Young people may lack sufficient experience to realize that many things that used to work no longer seem to function. Those of us with more mileage on the odometer of life have enough data to make invidious comparisons.
Yes, people used to get polio, but when vaccines were discovered they didn’t refuse to take them because they believed in urban myths. Yes, in industrial America there was appalling environmental pollution, but cities rarely allowed drinking water to give residents lead poisoning.
In the news last week you could learn that the VA unintentionally cut off benefits to thousands of vets who depend on them. Why? Because their ancient data processing equipment went cuckoo when a simple software update was attempted. And they seem to have no idea how to fix it, potentially putting 450,000 people at risk of deprivation.
Similarly, outmoded voting machines in Georgia and Florida made a recount of votes an endeavor fraught with peril and uncertainty. Do we see a theme developing here? Could it be that cutting government spending for ideological reasons (and in order to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them) has real world consequences?
Is winning re-election by bribing the one percent and lying to everyone else worth the loss of faith in democracy, shortchanged vets, and poisoned drinking water? How about an existential threat? Are voters really prepared to risk their lives for an anti-big government ideology?
Those may be the stakes according to a new report by the National Defense Strategy Commission. It found that the military edge of the United States has degraded dangerously. As a child of the Cold War, I grew up in a world where paranoid fear of imminent nuclear Armageddon was one feature of life we could rely on.
The Russkies were always coming, elections hinged on who “lost” China, and any military investment by the Communists meant we would all be incinerated if we didn’t counter it with a response double, triple, quadruple the size. “Overkill” wasn’t a pejorative, it was an article of faith. Though Churchill did supposedly argue that even conventional bombing could eventually do no more than make the rubble of the enemy bounce, and nukes would be even more quickly excessive.
But an arms race and overkill were very good for the bottom line of the military-industrial complex. We still spend an absurd amount of money on defense — $716 billion this year — four times as much as China and ten times as much as Russia. But the report argues it isn’t necessarily well spent and faults Pentagon strategic planning for “questionable assumptions and weak analysis.”
It concludes that our adversaries have studied us and have learned from our successes and perhaps even more from our follies. While we have squandered trillions on small, regional, interminable, inconclusive conflicts, they have been preparing for major confrontations.
As a result, we are “at risk of being overwhelmed if forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.” The Far East, Europe, and the Middle East come to mind. The report finds our ability to counter such large scale threats “under-resourced” and “insufficient to defeat a major enemy while deterring other enemies.”
An adversary like China has one a huge advantage in manpower, and another important advantage over our free enterprise, democratic system. Single-mindedness. If Xi Jinping and his advisors decide a priority is cyberwar capability or a blue water navy or 10,000 tanks, there is no debate. Vast resources are committed, manpower mobilized, and the decision from the top is implemented — or else.
In our system, the buying of weapons systems is influenced by competing services, lobbying by suppliers, located in the districts of friendly congressmen, and the guns are financed in competition with butter. Often compromise plays a part. New shiny objects are easier to sell than expensive maintenance and upkeep of existing systems or, conversely, penny-pinching causes outmoded gear to be preferred over the risk of the untried but needed innovation.
The Defense Strategy Commission’s recommendations include: For the Navy, more and improved subs and sea lift capability; for the Air Force, more reconnaissance and stealth bombers; for the Army, more armor, long range precision missiles and air-defense logistical forces. Our nuclear deterrent needs to be modernized and more air and missile defense added. Perhaps most importantly, a large commitment for R&D is required, especially for “leap-ahead” technologies.
Doing all that would require the military to bite the bullet and abandon the old to afford the new, but it would also require taxpayers to swallow the bitter pill of taxes sufficient to finance safety in a changing environment. There was a bipartisan, public consensus on the need for security at whatever cost during the Cold War. The result may have been appalling waste, but not thermonuclear war.
Is it possible to achieve the same level of commitment today? Highly unlikely. Trust has been squandered by inconclusive foreign adventures of dubious utility. In Korea, to some extent, but certainly in Vietnam and Iraq where the conflicts were fraudulently sold and incompetently pursued. Now we may actually face a serious threat from a powerful adversary, but a cynical public may no longer be willing to believe anything their political and military leaders tell them. The flock of boy who cried wolf ended badly when a real threat loomed but nobody listened.