At The Hill Brad Dress takes note of former acting SecDef Christopher C. Miller’s case that we should cut our defense budget in half:
Former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller is making the case for the Pentagon’s budget to be cut in half in his new memoir, “Soldier Secretary,†arguing the U.S. military should be molded into a leaner and nimbler fighting force with prioritized areas of focus.
At the end of his memoir, Miller writes the U.S. must adapt to the threats posed by foreign adversaries like Russia and China by reforming the military, which he calls “too big and bloated and wasteful.â€
“Our colossal military establishment was essential for our Cold War victory, but the Cold War has been over for 30 years,†Miller writes. “If we are truly going to end American adventurism and retool our military to face the challenges of the next century, we should cut military spending by 40-50 percent.â€
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2023 authorized $857 billion in topline defense spending, an increase from the $777 billion passed in the last fiscal year.
The U.S. spends far more than any other nation on defense, including China, which is in second place, spending around $300 billion on defense.
“We could cut our defense budget in half and it would still be twice as big as China’s,†Miller writes in his memoir.
I’m sympathetic with that and think we need to do some soul searching. Are we cutting enough “bang for our buck”? Does spending more on defense actually give us the defense we need and want or does it actually make it less effective? Would cutting the defense budget result in less “adventurism” as argued by Sec. Miller or would we still be engaging in ongoing conflicts and aggressive moves, just doing it less effectively and fraying around the edges more?
My own rather unpopular view is that reducing the number of general officers and flag officers sharply would both cut spending and improve our efficiency. It should also be noted that the “topline defense spending” is only a fraction of what we spend on defense when you take the total cost into consideration. That’s well over a trillion. I also think that cuts should be concentrated in the standing army but that’s getting into ways and means.
At this point we can’t seem to cut defense spending at all let alone cut it in half. Support for more defense spending has become a “valence issue“.
Cutting spending will bring charges of being weak on defense. That loses elections. Politicians, as a group, would rather have a not needed war than cut spending on defense.
Steve
Dave Schuler: Can We Reduce It At All Let Alone Cut It In Half?
The rule of thumb is that half of everything is wasted—assuming good management. The question is always “Which half?”
The whole idea is kinda dumb – even our feckless Congress would not just wake up one day and decide to cut military spending in half.
The gist seems to be a “starve the beast” strategy to force the DoD to become more efficient – but bureaucracies don’t work that way.
What’s really needed is more effective oversight and a laundry list of reforms. Start with forcing the DoD to pass a financial audit, which it has never been able to do.
But the reality is that most of the inefficiencies in the DoD are buttering someone’s bread, so politically this is difficult to do, even if our government and political parties wanted any kind of reform, which they don’t.