Plenty of cash for entitlements, but not enough for defense.
The White House made clear last week that it had no interest in Social Security reform, citing budget projections showing a shrinking deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio. This week Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel rolled out a budget that would shrink the Army to pre-World War II levels, on the excuse that the Pentagon needs to recognize "the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges."
So we're rolling in dough when it comes to entitlements, and on Wednesday the President also proposed to spend $302 billion on roads. Yet we're out of cash for defense. This is the policy combination that has made much of Europe bankrupt and defenseless at the same time.
Global View columnist Bret Stephens on a Pentagon proposal to shrink the Army to its pre-WWII size. Photo credit: Associated Press.
Speaking Monday at the Pentagon, Mr. Hagel stressed how much better off the military was under his budget than it would have been under sequestration, which may be true. And there are points in the Hagel plan to support. It preserves the Marine Corps at close to its current strength of 190,000. It maintains a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers. It promises investment in our decaying nuclear infrastructure. It retires the Eisenhower-era U-2 spy plane in favor of unmanned Global Hawks and cuts purchases of the problem-plagued and vulnerable Littoral Combat Ship to 32 ships from 52, in favor of plans for a more capable frigate-like alternative.
The Secretary also called for paring personnel costs, which account for about half the Pentagon budget. He's asking for further base closures and warned that he'd use his discretionary authority to cull bases if Congress balked. He'd be within his rights. The Pentagon "is operating at 20% excess capacity in bases—many billions a year," says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C. think tank. "This is the height of waste."
That's the good news. The bad news is Mr. Hagel's promise of a military structured to "carry out a variety of missions more relevant to the President's defense strategy."
Thus the special-ops forces favored by Mr. Obama will grow to nearly 70,000 personnel, a force larger than the entire German Army. We're all for the SEALs and Rangers, but it didn't require a brigade to kill Osama bin Laden or free Captain Phillips. The Army's helicopter fleet will be cut by 25%. The entire fleet of A-10 "Warthog" ground-attack jets, one of the most reliable combat aircraft the U.S. has ever fielded, will be retired, presumably to be replaced by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but not until 2020.
Those decisions are of a piece with the headline news that the Army will shrink to between 440,000 and 450,000 troops from 520,000 today. "Since we are no longer sizing the force for prolonged stability operations, an Army of [the current] size is larger than required to meet the demands of our defense strategy," Mr. Hagel said. Translation: Since we're never going to fight a war like Iraq again, we can do with a much smaller force.
One problem with this thinking is that it ignores that the Army was too small even at the height of the Iraq War. As former Army Vice Chief of Staff Jack Keane reminds us, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had to be fought sequentially, not concurrently, because the U.S. lacked the manpower to conduct two full counterinsurgency campaigns at the same time. "And they weren't big wars," Gen. Keane adds.
It is hubris and bad policy to assume the U.S. will never again fight another lengthy, manpower-intensive war that begins abruptly and requires a swift response—think of Korea or Kuwait. Critics of Iraq often claim it was a "war of choice," but the reality of these cuts is that it will leave the next Commander in Chief with far fewer choices to deter aggression or respond to a threat. There could not have been a surge in Iraq, and thus a military victory, with an Army of 450,000 troops.
The steep reduction in manpower and equipment is an invitation to unexpected aggression. In his speech, Mr. Hagel insisted that the force levels he envisions would be sufficient to protect the homeland, win a war in one theater, and conduct a successful holding action in a second. But how would a U.S. that found itself in another Gulf War respond if China took advantage of the opportunity to seize Taiwan, or if Russia took Ukraine? The purpose of fielding a large Army is to minimize the temptations for aggression.
Mr. Hagel concluded Monday's speech by quoting Henry Stimson, the Republican statesman Franklin Roosevelt recruited in July 1940 to prepare the country for war. Stimson inherited an Army of 270,000 troops and within a year it had grown to 1.46 million. Mr. Hagel, another Republican named to the Pentagon by a Democratic president, may imagine he's walking in Stimson's footsteps, but he and the President are taking the Army in the opposite direction.