How does America face the challenge of a $16.4 trillion national debt, while meeting competing domestic, foreign policy and national security goals? This question, brought to the fore once again by the so-called fiscal cliff, has sparked discussion on everything from across-the-board Defense Department cuts to reducing civilian and military personnel to cutting infrastructure with new rounds of base realignment and closure, or BRAC.
While some of these deserve serious attention, one bold part of the answer that is all but ignored has all of the uncommon virtues of being financially prudent, supportive of our stated shift toward Asia and nearly guaranteed to save hundreds of service members’ lives. Namely, the rapid drawdown of our forces in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, this has become a political third rail, even though that war costs us several hundred billion dollars per year and, from a purely analytical perspective, is not making progress — at least not in the right direction.
