Billions in waste and not a dime's
difference By Frida Berrigan
The war in Iraq is a failure. The "global
war on terror" cannot be won by military might
alone. Access to health care is a right for all.
The growing divide between rich and poor is a
problem. Torture is un-American.
The
Democratic
candidates for president - both
mainstream and long shots - tend to agree on these
and many other issues that position them as smart
and compassionate alternatives to the policies and
priorities of President George W Bush and his
administration. But on the
one issue that profoundly impacts all of the
above, there is not enough difference. Most
Democratic candidates for president speak of
increasing rather than slashing the military
budget.
Since Bush came into office
in 2001, the Pentagon's budget has increased by
more than one-third. The US$481 billion proposed
for 2008 –the $459 billion appropriations plus
the nuclear weapons programs of the Department
of Energy - is a jump of more than 10% over current
spending. To be clear, this is a huge figure even
before factoring in the costs of military
operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in
under the "war on terror". A recent analysis of
the emergency supplemental budgets to pay for the
war by the Congressional Research Service finds
that (so far) a total of another $607 billion has
been spent since September 11, 2001.
The
United States is currently spending more on the
military than at the height of the Ronald Reagan
military build-up (when the US had a nuclear-armed
superpower rival) or during the Vietnam or Korean
wars. Thanks to the Bush administration, the
United States now spends about as much on its
military as the rest of the world spends
collectively, according to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
Given these figures - and the fact that
preponderant military spending has not equaled an
unassailable military or the fulfillment of the
Bush administration's objectives - there is plenty
of fodder for Democratic candidates wishing to
take on the Bush administration's love affair with
the Pentagon.
In the 2008 military budget,
the White House showed its devotion to weapons
manufacturers and its disdain for men and women in
uniform by packing the "reconstituting the forces"
area of the budget with $51 billion in weapons
that are not only not worn out by the fighting in
Iraq and Afghanistan - but aren't even relevant.
There is money for 20 F-22 tactical
aircraft originally designed to engage Soviet
fighter planes in high-speed aerial dogfights.
Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia does not have any fighter
planes. Among other useless programs was $74
million to continue research on an unmanned spy
plane that is years away from being fielded.
A tale of two budgets While
this administration justifies the spending as
necessary to fight the terrorists over there so
that the US does not face them at home, the
numbers tell a different story - a story of two
separate military budgets.
The first is
bursting with billions for new fighter planes,
nuclear-powered submarines and ballistic missile
components. This is the budget that has propelled
spiraling profits for weapons manufacturing
companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop
Grumman.
The other military budget
is plagued with the belt-tightening one usually
sees in education and social service programs. The
army suffered a $530 million shortfall in 2006 that
led to cuts at military hospitals and no new money
for medical research on key procedures like
dealing with traumatic brain injuries - the signature of
the improvised-explosive-device war in Iraq.
All the Democrats who wish to sit behind
the desk in the Oval Office criticize the
administration for not providing ammunition,
communication systems, armored vehicles and
helicopters to US soldiers in the field. They also
take Bush to task for always leading with the
Pentagon and not providing enough support to the
State Department's non-military counter-terrorism
programs.
After $20 million was slashed
from their counter-terrorism program budget in
2007, the State Department is requesting only $150
million for 2008. Its highly touted Regional
Strategic Initiative, bringing together different
agencies to collaborate on the ground, is getting
a mere $1 million each year - the kind of money
the Pentagon loses in its sofa cushions every
week.
What the candidates say But, in most cases, the Democrats are not
taking the next step to say that the United States
does not need to spend more on the military, it
needs to spend smarter. Of the leading Democratic
candidates, only John Edwards has identified
specific weapons systems he would red-line.
In a speech before the Council on Foreign
Relations on May 23, 2007, Edwards vowed to root
out "cronyism and waste" while "increasing
efficiency in the Pentagon" and investing
"substantial additional resources into maintenance
of our [military] equipment". He also said that if
elected, "I would direct my secretary of defense
to launch a comprehensive, tough review of fraud,
waste and abuse - and put an end to it. One
example is missile defense and offensive space
based weapons, which are costly and unlikely to
work."
Pursuing this strategy as president
would mean taking on the military-industrial
complex, which has been living high-on-the-hog
throughout the Bush administration. It would be an
uphill battle, but one worth pursuing.
Senator Barack Obama has not talked about
cutting the military budget. In fact, when asked
recently in Cedar Rapids if he would cut the
military budget, he responded: "Actually, you'll
probably see an initial bump in military spending
in an Obama administration." He went on to explain
that those resources would be used to "reset"
forces worn out by war in Iraq and to cover adding
as many as 80,000 soldiers and marines to the US
military.
Senator Hillary Clinton is proud
to be the first New York senator to serve on the
Armed Services Committee and tends to
over-compensate for her gender and her husband's
reputation (deserved or not) as anti-military by
being uncritically pro-military. She has also
gotten behind the idea of increasing the size of
US forces: "I have joined other Democrats and
Republicans in proposing that we expand the army
by 80,000 troops, that we move faster to expand
the special forces, and do a better job of
training and equipping the National Guard and
Reserves."
None of these front-running
candidates has identified the short- or long-term
costs of adding troops, where the money would come
from, or perhaps most importantly, the missions
these troops would be engaged in once the
Democratic leadership succeeds in "bringing them
home".
Department of peace?
Dennis Kucinich, the representative from
Ohio, is considered a very long shot for
president. In fact, Edwards and Clinton found
common ground a while back in wanting to limit
future debates to what Edwards called a "more
serious group". Kucinich consistently calls for a
more limited and defensive role for the US
military and putting more resources into diplomacy
and global engagement. His Department of Peace is
one indication of the kind of vision his candidacy
embraces.
There is no Department of Peace
in any of the Republican platforms, but their
efforts to strike a different posture than Bush
and company do not include a radical revamp of the
Pentagon budget or taking on the weapons
manufacturers who reap the benefits of a
war-without-end strategy.
Despite John McCain's prisoner-of-war
credibility, Rudy Giuliani's September
11-forged patriotism and Mitt Romney's neo-Republican
suave, they and most of the other
Republican hopefuls are not promoting a set of
policies that would spend less for more security. Only
the libertarian "maverick" Ron Paul is calling
for smaller budgets - even the military budget
- as a first step to smaller government and
challenges the wisdom of a "war on terrorism" by
calling it a "vague declaration".
The
Unified Security Budget for the United States, a
joint effort of Foreign Policy In Focus and the
Center for Defense Information, outlines $62
billion in cuts to the military budget and another
$52 billion that can be added to budgets for
diplomacy, emergency response, infrastructure and
other non-military defensive tools. Their 38-page
report should be required reading for any
presidential contender who is serious about
charting a more secure and peaceful course for the
United States in the decades to come.
FPIF columnist Frida Berrigan is
a senior program associate at the Arms and
Security Project of the New America
Foundation.
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