty, it also endangers American security.

Let’s be clear at the outset: defense spending is not driving the fiscal crisis. True, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the debt, but that’s because President Bush, in a break with wartime precedent, declined to raise taxes to pay for them. The good news is that as the overseas deployments wind down, future military spending is set to naturally shrink.

The structural causes of America’s escalating national debt are the unsustainable cost growth of federal entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and historically low tax revenues (which reflect both subpar economic growth and the Bush tax cuts). But it has become apparent that as America’s political leaders shirk tackling tax and entitlement reform, the burden of debt reduction threatens to fall disproportionately on domestic discretionary spending, including defense.

The first shoe has already dropped. On August 2, President Obama and Congressional Republicans struck a deal that would cut spending by $2.1 trillion over ten years in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Among other cuts, the compromise takes an initial bite of $350 billion from defense spending. The deal also created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction or “supercommittee” to come up with an additional $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in federal savings by the end of the year.

If the committee fails, it will trigger a “sequester” that automatically cuts domestic and defense spending across the board. That could mean an additional $500 billion—if not more—cut from the military.

All told, defense spending could be reduced from $850 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade. Cuts of this magnitude are simply too large. They would jeopardize America’s ability to successfully conclude the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, conduct global counterterrorism operations, and hedge against the rise of new threats—both state and non-state actors—to U.S. security and international order. Absent corresponding reductions in America’s global commitments, such large cuts portend exactly what Walter Lippman warned against—foreign policy “insolvency,” in the sense that America’s commitments far exceed its means.

Nor would deep cuts in national defense solve the country’s fiscal problems. America’s national debt now exceeds $14 trillion and is growing rapidly. Since 2004, it has zoomed from 40 percent to about 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and is on course to exceed 100 percent in the coming decade. There is wide agreement among fiscal experts that policymakers need to cut at least $4 trillion over ten years just to stabilize the debt at 60 percent of GDP. So even if the new “supercommittee” succeeds in cutting $2.1 trillion, there’s still a long way to go.

Yet the Pentagon should not escape scrutiny, either. The fiscal task before the country is monumental, and President Obama has rightly called for “shared sacrifice” in crafting a bipartisan solution. This means everything—entitlements, tax revenues, domestic spending and defense—must be on the table.

The military must contribute its fair share to deficit reduction, but it must not be made to pay for America’s leaders’ inability to grapple with the country’s fundamental fiscal challenges. Beyond marginal adjustments, the basic level of defense spending should be set by America’s strategic needs, not by a game of fiscal chicken.

Moreover, how defense spending is cut matters almost as much as the cut’s size. Across-the-board caps or freezes—as proposed by some leading bipartisan groups—are convenient for political budget cutters, but they are a bad way to wring savings out of national defense. The fact is that not all Pentagon programs are created equally: To en- sure that reductions in the military’s budget don’t disrupt current missions or impair the U.S. mili- tary’s ability to sustain qualitative technological superiority over the long term, policy makers need to make strategic trade-offs among competing security priorities.

That’s because while keeping Americans safe is the federal government’s first responsibility, America’s military power also underpins its diplomacy and anchors strategic alliances in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The military cements America’s position of world leadership, which rests on the United States’ will and capacity to defend liberal democratic values and strengthen global institutions for collective problem solving. I see no evidence that the American people are clamoring for a retreat from these responsibilities.

For all these reasons, heedless cuts in military spending have no place in a progressive strategy for restoring fiscal discipline. In this Policy Brief, I offer pragmatic answers to these questions:
The post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion—or about 10 percent—by 2021.

How much should the Pentagon contribute to defense spending reductions?
And how do policymakers realize these savings?

I answer those questions by examining defense spending in an historic and current budget context, break down Pentagon spending by category, distinguish between one-off war spending and on-going military missions, and contrast spending proposals from the political left, right and center. I conclude with a series of strategic guidelines for how much and where to trim the defense budget.

Based on this analysis, I believe military spending can safely be reduced over the next decade towards the “post-Cold War benchmark” achieved in the late 1990s: After a series of exhaustive strategic re- views, military spending slowly declined through- out the decade and eventually settled at around three percent of GDP by 1998. During peacetime and absent a major nation-state military competi- tor, this range was deemed sufficient to handle two regional conflicts while maintaining the U.S. military’s high-tech edge and global reach.

Of course, this formula cannot be applied mechanistically because the United States is not at peace and faces a different slate of threats than in the 1990s. Therefore, budgeteers must build in some leeway above three percent of GDP to accommo- date the following realities: America must con- clude the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; maintain a vigorous, global counterterrorism campaign; assure its qualitative military superiority over po- tential rivals, such as China; continue to invest robustly in advanced technology; and be prepared for unanticipated contingencies.

That’s why the post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion— or about 10 percent—by 2021.

In achieving these savings, policymakers should be guided by five rules:
1. Don’t let fiscal politics trump U.S. strategy.
2. Cut over time.
3. Focus on personnel costs.
4. Avoid radical surgery to military procurement and research & development.
5. Set a floor beneath defense cuts.

Read the entire memo.

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Policy Memo | 1 Comment »

Defense’s Careful Contribution to Deficit Reduction

Thursday, August 25th, 2011
The Progressive Policy Institute




by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI’s Will Marshall and Jim Arkedis have a piece in the Detroit News this morning on the defense budget. Here’s an excerpt:

Recently, Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress unveiled their choices to head the so-called “super committee” entrusted with forging a long-term agreement to reduce the nation’s deficit.

The stakes are high for the Department of Defense. Should the super committee fail to propose legislation, or a divided Congress fail to pass a compromise, the deal to avert national default would automatically trigger a $500 billion cut from the Pentagon’s budget. Added to the $350 billion already cut by the deal, the Pentagon’s budget could shrink by $850 trillion over 10 years.

If the Department of Defense is forced to make such a substantial contribution to deficit reduction, one point is clear: Our political leaders remain unwilling to tackle the national deficit’s two main cost drivers — entitlements and taxes.

Nothing is set in stone, but the congressional super committee now faces two crucial questions: Should defense contribute more toward deficit reduction? And, if so, how do we save?

Our answers are that defense can contribute, but carefully.

Continue reading in the Detroit News by clicking here.

Photo credit: Brave Heart.

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Defense Contractors Suffer Network Attacks as Pentagon Issues Cyber Strategy

Monday, June 6th, 2011
Matthew Dahl


Matt Dahl is a judicial clerk in Virginia and writes about national security law on his blog. The views expressed here are his own.

by Matthew Dahl

Last week reports emerged about attempted cyber attacks against the internal networks of three major U.S. defense contractors: Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, and Northrop Grumman.  All of the attempted hacks tried to access the companies’ internal networks using compromised remote-access security tokens, which are believed to be linked to yet another hack that occurred at a different government contractor, RSA, in March.

Amidst news of last week’s attacks, DoD is preparing a formal cyber strategy and a list of deployable cyber weapons. The strategy is not in response to the incursions, but as the first formal cyber strategy written by the Pentagon, it obviously has bearing on USG’s response to them, as well as future assaults.

The strategy is not yet public, but two important provisions are known: First, that the Pentagon may use conventional force to respond to a cyber attack against the U.S.; second, that the strategy explicitly contains an authorization framework, reportedly requiring the military to obtain presidential approval before deploying cyber weapons.

While it’s time that the U.S. government assembled clear policies to respond to cyber attacks, it is important to recognize the unique challenges contained therein. Two of the most important are 1) assigning responsibility for an attack and 2) assuring that any retaliation avoids excessive collateral damage.

First, unlike attacks with conventional weapons, an attacker has more opportunities to hide his origin in cyberspace. For example, state actors can create plausible deniability behind contracted criminal groups, a tactic likely used by Russia and China. It’s unclear how the new strategy will deal with this point.

Second, if the U.S. government is able to correctly attribute an attack, its response would have to comport with international law, specifically a statute known as the Law of Armed Conflict (LoAC). The United States is bound to the LoAC through multiple treaties such as the 1907 Hague Conventions and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, as well as through customary international law. Two elements of the LoAC pose particular challenges in the cyber realm: proportionality and distinction.

Proportionality may be a particularly tough nut to crack, as we know that the Pentagon’s policy will permit retaliating against a cyber attack with conventional weapons. It’s new ground, and the argument could be made that launching a missile in response to a computer-based attack is inherently disproportionate. However, we must recognize that a cyber attack has the ability to cause actual loss of life if, for example, it were aimed at air traffic control systems and caused planes to crash. Under the new policy, only an attack of this magnitude would allow a conventional response to a cyber attack, and it is imperative that such a response be proportionate.

Distinction is another problematic element of the LoAC because cyber weapons can have unintended consequences.  The amount of damage that a conventional weapon does is known before it is used even though it may damage unintended targets.  Not so in the cyber world: Vital military and civilian assets may reside on the same network, thus making it difficult to limit damage to the legitimate military target. Furthermore, cyber weapons are different because entities that reside in cyberspace are interconnected on a global scale: attacking a target on a server in China can also cause damage to another server in Canada.  This actually happened in 2010 when the U.S. military took down a jihadist website hosted in Saudi Arabia that led to disruption to more than 300 servers in Saudi Arabia, Texas, and Germany.

These are only a couple of considerations that complicate the use of cyber weapons, and developing a strong cyber capabilities must occur within the context of these considerations. With so much of its vital national assets relying on the Internet, the U.S. must equip itself with both the strong defensive capabilities and project power in cyberspace, as well as with robust policies to regulate these capabilities.

Photo Credit: West Point Public Affairs.

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End Separate War Spending

Monday, February 14th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

It’s federal budget season. Before you doze off, stick with me: there’s a deceptive budgetary maneuver that is costing you billions in defense dollars, forcing progressive members of Congress into uncomfortable votes on Iraq and Afghanistan, and defying every historical precedent in Pentagon budgeting.

This maneuver is the supplemental appropriation for war funding. Every year since the United States launched military operations in Afghanistan in response to the September 11th attacks, Congress has appropriated separate funds for unanticipated wartime costs in addition to the Pentagon’s baseline budget. In some years, only one extra war spending bill is approved; in 2010, two supplemental appropriations were passed.

Supplemental war funding appropriations are hardly new, beginning in World War II. When used correctly, the process serves as a vital tool that delivers timely funding to America’s fighting men and women. In the initial stages of combat, supplemental appropriations are extraordinarily useful in the face of the lengthy Congressional budget process, which does not allow for unanticipated military spending. Typically, the supplemental funds pay for pre-deployment costs, servicemembers’ transportation to the warzone, combat operations, equipment needs, and military construction. Without this tool, the Pentagon would essentially be forced to sacrifice long-term projects to meet immediate wartime needs.

Here’s the rub: Under the Bush administration, allegedly “emergency” supplemental appropriations for war costs became routine avenues for backdoor spending. Their opaque nature and lack of oversight have created a propensity to fund low-priority programs that has effectively eroded any sense of fiscal discipline at the Pentagon, bloating military spending. We must put an end to the practice

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the unquestioned champion of discretionary spending—money the government chooses to spend, rather than is obliged to pay for entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. With more than $700 billion in discretionary funds available, the Pentagon far outpaces its nearest competition, the Department of Health and Human Services, at $80 billion.

Since 2001, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that Congress has approved $1.12 trillion in supplemental appropriations, 90 percent of which—$1.01 trillion—has been destined for the Department of Defense. One estimate is that Congress has no control over one-fifth of supplemental war spending; therefore, a rough calculation suggests that some $200 billion has been wasted in 10 years.

While those on the extreme left and in the Tea Party would like to see slashes in the Pentagon’s spending, what DoD’s budget really needs is not gutting, but a solid dose of discipline.

Read the policy memo

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Slider | 2 Comments »

The Defense Budget Sleight of Hand That’s Costing You Billions

Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Look, I get it. If you’re not a budget wonk, I can understand how you might not care about this stuff. But if you’re a progressive and you’re concerned about the Tea Party destroying the EPA for no good reason, then that’s reason to pay attention.

I’ve written a policy memo about something else that is crucial to understand if we want to even the discussion of getting Defense spending under control: it’s simply vital that we end the practice of supplemental war funding bills.

Wait! Wait! Don’t fall asleep. Seriously. We’ve wasted $200 billion over the last ten years through a little-discussed system of back-door Pentagon budgeting, which essentially funds the stuff on DoD’s wish list by falsely calling them “emergency war necessities.” Why, for example, did Congress give Don Rumsfeld an $11 billion slush fund to spend as he pleases without any Congressional oversight?

We have to end this systematic abuse of your taxpayer dollars — start reading here to find out how.

Read the policy memo

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Tom Friedman’s Reading My Stuff on Green Tech and the Military!

Monday, December 20th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Look, I realize that Tom Friedman gets a lot of guff from the liberal intelligensia.  Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone has practically made a second career out of eviscerating Friedman’s sometimes tortured contortions of the Queen’s Tongue.  Certainly, Taibbi scores the odd point: “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” Friedman once wrote about George Bush’s Middle East policy, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.”  What?

Fair enough.  But Tom, a long-time friend of PPI no less, is an insightful writer who, more often than not, is on the right side of history.  Take his column this weekend on the “U.S.S. Prius“:

Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for “out-greening” Al Qaeda, “out-greening” the Taliban and “out-greening” the world’s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel — to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators — to remote bases all over Afghanistan.

Mabus’s argument is that if the U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels, then it could out-green the Taliban — the best way to avoid a roadside bomb is to not have vehicles on the roads — and out-green all the petro-dictators now telling the world what to do.

Let’s just say I’m happy Tom’s reading my stuff.  Yep, on October 12, I wrote the following piece in the Los Angeles Times on the same topic to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S.S Cole in Aden harbor:

America forgets Oct. 12 as seamlessly as it remembers Sept. 11. Ten years ago today, 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and 39 injured in an Al Qaeda attack against the U.S. destroyer Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. The Cole was relatively defenseless during a 24-hour refueling stop when suicide operatives pulled alongside in a small, explosive-laden boat and detonated a charge, ripping a 40-foot hole in the hull.

Though the lessons from 9/11 will be debated for years, Oct. 12′s message is succinct. It is best summed up by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway: “Energy choices can save lives on the battlefield.” The armed forces are searching for next-generation green energy technologies because they provide power at the point of its consumption, which decreases the military’s need to resupply with carbon-based fuels.
…
Mabus is setting big goals for an energy-independent military. He wants to sail a “Great Green Fleet” by 2016 — a full carrier strike group composed of nuclear and hybrid electric ships, as well as biofueled aircraft. By 2020, Mabus wants half of the Navy’s energy to come from alternative sources.

That’s why the Obama administration should consider a Pentagon innovation fund. A few well-spent dollars would help companies tackle the technological learning curve and reduce costs.

To get to where Mabus wants to go, ideas need cash. The Pentagon may have a truly out-of-control budget, but consider this: Radar, GPS and the Internet all started as military-funded projects. The next green technology could be sitting in a lab somewhere, begging for a few dollars to help produce it on a bigger scale.

With conservatives pushing this climate change denial nonsense, it’s an important point that the military is innovating on green-tech because it can’t wait for the political “debate”.  So much the better as more-and-more mainstream writers pick up on this narrative.

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Issues | 2 Comments »

Deficit Commission and Defense Spending: A Scorecard

Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Fully half – $100 billion – of Deficit Commission Chairmen Erskine Bowles’ and Alan Simpson’s reduction proposals target that infamous five-sided building on the Potomac. In a paper containing at least something for everyone to hate, you can almost hear the battle lines being drawn from parochial quarters: weapons makers, veterans groups, and personnel contractors will all howl as their respective cash cows linger in the cross hairs for uncomfortably long periods.

When parsing Bowles’ and Simpson’s suggestions, it’s worth bearing in mind the authors’ guiding principle: “America cannot be great if we go broke.” In essence, the proposal channels the White House’s own National Security Strategy, “Our economy… serves as the wellspring of American power.”

That’s the bad news: both the Deficit Commission and administration are right, and the country is in a bad spot.  Here’s the worse news, as told in the introduction of the Deficit Commission’s Report: The Problem Is Real; the Solution Is Painful; There’s No Easy Way Out; Everything Must Be On the Table, and Washington Must Lead.

The Bowles/Simpson proposals do deserve serious consideration. They also must be placed in context — first, they are “illustrative” cuts, ones that are on the table and illustrate how the Commission might save $100 million in defense over five years. These cuts are on top of Secretary of Defense Bob Gates plan, announced over the summer, to wring $100 billion out of the Pentagon’s $700+ billion budget over five years, by reducing contractors, saving on personnel costs, and riding herd on and/or canceling over-budget and delayed programs. While many of Gates’ plans coincide with Bowles/Simpson (contractors and V-22 Osprey, for example), reconciling what to do with the savings is sure to cause a fight.  More on that below…

It’s most useful to evaluate the Bowles/Simpson illustrative cuts against three core criteria:

  1. Does a proposal fundamentally weaken the country’s ability to defend itself?
  2. If not, does a proposal fundamentally weaken the country’s core non-military national interests?
  3. If not, does the savings benefit to the country outweigh the parochial interest of the proposed cut?

With that in mind, on balance, most of the Commission’s proposals on Defense spending are quite sensible.  For readability’s sake, I’ll lump several of the proposals into larger categories.

First, a starting point:

A simple way to enforce budgetary discipline at the Pentagon starts with one basic policy adjustment: end the practice of supplemental budgeting. DoD has three budgets, not one: a baseline appropriation, plus two “supplemental” appropriations that are supposed to pay for the war, but do oh-so-much-more. I’ve written about the problem for Forbes.com, and you can see an excerpt here:

Having three budgets is like having three strikes in a baseball at-bat — you have the luxury to swing and miss twice. Projects that don’t make the baseline DoD budget (strike one!) can be considered in either of the additional supplementals (strike two! strike three!) before they’re “out.” Ending the supplementals would be like giving the batter just one strike. By combining all defense spending into one (larger) appropriation each year, the batter has just one swing — miss the first time, that’s it. The practice would force Congress to make hard choices that prioritize the war-fighter.

If we have just one budget, it would be much easier to implement many practices recommended in the Bowles/Simpson plan, such as “reducing procurement by 15 percent” and “reduce ‘other procurement’”.  Procurement is bloated with multiple, supplemental budgets.  Having just one a year forces appropriators to make hard choices.

Savings over five years: $28.5 billion, per Commission estimates.

Next, the low hanging fruit amongst the “illustrative” cuts:

Salary freezes for civilians and military, doubling cuts to contracting personnel and replacing some with civilians. These check all categories without question. The commission could perhaps go even further by advocating a freeze in combat pay as well — Yes, our military has performed heroically in difficult circumstances, but we’re talking about not increasing warzone pay, we’re not talking about eliminating it.  Reducing contractors is a no-brainer.

Troop reductions in Europe and Asia. Europe is the easier sell: Twenty years after the Cold War and with staging needs for Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, the American military does not need as extensive a footprint on the European continent.  The Commission proposes reducing American forces in Korea by 17,000 troops, which leave 11,500 by my math. That’s hardly a comforting thought, with an unstable and nuclear-minded North Korean regime in the midst of a power transition.  We would continue to maintain 32,000 in Japan, and it perhaps makes more sense to split reductions between the two countries, even though removing troops from Japan has been a local political hot potato of late.

Modernize TriCare: Let’s be honest: this isn’t a move to “modernize” defense health care, it’s an effort to bring the military’s health system’s co-pays and deductables in line with cost-structures of private insurers.  Does it seem like we’re giving our servicemembers the shaft?  Yes.  But are military health care costs, “are eating the Defense Department alive,” according to Secretary Gates. It’s unfortunate, but servicemembers’ premiums must rise to correct this problem.

Reduce base support, facilities maintenance, retail activities, and DoD schooling: With the exception of closing unused DoD schools, there’s no question these cuts will hurt.  But is reducing the deficit more important?  In these times, yes.

Savings over five years: $45.1 billion, per Commission estimates.

Slightly tougher to swallow:

Weapons Cuts: Not all platforms are created equal: certain are needed for modernization, others for replacement, and yet others to fill niche capabilities.

The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) takes a beating from Bowles/Simpson, something followers of the program probably suspected.  After all, when procurement of the F-22 was ended last year at 187 planes, DoD proclaimed itself ready to buy 2,443 F-35 JSFs instead.  At the time, 2,443 JSFs seemed a preposterously and unrealistically large number.  It still does, which is why a revised purchase plan, mixing in refurbishments of cheaper F-16s and F-18s while cancelling the USMC’s version of the JSF outright, falls within my comfort level.

We’ve already purchased 288 V-22 Osprey, which is two-thirds of the planned buy, and enough to meet the lion’s share of mission requirements.  Along those lines, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle’s (EFV) capabilities are ably substituted by other technologies under development, allowing for EFV’s cancellation.

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Ground Combat Vehicle, and Joint Tactical Radio would be delayed, not canceled, under the Bowles/Simpson plan, which seems reasonable as the Army’s tactical vehicle fleet received an unexpected influx of cash to procure IED-hardened MRAP vehicles for Iraq.

Reduce R&D: This might seem unwise (“Why do we want to cut R&D while we’re dropping weapons? Shouldn’t we invest in developing weapons even if we don’t end up producing them?”), but it’s not as big a deal as it originally seems.  Fact is, by combining the defense budgets and reducing certain weapons buys, R&D organically decreases as a natural function of those actions.

Knowing how Congress works, it’s highly unlikely that these planned weapons buys will be fully endorsed.  But they will likely be negotiated reductions, in order to maintain capability while sending a strong signal that there’s a changing culture of fiscal discipline.

Savings over five years: up to, but probably less than $30.45 billion, per Commission estimates.

Up in the Air:

Secretary of DefenseBob Gates came out with his own plan to trim $100billion from the Pentagon’s budget, which he intended to reinvest in DoD modernization plans. He was coyly getting out in front of Bowles-Simpson, who want to take Gates’ savings and apply them not to modernization, but rather to deficit reduction.

The trick is convincing the Secretary to follow through with these plans, knowing that the Pentagon won’t get to keep all the planned savings. The good news is this fight probably won’t happen, as Gates will likely leave his post before final decisions are made. Savings reinvestments is just one of the reasons the new Secretary’s views on deficit reduction will have to align with Obama’s.

You Can’t Touch This:

The only illustrative cut in the Bowles-Simpson plan that I whole-heartedly disagree with is the notion of canceling the Navy’s Future Maritime Prepositioning Force. These plans are currently under study, and if executed correctly, could end up saving money while allowing the Navy to project force more efficiently in an era of restrained budgets. There’s still work to be done here, and at $2.7 billion in potential savings, isn’t exactly a budget buster.

Photo credit: pingnews.com

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues | 1 Comment »

These Just May Be The Lunatics We’re (Not) Looking For: Conservatives on Conservatives

Monday, November 8th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Here’s how Bill Kristol, Fox News contributor and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, summed up a panel discussion I attended at the conservative American Enterprise Institute:

This is a truly distinguished panel, and one I’m happy to say that’s fair and balanced.  We have (former Republican Senator from Missouri) Jim Talent, a responsible, respectable hawk.  We have a slightly crazed militarist in Tom Donnelly, and a really insane hegemonic imperialist… me.  It’s the correct spectrum of opinion.

The crowd chuckled its DC chuckle, and Wild Bill began. As it turned out, he was ironically prophetic – these people are batshit crazy. That tens of newly-elected Tea Partiers – folks who have never had much to say on national security and foreign policy issues – are now taking their cues from these jokers is downright terrifying.

But before diving into the political angles, here’s what makes these nutcases tick:

My suspicions were first aroused when former Senator Jim Talent (MO) blamed Bill Clinton for Iraq.  Would that I were joking! Indeed, Talent bemoaned Clinton’s decision to scale down the size of the military in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. He correctly claimed that we were “fully deployed” during Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning that we simply didn’t have the numbers of troops necessary to properly resource both conflicts.  It’s painfully and unfortunately obvious that Talent learned exactly the wrong lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan:

How much money and how many lives would it have saved if we’d have had 14 divisions instead of 10 and had been able to do in Afghanistan at the same time as we were (doing) in Iraq? … The blood, the lives, the people who were dying… we could have been years ahead of that schedule!

In other words, not only was invading Iraq the right call, we should have gone bigger and harder. It’s just too bad that all those people had to die and we had to waste all that money there because Bill Clinton decided to cut the size of the military after the Cold War.

Is Jim Talent a co-author on Decision Points or something?  And here I was thinking that the decision to go to war without fully understanding what we were getting ourselves into caused all the slow progress.

Then there was Kristol’s fundamentally misguided view of defense spending. And that’s odd because he starts out with a correct general premise: “We should cut what should be cut and shouldn’t cut what shouldn’t.”  That’s all well and good, provided you think that there are things to be cut.  So over to you, Bill:

The best possible spending you can have is defense spending! We got out of the Great Depression by having a big defense build up…. The Pentagon has plenty of shovel ready projects!

F-22? No way! Foreign aid? Why not? It was deliciously ironic that while Kristol supported the idea of foreign assistance, he was open to restructuring its $45 billion budget; at the same time, Kristol lauded Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), incoming House Appropriations chairman, saying Ryan “knows how little can be saved in the defense budget — maybe $20 billion.”  Pssst: Bill, that’s almost half of the foreign aid budget you think is big enough to reexamine. It’s also half of State’s.

It all seems so obvious to Talent: The defense budget “is affordable. To argue that it’s not affordable just isn’t right.” It’s especially affordable if we keep cutting taxes, right Jim?

Talent wrapped it all up in a nice big Fox News bow by tying alleged American declinism to Obama’s nefarious plan to nominate Joseph Stalin’s ghost as Tim Geithner’s replacement: “A socialized economy will not let America remain a great power.”  But hold on there –- does a socialist want to “position our nation for success in the global marketplace” via a “strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity”?  Then Talent has some explaining to do, because that’s what the president says in this year’s National Security Strategy.

Thankfully, there was one area these mental dwarfs didn’t completely screw up: New START.  Let’s be clear: Their partisan glasses won’t let them whole-heartedly endorse a very sensible treaty.  Instead, they’re holding it hostage to more missile defense spending.  But they’ll vote for it… hopefully.

Now, this all gets incredibly fascinating when you put it in a political context. The major take-away from this session is that the conservative establishment is pissing down their collective leg at the Tea Party’s soon-to-be dominant position on the Hill.  Their plan is to co-opt the Tea Party by supplying it with mainstream conservative positions in an area the Tea Party doesn’t spend much time thinking about.

Kristol liquored up new Tea Partiers in hopes of bringing her home after the prom:

I think the Tea Party gets a bum wrap. They don’t believe we should lose wars, they don’t believe we should weaken the military, they do believe the world would be safer if Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons.

Jim Talent poured a few shots into Kristol’s punchbowl by hitting the “DC Republican establishment” (note to Talent: you’re a member.)

People who sat around and didn’t do what had to be done in 2001-2004 (specifically: Don Rumsfeld)… it’s a little much for them to be all up in arms because one Tea Party candidate said something that sounded vaguely not quite correct from the point of view of a strong U.S. foreign policy.

They’re pandering, and hard.  Rand Paul doesn’t know it yet, but the Tea Party’s biggest spending hawk is about to vote for an ever-increasing defense budgets soon enough.

It was a mind-blowing Friday morning for yours truly, but was very reassuring in a way: The conservative establishment is as out of touch and irresponsible as always on national security, and they’re trying to take advantage of the strongest but most impressionable subset of their caucus.  That’s why now more than ever, progressives have to offer strong, smart, rational approaches to U.S. national security, military, and foreign policy challenges.

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Remember the Cole

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed in the LA Times:

America forgets Oct. 12 as seamlessly as it remembers Sept. 11. Ten years ago today, 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and 39 injured in an Al Qaeda attack against the U.S. destroyer Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. The Cole was relatively defenseless during a 24-hour refueling stop when suicide operatives pulled alongside in a small, explosive-laden boat and detonated a charge, ripping a 40-foot hole in the hull.

Though the lessons from 9/11 will be debated for years, Oct. 12′s message is succinct. It is best summed up by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway: “Energy choices can save lives on the battlefield.” The armed forces are searching for next-generation green energy technologies because they provide power at the point of its consumption, which decreases the military’s need to resupply with carbon-based fuels.

But there’s a huge problem: Renewable energy technologies, to which Conway refers, aren’t being developed fast enough. One solution is an “innovation fund,” housed in the Pentagon, to help companies bridge the gap between the test lab and the battlefield. Such a fund would use public dollars to leverage private money, scaling up the most promising clean-energy projects. And if a green technology revolutionizes how the military powers itself, that idea might one day power the rest of us too.

Read the full column at the LA Times.

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, PPI in the News | 1 Comment »

McCain’s Missing Cojones on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

I have a friend who canceled plans last year to play recreational football because, “it’s Wednesday, and I usually get home early on Wednesdays and like to have dinner ready for my wife when she gets home from work.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” a second friend lamented, “I wish I could email that sentence to the You of 2006 and see what he has to say about your cojones.”

Such is John McCain on “don’t ask don’t tell.”  Here’s an interview with him in 2006 saying that “the day the leadership of the military comes to me and says, we oughta change the policy, then I think we oughta seriously consider changing it.”  Where are his cojones?

As I highlighted yesterday, the military brass has answered McCain’s call.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and retired General Colin Powell have all signaled a willingness to change the policy.  Back in March of this year, General Petraeus echoed McCain’s 2006 language almost verbatim, saying ““I believe the time has come to consider a change to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”

So you’d think that when the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, America’s most respected retired flag officer and its most respected battlefield commander all endorse a change to DADT, McCain would be good to his word.

Instead, McCain is moving the goal posts.  For McCain, all of a sudden it’s not good enough that the military leadership has let its views be known, because he now claims that by voting on the measure, the Senate would be “ignoring the troops”.  This is a reference to an ongoing survey of active duty troops on their views on DADT, which McCain is working to discredit anyway, just in case it doesn’t say what he wants it to (and frankly, who knows what he wants it to say at this point.)

To be clear, the Pentagon should absolutely solicit the views of active duty personnel as a critical factor in this debate.  However, it is neither the only nor most important input.  Results of any survey must be weighed against historical averages, adjusted for bias and put in perspective.

Might the social norms of macho military culture influence soldiers to indicate false discomfort about serving with homosexuals? Should the opinion of an 18 year old private matter as much as a battle-tested Four-Star general with 40 years of military experience?  Keep in mind that the military’s rigid command structure regularly demands that its leaders make choices in the best interests of the country.  And those leaders have clearly spoken.

John McCain’s consistent inconsistencies (ha!) have been well documented by my friend Max Bergmann.  It’s curious why McCain, ex-maverick and having successfully beaten back a Tea Party challenge in his recent Arizona primary, continues down this orthodox conservative path.  Let’s hope John McCain remembers the “him” of 2006.  Or even better, the McCain of 2000.

Photo credit: Wigwam Jones

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It’s Time to Repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”

Monday, September 20th, 2010
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

A few events over the last few weeks continue to highlight the importance of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy the Obama administration is on the verge of repealing – that is, provided members of his Senate caucus don’t flip out before Tuesday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee is set to vote on the measure in the defense authorization bill and move it to a full Senate vote.  The swing votes in committee may be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Rs-ME), who have said they’re unsure how they’ll vote.

DADT was always meant as a transitional policy from the Clinton era, born out of a fight the 42nd president picked (and essentially lost) with the military brass.  It’s time to move our military into the 21st century — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has endorsed its end, as has Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.  So has Colin Powell.

I worked for the Pentagon for about five years, and I know and worked with homosexual members of the armed forces.  Their orientation never affected their ability to serve, or their subordinates’ ability to respect them.  Countries including Britain, Denmark, and Israel have all realized that being gay and being in the military is a simply a non-issue.

Last week, Jonathan Hopkins, an Army captain honorably discharged this August for being gay, had this to say in the NYT following his forced separation from the military services:

In my case, after the military learned from others that I was gay, I served for 14 more months during investigations and administrative actions to discharge me. Everyone knew, so, essentially, I lived for more than a year in a post-D.A.D.T. work environment.

…

Amid all of that, the unit continued to function and I continued to be respected for the work I did. Many, from both companies I commanded, approached me to say that they didn’t care if I was gay — they thought I was one of the best commanders they’d ever had. And unbeknownst to me, many had guessed I was probably gay all along. Most didn’t care about my sexuality. I was accepted by most of them, as was my boyfriend, and I had never been happier in the military. Nothing collapsed, no one stopped talking to me, the Earth spun on its axis, and the unit prepared to fight another day.

John Nagl, president of the bipartisan CNAS, commented on Hopkins, his former charge, in Defense News:

Jonathan is the third combat veteran I personally know who has left the Army under the terms of DADT. Collectively, they represent almost a decade of combat experience, a big handful of Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars, service as aide-de-camps to general officers and as platoon leaders and company     commanders in combat, and the investment of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. They have offered blood, sweat, and tears in defense of a nation that discriminates against them for no good reason.

This policy must end.

The cause has even received the attention of Lady Gaga, heretofore known as the spokeswoman of our times, who called for an end DADT at a rally in Collins’ Maine. She’s the most followed person on Twitter, and if she can motivate a few fans to show up, Tweet, and call the Senator, it might just make a difference

The House has already voted to repeal this highly discriminatory policy, and the Senate hangs in the balance.  If the issue is left to the next Congress, there’s no telling if a more conservative Senate would ever get around to it, which is why tomorrow’s vote is crucial. With the rise of the Tea Party and general rightward slant of the conservative movement today, it’s little wonder that Senator Collins is gun-shy about reiterating her support of a DADT repeal.  One hopes she musters the courage to do what’s right.

Photo credit: Enrico Fuente

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Posted in A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues | 2 Comments »

CyberSecurity: Preventing The Next 9/11

Monday, September 13th, 2010
Sarah Granger


Sarah Granger is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. She is an editor and contributor to four books on computer security and the founder of PublicEdge, which advises progressive organizations on new media.

by Sarah Granger

I remember the feeling I had when first visiting Pearl Harbor, and again years later when flying into Manhattan just after September 11, 2001. There’s an eerie quietness about the ships buried underwater, and I still see the faces of people I met in the World Trade Center.

We were warned about those attacks. We may not have known the exact details, but in retrospect, we could have done more – much more – to prevent them. Today, we face a similar threat in cyberspace.
While we don’t know the exact details, we know something is coming, and the devastation could be far more deadly.

A cyber attack – by terrorists or a state – could look like sudden power outages, scrambled data in financial systems, air traffic accidents, water contamination, and mass media propaganda about all of the above. All of this can be done on computers from halfway across the globe. We’ve already seen examples of it – tests, so to speak – in other countries and within smaller networks. In 2008, Russian hackers took down Georgian government websites in an effort to throw off the administration during turf conflicts. Hundreds of Lithuanian servers went down earlier in the year in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack also by Russian hackers flexing their muscles in protest of the law banning public display of Soviet era artifacts. According to U.S. government sources, other countries have seen attacks on their power grids.

The nightmare scenario could involve air strikes with no warning systems enabled, missiles arriving from unknown origins. Dirty bombs could get through port security as logic bombs crush the remaining networks. Meanwhile, with financial systems crippled and damaged infrastructure, panic would ensue and local governments would be ill-equipped to deal with so many simultaneous problems. We could find ourselves with multiple major cities suffering from Katrina-like aftermaths – massive numbers of homeless, injured, without power or resources, while looters take to the streets.

Though no terrorist organization is yet known to have this capacity, most experts say we have less than five years before the first major cyber attack on U.S. soil. In a recent meeting with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand , she told a group of bloggers she thought five years would be a generous timeline. We know hacker cells operating in Russia and China already have the skills and the tools necessary, as do some in the Middle East. Terrorists may be next.

Over the past year, the Obama administration and the Pentagon have begun to take the issue more seriously, appointing a new White House Cyber Security Advisor and establishing the U.S. Cyber Command. While this marks a dramatic improvement, it is far from enough. We know logic bombs have already been placed into critical networks but what we don’t know is: when will they explode? And who put them there?

Fortunately, some members of Congress are working to address the situation. Both S. 1438, Fostering a Global Response to Cyber Attacks Act (Gillibrand) and S. 3193, International Cyberspace and Cybersecurity Coordination Act of 2010 (Kerry) address the international coordination necessary to seek and obstruct attackers. This is an important step in both preventing attacks and bringing the perpetrators to justice, although another more aggressive strategy of pre-emptive reactions to attacker stands on shaky legal ground.

We also must ready our military Cyber Command. Captain Daryl Hancock of the U.S. Fleet CYBERCOM (U.S. Navy 10th Fleet) spoke about their progress at the International Conference on Cyber Security recently, emphasizing they will be operational on schedule for next month. Still, we need more resources to manage future threats. H.R. 4061, The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2010 (Lipinsky) and S. 773, The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (Rockefeller & Snowe), attempt to address this, but training thousands of people to act as first responders to cyber attacks that could come in a variety of forms takes time and resources.

Since the Internet resides on a network of nodes owned and operated by a wide range of entities, our security rests in the hands of many people. Developing a nationwide attitude of awareness and preparation will reduce the likelihood that a large-scale cyber attack will have lasting consequences like the disasters of the past. We have the opportunity now to reduce the possible destruction that could result from these attacks. It’s in our hands, and in the hands of those who represent us.

Photo credit: The Egglepant

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