Federal Surplus Mustn’t Neglect Defense
I normally would not expect to find profound observations about national security in Rolling Stone magazine. Nonetheless, in an article on West Point last November, the magazine noted that “when you look into academy history, you keep bumping into America’s history, as if the same story is being told two different ways.”
It was an astute observation not only about West Point but also regarding American armed forces as a whole. Contrary to what some people think, our military services are not interest groups pursuing their own narrow agendas, but vital national institutions linked to our nation’s success, past and future. If Rolling Stone can figure this out, why is it so difficult for our national policymakers? Despite the most recent projection that over the next decade we can expect to accumulate in the national coffers a surplus of nearly $1 trillion, and despite the fact that over the past decade military cuts have helped to reduce the federal deficit, there is little attention given to the need to use some of this new wealth to address the accumulating problems of a force that has been used too often, paid too little and recapitalized too slowly.
When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, it was clear that we were entering a new strategic environment. Defense spending, which had consumed as much as 6% of our gross domestic product, was clearly going to decline sharply as domestic priorities stepped to the fore. Accordingly, those of us in positions of senior responsibility in the Pentagon began drafting plans to make our armed forces smaller and to reconfigure them for new missions.
Yet as we made the force nearly 40% smaller in terms of units, none of us anticipated that the burdens of peace would be so pronounced. Rather than a period of quiet in which new organizations could be tested and new equipment developed, we have found ourselves in a chaotic age where our substantially smaller forces are used with greater frequency and for longer duration than any of us had imagined. Money that had been intended for modernized equipment was diverted to support a wide array of contingency operations. Because equipment was being used more heavily, an inventory that was aging quickly as new procurement was deferred began wearing out at a quicker pace. This combination of lowered replacement rates and increased operational rates creates what senior defense officials call the modernization “death spiral.”
A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that replacing the current capital stock as planned in the Pentagon’s 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review requires a defense procurement account more than $100 billion higher than the $60.3 billion in the latest budget. Providing such funds would necessitate raising the defense budget by more than 30%, an amount exceeding that seen in the Reagan administration. The services themselves have identified major shortages of nearly $30 billion annually. This means procurement should be raised to $90 billion annually--still a hefty sum, but significantly more modest than the CSIS projection. The common ground here is the recognition that current levels of defense spending are inadequate. Although procurement receives the most attention, the recent tightness of labor markets and increasing wage rates have made recruiting more difficult.
Yet despite these disturbing trends, there is little discussion about the need to use a portion of the surplus to repair the more seriously frayed edges of our military fabric. President Clinton deserves some credit for increasing defense spending in real terms with his recent budget submission, but there is little mention about defense on the campaign trail. Clearly, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid deserve attention, and the surplus has limits. Yet we also need to think about our armed forces. Further reductions in the force or eliminating congressional pork or finding additional “business efficiencies” will not solve the problem.
If we mean to continue efforts to shape world events, to respond rapidly and rigorously when crises erupt, to retain an innovative and competitive defense industrial base, we simply have to spend more on defense. Failing to do so will eventually result in a force unable to bear the burdens that have been heaped on it over the past 10 years.