Bush's Pentagon plan: spend now, ask questions later
June 27, 2001
The Bush administration's plan to increase Pentagon spending by $33 billion next year is unjustifiable.
Bush had pledged to hold off on major increases in military spending until after Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld completes his review of U.S. military strategy, but on June 23 the Pentagon announced the proposed increases anyway.
The administration's new military blueprint will cost taxpayers $343 billion next year, which includes the Pentagon budget plus the cost of nuclear-weapons activities at the Department of Energy. This is an enormous sum.
The Pentagon's proposed $33 billion increase alone equals twice the combined annual military budgets of all of the so-called states of concern -- Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria -- that are viewed as likely U.S. adversaries, according to the Council for a Livable World.
The biggest single item in the proposed budget is missile defense. Bush's pet project comes in at more than $7 billion, a 40 percent increase from the current budget. And that's just the down payment on a program that could cost up to $240 billion over the next two decades if plans to deploy missile interceptors from land, sea, aircraft and space hold firm.
It would be one thing if these vast expenditures were needed to defend the country, but they're not. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak noted earlier this year that if we can't defend the country for $300 billion per year, then we need some new generals.
Lawrence J. Korb, a former top official in the Reagan Pentagon, went a step further by writing in an April 2 In These Times article that better planning could cut $64 billion from current Pentagon spending levels and lead to more effective defense forces.
When Rumsfeld began his defense review, the conventional wisdom was that the Bush administration would make some hard tradeoffs in the defense budget to keep the cost of its military ambitions from going through the roof. It was assumed that Cold War-era systems designed to fight a Soviet war machine that no longer existed would be cast aside in favor of quicker, more maneuverable, long-range systems.
But now it looks like Rumsfeld just wants to have it all -- the old cold-war weapons, the new "quick strike" systems and a costly new missile shield.
Under the guise of pursuing "reform," Rumsfeld has surrounded himself with a phalanx of defense industry executives who will be given unprecedented authority. The former vice president of Northrop Grumman, James Roche, is now secretary of the Air Force. Rumsfeld is considering buying 40 B-2 bombers at $735 million apiece. Northrop Grumman makes the B-2.
Secretary of the Navy Gordon England comes to the job straight from General Dynamics, which makes submarines for the Pentagon.
And Under Secretary of the Air Force Albert E. Smith will be in a position to funnel billions of dollars in contracts for military space projects to his former employer, Lockheed Martin.
Having former executives of military contractors run the Pentagon risks putting the interests of the contractors over the nation's legitimate defense needs.
The best way to control runaway military spending is to move toward preventing new threats from emerging, not by investing hundreds of billions of dollars in questionable, new military hardware.
To guard against such threats, the Bush administration needs to do several things.
First, it must abandon its costly missile-defense fantasy in favor of bold diplomatic moves to reduce, and eventually eliminate, nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
Second, it must cancel costly Cold War relics like the F-22 fighter, new aircraft carrier battle groups and the Crusader artillery system.
And finally, it needs to reduce and restructure U.S. forces to handle one major regional conflict plus peacekeeping duties.
If Rumsfeld is unwilling or unable to take these commonsense steps, members of Congress and the public must step forward to demand them.
Otherwise we will mortgage our future to an ill-conceived, overpriced military buildup that will fatten the wallets of major weapons makers and rob America and the world of a chance at peace.
William D. Hartung is a Senior Research Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York City. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.