By Cindy Williams*
May 23, 2001
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seems determined to seek an additional $20-to-$50 billion in defense spending in each of the next six years. President Bush and the Congress should reject this demand.
For years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others have warned that the military could not afford to retain its existing force structure,complicated weapons programs and vast infrastructure without a big budget increases. But the Pentagon chose to ignore those warnings four years ago during the first congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review. Instead of reducing forces and programs to fit the budget, or admitting defeat in the battle to keep a lid on post-Cold War defense expenditures, the Defense Department decided to keep virtually all forces and equipment plans intact and -- against all reason -- vowed to hold budgets constant for a decade.
Within a few months of the 1997 review, the military chiefs complained they were on the razor's edge of a readiness crisis and needed massive infusions of cash. Four years and repeated budget boosts later, the CBO still reports that, after adjusting for inflation, maintaining today's forces will cost about $350 billion a year -- or $40 billion more than we spend today.
Such big budget increases are neither neither necessary nor inevitable. They will do nothing to improve the state of the nation's armed forces. Giving in to military's demands for more money is like increasing the credit limit for a family struggling under a mountain of debt. What the family needs is to get its spending under control and not be rewarded for living beyond its means.
There are plenty of ways to avert the budget growth CBO projects; adopting them will be good for the military and for the nation.
First, we must stop pretending that the military's first priority is to fight and win in two major theater wars simultaneously -- each of them about the size of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The two-war standard, adopted as the Cold War was ending, creates problems for military units when they are assigned other duties, like peacekeeping or humanitarian assistance, but are somehow expected to remain ready on a moment's notice to fight in a large regional war.
Moreover, the standard greatly exaggerates the threats posed by our two most plausible enemies. Modifying the unreasonable standard to reflect realistic threats and priorities for the future would allow the Pentagon to eliminate 15 to 20 percent of Army battalions, Navy ships, and Air Force tactical squadrons. Such reductions would open the door to reshaping the forces for post-Cold War realities and could save more than $25 billion a year.
Reducing our nuclear forces, as the Bush administration plans, will also save money. Cutting back to START III levels of 1,000 to 2,500 nuclear warheads can save $1 billion or more.
In addition, it is time to rein in the department's ambitious purchasing plans. Canceling just one of the three advanced tactical planes that the Defense Department wants , and replacing it with a current-generation system, could save nearly $4 billion a year. Canceling other new-generation weapons and substituting current-generation or refurbished items could result in further savings of billions of dollars.
We should also eliminate more of the excess infrastructure left over from the Cold War. Closing 50 military bases and reducing excess capacity in the department's laboratories and test-and-evaluation centers can save up to $6 billion a year, after an initial expenditure. Consolidating some maintenance depots and combining some classroom training activities can save another $1.5 billion. Reducing the military's medical infrastructure to the size needed to treat service members in wartime, and turning to private-sector health plans for military families and retirees, can eventually save more than $5 billion a year.
These measures alone can save more than the $40-billion shortfall expected by the CBO over the long term if we insist on maintaining our armed forces at their current level. Of course, actual savings could fall short of the experts' predictions. And implementing such measures will take enormous political will.
But the point is clear: A big rise in defense spending is neither necessary nor inevitable. The budgetary pressures that the Defense Department faces can be offset by reshaping forces to reflect future needs rather than Cold War visions, ditching excess infrastructure, and restraining the impulse to replace every single piece of equipment with a more complicated, next-generation system.
The president and Congress should enforce current spending limits and insist that the Pentagon live within its means.
Cindy Williams is a principal research scientist in the
Security Studies Program at MIT and the editor of Holding
the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century
(MIT Press, 2001).