White House leaks indicate that President Obama’s upcoming deficit reduction plan will include about $400 billion in cuts from Pentagon budgets over the next 10 years. That might account for as much as 40 percent of the total spending cuts he proposes.
No doubt he will explain that defense spending has to be “on the table” along with other forms of discretionary spending, entitlements and, being a Democrat, taxes on the “wealthy.” And he may adopt the argument that the government’s fiscal health is crucial to American national security.
And the details of the defense cuts will matter, too. The president may include rosy projections about “ending” the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya wars, thus adding avoided war cost “savings” to any reductions in core defense spending. It’s more likely, however, that the cuts will be calculated against the “core” defense budget, thus meaning that there will be another 8 to 10 percent loss in American military power—indeed, when measured in defense “purchasing power,” the loss will be substantially greater.
Of course, the president wouldn’t be making this speech at all if he hadn’t been dragged against his will into a de facto debate with House Republicans over the need to get federal spending under control. The president seems to want to referee between the Democratic left, which will defend entitlements, and the Republican right, which will defend against tax cuts. Neither party’s leaders will defend defense as its top priority.
As we have seen in the plan offered by House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, the president – whose authority as commander in chief is hard to gainsay from the legislature – sets a ceiling on defense spending. Thus Ryan adopted Obama’s 2012 defense numbers without alteration. If the president now lowers the ceiling, it’s a good bet that congressional Republicans will follow suit.
No matter how the numbers are manipulated, the bottom line is that the future American military will be smaller, less modern, and less capable in every way. And America’s ability to provide the global security guarantees that are the elemental force of international politics will also be diminished.
