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Richard Haass on U.S. Foreign Policy
Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass has just published an article in Time magazine (also available here) that challenges many of the comfortable nostrums guiding U.S. foreign policy for at least the last twenty years. He scores a 9 out of 10 in his analysis of what is wrong: we have an inordinate fear of things that shouldn’t be that frightening; we have a misplaced faith in our ability to fix nettlesome problems in distant lands; and we repeatedly stumble into costly and counterproductive wars that we should generally avoid.
Haass then proposes a new doctrine to “help establish priorities and steer the allocation of resources” and “that fits the U.S.’s circumstances.”
It is one that judges the world to be relatively nonthreatening and makes the most of this situation. The goal would be to rebalance the resources devoted to domestic challenges, as opposed to international ones, in favor of the former. Doing so would not only address critical domestic needs but also rebuild the foundation of this country’s strength so it would be in a better position to stave off potential strategic challengers or be better prepared should they emerge all the same.
So far, so good. The problem, however, is not what Haass proposes to do — refocus America’s attention and resources at home, what he calls “restoration” – but rather how he proposes to do it. For all his wisdom in defying the Washington foreign policy consensus, he betrays a typical Washington-centric approach by suggesting that the federal government must take the lead “in restoring this country’s strength and replenishing its resources — economic, human and physical government.”
Restoration is not just about acting more discriminating abroad; it is even more about doing the right things at home. The principal focus would be on restoring the fiscal foundations of American power.
[...]
Reducing discretionary domestic spending would constitute one piece of any fiscal plan. But cuts need to be smart: domestic spending is desirable when it is an investment in the U.S.’s human and physical future and competitiveness.
In other words, the money we save by not waging foolish wars abroad would be redirected to other government projects. Thus, he calls for more federal spending for higher education, despite the fact that such spending has exploded over the past three decades, and has coincided with an equally dramatic rise in tuition – often three to four times the rate of inflation. (H/T N.M.) Haass likewise calls for more money to public transportation, despite the fact that federal support for Amtrak, for example, amounts to a massive subsidy paid from non-riders to the often relatively well-to-do. Similar facts prevail in other government-subsidized transit systems.
Haass is also wrong to perpetuate the myth that we are dependent on Middle East oil. We’re not. The Middle Easterners are dependent upon selling it. We have alternatives to buying their oil, and we don’t need government to force us to exercise them.
Here’s a different approach to restoring America’s strength at home: we should stop asking our brave men and women in uniform to be the world’s policemen; refocus a smaller, less expensive military on a few core missions that are vital to U.S. security; and give every American family a tax cut. If we spent what the average British or French citizen devotes to national security, that could amount to more than $6,000 a year for the average family of four. The savings would be even greater if we matched what Germans and Japanese spend. Every American family could then choose how to spend or invest their money (e.g. Save for college. Pay for bus/train fare. Buy a more fuel-efficient car, etc).
There is already considerable support for cutting the Pentagon’s budget, and I think there would be even more if people believed that these savings would not merely be diverted elsewhere within the federal government. Richard Haass has made an important and timely contribution to the debate over the future of U.S. foreign policy, and I generally concur with his assessment. But he and others should demonstrate the tangible benefits that would flow to the average American from a more prudent, restrained foreign policy. I think that fewer dumb wars and more money in our pockets is a pretty compelling case.
Spending Cuts and National Security
An op-ed by Peter Singer and Michael O’Hanlon in today’s Politico questions the impact of spending cuts on the military. “Substantial defense budget cuts are possible, make no mistake,” the Brookings’ scholars concede, “But they could mean loss of capability, and some may increase security risks.”
Another Brookings scholar, Robert Kagan, is more emphatic, telling Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post that “[The proposed cuts are] utterly irresponsible and dangerous to national security.” Max Boot agrees. Cuts of up to $1 trillion over the next 10 years “would be nothing short of a disaster.” Lawmakers who are considering such cuts, Boot claims, “are flirting with eviscerating American combat capabilities — and with it the role of the United States in world affairs.” AEI’s Tom Donnelly wails: “Nobody has defense as a high priority. It’s increasingly looking like everybody wants to toss the military overboard.”
Wow. Sounds scary. What is actually going on here?
For starters, the military’s budget has still not been cut. As I noted yesterday at the National Interest‘s “The Skeptics”:
The Department of Defense has enjoyed an unbroken streak of rising budgets since 1998. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, U.S. taxpayers now spend more on national security than at any time since the end of World War II. An effort led by South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney to hold the DoD base budget to last year’s levels failed. Mulvaney’s amendment, which would have cut $17 billion from the budget voted out of committee, attracted support from more than a quarter of the House GOP caucus, but was ultimately defeated. So the DoD base budget that emerged from the House continues its growth.
Second, the various proposed cuts to future spending are just that: proposed. As with everything else associated with the debt negotations, the details matter a lot. The cuts might never materialize; future Congresses might simply renege on deals made this summer. More importantly, in nearly every case, they aren’t actual cuts. They are projections based against certain assumptions about future spending. And depending on inflation, the growth of the economy, and a host of other factors, those assumptions will change.
Gauging the Mood of Congress on Military Spending
Amidst the wrangling over a debt deal between the White House and Congress, the most interesting movement pertains to military spending. Several reports today suggest that up to $700 billion in military spending cuts is under consideration, which would amount to a bit more than 10 percent less than current projections over the next 10 years. A more realistic bottom line might be $300 billion, which could be achieved by allowing the budget to grow at the rate of inflation (in other words, no real cuts in spending).
As always, the devil is in the details. From what baseline? Over what time period? Would the cuts apply only to the base DoD budget, or all national security spending, including the costs of the wars, as well as the budgets for the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs? Most important is timing. If the savings are all backloaded in the out years, they may never materialize. Today’s budgets project spending out five or 10 years, and the “savings” really just amount to a new set of projections against that baseline. Plus, these agreements are rarely binding on future congresses; a different cast of characters will be responsible for passing DoD appropriations bills in 2018 or 2020.
One thing is clear, however. People here in Washington are now considering military spending cuts that they thought strategically unwise and politically impossible just a few years ago. And conservatives are joining in. South Carolina Republican Mick Mulvaney offered an amendment to the DoD budget appropriation bill that would have frozen spending at 2011 levels, a $17 billion cut below the amount voted out of committee. Meanwhile, three Democrats and three Republicans co-sponsored an amendment to cut the proposed increase in the FY 2012 budget in half, generating savings of $8.5 billion. The bad news for taxpayers is that both amendments failed. The good news is that some in the GOP are starting to match their rhetorical zeal for spending cuts with actual votes that do so; 43 Republicans voted for both measures. (h/t DSM)
It is no longer credible to declare military spending off limits in the search for savings, and most Americans understand that we can make significant cuts without undermining U.S. security (William Kristol being one of the predictable outliers).
I’ll hazard a prediction: I think that military spending in FY 2012 will be slightly less than President Obama initially requested, but still not less than will be spent in FY 2011 (in other words, they’re still only faking cuts).
To get real cuts, Washington is going to have to clear some things off the military’s plate. If we want a military that costs less, we have to ask it to do less. And I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm for that—yet. Starting a new war in Libya (and signaling that similar missions are in the military’s future) doesn’t help.
Perhaps the key will be to connect two seemingly disconnected dots: our subsidizing defense spending for other rich countries has allowed them to divert money to dubious social spending and a too-large public sector with too-generous pay and benefits. I don’t know how Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) can go to their constituents and say they’re cutting popular programs here in the United States, and holding the line on the DoD’s budget, so that our European and East Asian allies can fend off cuts in their pensions and avoid taking responsibility for their own security.
For more, see the video after the jump.
Cleveland vs. Greenberg on Isolationism (so-called)
Props to Grover Cleveland at Pileus for his short but perceptive take on David Greenberg’s op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times. Cleveland places the piece in the “Not Worth a Read” category and asks:
Hasn’t this kind of simplistic “history” and inaccurate categorization of today’s critics of liberal internationalism/neoconservatism been written about a million times already? And aren’t these types of pieces really just rhetorical bullying to prevent a serious discussion of American foreign policy?
Answer: Yes, and yes. And Cleveland is hardly the first to make this observation. (e.g. here, here, and here)
As with other writers who have crawled out of the woodwork recently to write about isolationism (so-called), Greenberg is sure that it’s bad, both for the country and for the Republican Party.
I agree with that statement. But I disagree with Greenberg’s characterization of the discussion taking place within the Republican Party (and the country) about the purpose of U.S. military power to be in any way comparable with the debate over ratification of the League of Nations Charter in 1919 or overwhelming public opposition to joining the war in Europe 1940 and 1941. Greenberg says that today’s isolationism “rejects America’s leadership role in the world.” I sense, instead, a skepticism toward the costs and benefits of American global hegemony, and a welcome (and to be expected) desire to shed some of these burdens.
To be clear, a sharp turn inward would be bad for the country. Global engagement has made the United States into the envy of the world. And yet, there is an ugly form of hostility toward outsiders that runs throughout U.S. history. Today, it manifests itself in the xenophobia, nativism, and outright bigotry that maintains that the United States can remain strong only by deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants and building a 20-foot high wall along the Mexican border. Isolationism is also manifested in protectionism, a false belief that American manufacturers and American workers can disconnect from the global marketplace, and that producers and consumers alike would both be better off if we were all confined to the domestic U.S. market.
Read the rest of this post »
More from McCain on ‘Isolationism’
Over at World Politics Review, Justin Logan and I collaborated on an article about the supposed rise of ”isolationism” within the GOP.
The charges come mainly from Sen. John McCain, though presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty copped that line yesterday, drawing praise from the editors of The Weekly Standard.
McCain directed his “isolationism” fire late yesterday at West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, one of 27 senators who signed a letter to the president calling for a substantial troop reduction in Afghanistan. On the floor of the Senate, Manchin explained his reasoning: “I believe it is time to for us to rebuild America, not Afghanistan.”
According to McCain, Manchin’s comments “characterize the isolationist withdrawal, lack of knowledge of history attitude that seems to be on the rise in America.”
But McCain needs to reconnect with recent history, and contemporary reality. Nation building is a fool’s errand: costly, counterproductive, and unnecessary. We could continue to hunt al Qaeda with far fewer troops in Afghanistan. A smaller presence would provide us with sufficient flexibility to deal with other challenges elsewhere — and help us to put our own house in order. McCain is OK with spending over $100 billion a year in a country with a GDP of around $16 billion, while our economy suffers.
President Obama’s Afghan Decision: Previewing the Speech
Tomorrow night, President Obama will announce how many troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan over the next 18 months. CNN.com reported this morning that the president is expected to announce a plan that would bring all 30,000 “surge” troops home by the end of 2012. This would give them two more fighting seasons in Afghanistan. The Los Angeles Times reported administration and Pentagon officials told them 10,000 troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of this year. In an effort to quell the leaks, White House officials told Fox News that Obama has not made a final decision and that the reporting is “all over the map.”
But we should not allow this speculation over troop numbers to distract us from the bigger picture. Even if by the end of 2012 the size of the U.S. military presence is reduced by 30,000 (and I’m not holding my breath), that would still leave more than twice as many troops as were there in January 2009 when Obama took office.
We won’t know for sure what the president intends until tomorrow. More importantly, we won’t know if the president’s intentions translate into actual troop withdrawals until our brave men and women are welcomed back home. There will always be those arguing that conditions on the ground do not allow for a U.S. withdrawal. Some are making that case with respect to Iraq, a war that was supposedly won by David Petraeus and the surge back in 2008. For the U.S. military, it seems that every war is like the Eagles’ Hotel California: we can check out, but we can never leave.
Regardless of the president’s decision, the mission will not have changed. The military wants more time to put pressure on the Taliban. They believe that they have the Taliban on the run, and that continuing pressure will aid in negotiations on a political settlement. Meanwhile, the true believers of nation-building want to buy more time for the Karzai government to get its act together. They believe that if American troops and aid workers dig more wells, pave more roads, build more schools, and draft more legal standards, we will have achieved our essential goals. The public, and a growing number within the Congress, is skeptical.
And they should be. A nation-building mission is far too ambitious, and far too costly. Most importantly, it isn’t necessary. We could keep pressure on the Taliban, and deny al Qaeda a sanctuary, with perhaps as few as 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. If President Obama rejects that option, and declares instead that more than 60,000 U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan in 2013, he will have bowed to pressure from some within the Pentagon, at State, and a handful of think tankers, and ignored the clear wishes of the American people who want to turn their attention to building the United States, and allow the Afghans to build Afghanistan.
Huntsman Right to Rethink Afghanistan
Jon Huntsman’s recent comments about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and the need to reduce our military footprint have drawn a good amount of media coverage this week. Huntsman, who will announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next week, is the latest among the field to call for rethinking our strategy in Afghanistan. Huntsman is advocating a reduced presence in the country, in the area of 10 to 15,000 troops, to fight a narrowly focused counterterrorism mission. Coincidentally, a just-released Cato paper makes a similar recommendation.
Today, ForeignPolicy.com examines Huntsman’s comments and the “Drawdown Debate” in a round table of opinion pieces. My contribution: “Huntsman’s Right: Bring ‘em Home:
Jon Huntsman is on the right track with his call for a much smaller U.S. military presence and a more focused mission in Afghanistan. His suggestion makes sense for at least three reasons. First, the current nation-building mission is far too costly relative to realistic alternatives, particularly at a time when Americans are looking for ways to shrink the size of government. Second, nation-building in Afghanistan is unnecessary. We can advance our national security interests without crafting a functioning nation-state in the Hindu Kush. And third, the current mission is deeply unconservative, succumbing to the same errors that trip up other ambitious government-run projects that conservatives routinely reject here at home.
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Alas, although many rank and file Republicans agree with Huntsman, many GOP leaders do not. Perhaps that will change when they realize that, at least in this instance, good policy and good politics go hand in hand. We should bring most of our troops home, and focus the attention of the few thousand who remain on hunting al Qaeda. The United States does not need to transform a deeply divided, poverty-stricken, tribal-based society into a self-sufficient, cohesive, and stable electoral democracy, and we should stop pretending that we can.
Sen. Rand Paul on a ‘Conservative Constitutional Foreign Policy’
I had the good fortune of attending a speech by Sen. Rand Paul earlier this week in which the senator from Kentucky made the case for a “conservative constitutional foreign policy.” His office has recently posted the text of his remarks, and it is worth a closer look.
Senator Paul tweaked President Obama for disagreeing with Senator Obama when it comes to the war power, a point that I highlighted here a few weeks ago.
But Paul’s remarks went well beyond the Libyan war. He explained that he was trying to stake out a middle ground between the extreme of intervening militarily everywhere, all the time, and nowhere, none of the time.
What I’m talking about here has a relatively recent example: Ronald Reagan.
[...]
Reagan’s foreign policy was one in which we were somewhere, some of the time, in which the missions were clear and defined, and there was no prolonged military conflict — and this all took place during the Cold War….
Reagan’s policy was much less interventionist than the presidents of both parties who came right before him and after him. And Reagan’s foreign policy was certainly more restrained than that of our current president.
I’d argue that a more restrained foreign policy is the true conservative foreign policy, as it includes two basic tenets of true conservatism: respect for the Constitution, and fiscal discipline.
The whole speech can be found here.
Gates to NATO: Man Up!
My title above can’t really top the one DOD Buzz gave its summary of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s comments to NATO ministers yesterday.
Here is the passage from Gates’s speech that is getting the most attention:
The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress … to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.
The gist of his comments were quite clear: the NATO allies must do more, spend more, and take their security responsibilities more seriously.
A parade of U.S. presidents, dozens of secretaries of defense and state, and countless lower-level officials have begged, pleaded, cajoled, threatened, and whined about our NATO allies’ unwillingness to spend more on defense. Gates’s remarks yesterday fit this pattern, and isn’t all that different from a speech that he gave last year. So his comments shouldn’t come as a surprise.
What is surprising, to me at least, is the fact that apparently none of these people have ever read any of the scholarly literature on the economic theory of alliances. If they have read it, they obviously don’t understand it. This research, as Justin Logan explained, conclusively shows that weak countries have a very powerful incentive to free-ride when one very large partner in an alliance spends far more. I also wrote about this in my book.
Congress Debates the Libya War
Better late than never.
The House of Representatives today debated two different resolutions purportedly aimed at forcing the Obama administration to comply with its statutory and constitutional obligations to secure formal authorization for the ongoing military campaign in Libya.
I say “purportedly” because it seems quite clear that the real intent of House Speaker John Boehner’s resolution was to lure away a sufficient number of Republicans who otherwise would have been inclined to vote for Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s (D-OH) measure. Whereas the Kucinich resolution would have compelled the Obama administration to withdraw from all military operations in Libya within the next 15 days, Boehner’s resolution bars the administration from deploying ground troops, but allows current operations to continue. The resolution stipulates that the administration must explain what the U.S. military is actually doing, and calls on the president to justify his decision to launch the campaign without first obtaining congressional approval. Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern suggested that a strongly worded press release would have the same effect. Others noted that similar language has already been written into the defense authorization passed late last week.
Boehner’s gambit worked, for now. His resolution carried, with overwhelming GOP support. The House failed to adopt the Kucinich measure, although more Republicans than Democrats voted for the bill. The detailed vote totals for both measures signal a growing willingness on the part of even many Republicans to question the country’s many wars.
Indeed, many were prepared to go beyond merely voting for the measure; about a dozen House Republicans (including resolution co-sponsor Dan Burton of Indiana) spoke out in favor of the Kucinich resolution. Many of these House members seemed quite eager to reassert their authority and to defend the principle of legislative control over the war power, even if that meant allying with one of the most liberal members of Congress.
At one level, it shouldn’t surprise that a number of Republicans voted for the Kucinich resolution. The war is unpopular with the American people, and their elected representatives are reflecting that sentiment. A number of speakers this morning made this point explicitly. But leaving public opinion aside, and conceding that the constitutional question has been practically rendered moot by the parade of presidents and Congresses who have summarily ignored its clear intent, there are ample opportunities for questioning the Libya war on strategic grounds, and not many solid arguments that prove the war to be serving a vital national interest.
Pawlenty Understands Incentives, Except When It Comes to Defense
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty’s brief visit to Cato yesterday elicited some snide commentary in the blogosphere, especially this piece by the Huffington Post’s Jon Ward. Ward notes how the just-declared presidential candidate has been pretty adept at annoying audiences with his answers to questions. This one rankled the questioner, and a number of others in the auditorium.
I’m not one who is going to stand before you and say we should cut the defense budget.
[...]
I’m not for shrinking America’s presence in the world. I’m for making sure that America remains the world leader, not becoming second or third or fourth in the list.
One can sort of forgive a governor for not knowing much about foreign policy, although governors who aspire to be president should probably know that the U.S. government could cut military spending in half and still spend more than our next two potential rivals, combined.
The average governor, however, should know that people don’t feel obligated to pay for things that you are willing to give them for free. And Pawlenty does understand this when it comes to domestic spending. Check out his comments about the difference between a cash bar and an open bar at a wedding reception, via the Daily Caller:
If people have the impression that things are free, and they get to consume it endlessly, and the provider has the only incentive to provide on volume, and the myth or the lie is created that the bill goes somewhere else and that a third party pays for it, that is a system that I can tell you is doomed to failure and inefficiency. And that’s much of our government, unfortunately.
But the same principle applies in military spending. Our European and East Asian allies are consumers of the security provided by the U.S. military, and all Americans are the third party payers. As my colleague Ben Friedman likes to say, we agree to defend our allies, and they agree to let us. We shouldn’t blame them for under-providing for their own defense; it’s our fault for agreeing to do it for them.
Cato President and Founder Ed Crane’s quick take on Pawlenty’s view on defense military spending is worth repeating:
There is a difference between military spending and defense spending. The Constitution provides for a military to defend the U.S—not to democratize the world. One would hope that presidential candidates would consider America’s commitments overseas very seriously before endorsing those commitments.
Cato scholars have been out in front for years making the case for a principled, constitutional view of “defense” that does not include defending others who can and should defend themselves. If we adopted a strategy of restraint, we could responsibly make significant cuts in military spending, deliver the savings to American taxpayers, and remain the safest and most secure country on the planet. Yesterday, Tim Pawlenty took the opposite tack. He argued that the U.S. military should continue to serve as the world’s policeman/armed social worker, allow other countries to free ride, and require U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill.
Although that might be popular elsewhere in Washington, I can’t imagine it will sell in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Manchester, New Hampshire.
A ‘Special’ Relationship?
When President Obama meets with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London, they should focus on the two wars that involve both the U.S. and British militaries (Afghanistan and Libya). But these discussions will take place in the context of diminishing British military capability.
At a time when the United States should be shedding some of the burdens of policing the globe, and encouraging other countries to step forward to defend themselves, the British are moving in the opposite direction. They are cutting their military, and tacitly becoming more dependent upon U.S. power. The end result will be a United Kingdom that is less able to assist us in the future.
The United States today spends far more on its military than does the United Kingdom, and the gap is likely to grow. This is sure to have an impact on the U.S.-UK relationship.
The number of British troops, ships and planes that are available for missions has dropped and will continue to if Cameron pushes through significant cuts in British military spending. He has proposed actual cuts, not the slowing in the rate of growth that Obama and Defense Secretary Gates have presided over so far.
The special relationship has been cemented by the numerous occasions in which British and American leaders have cooperated to address common security challenges. The most important of these involve U.S. and British troops fighting side by side.
But shrinking British defense spending could strain the relationship. The goodwill that has prevailed between the two countries could be in jeopardy, and Americans may find it harder to look upon the Brits as the “good” ally, the one that sticks by us through thick and thin. And if the American public grows disenchanted with British contributions to U.S.-led military missions, the British public may then hold less generally positive opinions of the United States.
A version of this post originally appeared in The National Interest Online.
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