Leave Iraq to the Iraqis is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

A ‘Special’ Relationship? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In the midst of difficult domestic political battles, Barack Obama begins a lengthy European trip today.  He should encourage the continent to increase its defense capabilities and take on greater regional security responsibilities.

Presidential visits typically result in little of substance.  President Obama’s latest trip will be no different if he reinforces the status quo.  His policy mantra once was “change.”  No where is “change” more necessary than in America’s foreign policy, especially towards Europe.

Despite obvious differences spanning the Atlantic, the U.S. and European relationship remains extraordinarily important.  The administration should press for increased economic integration, with lower trade barriers and streamlined regulations to encourage growth.

At the same time, however, Washington should encourage development of a European-run NATO with which the U.S. can cooperate to promote shared interests to replace today’s America-dominated NATO which sacrifices American interests to defend Europe.  Americans no longer can afford to defend the rest of the world.  The Europeans no longer need to be defended.

Although World War II ended 66 years ago, the Europeans remain strangely dependent on America.  Political integration through the European Union has halted; economic integration through the Euro is under sharp challenge; and military integration through any means is reversing.

Indeed, the purposeless war in Libya, instigated by Great Britain and France, has dramatically demonstrated Europe’s military weakness.  Despite possessing a collective GDP and population greater than that of America, the continent’s largest powers are unable to dispatch a failed North African dictator.

President Barack Obama starts with visits to Ireland,  the UK, and France.  In the latter he will consult with the heads of the G8 nations, which include Germany and Italy.

His message should be clear:  while America will remain politically and economically engaged in Europe, it will no longer take on responsibility for setting boundaries in the Balkans, policing North Africa, and otherwise defending prosperous industrial states from diminishing threats.  Washington should expect the continent to become a full partner, which means promoting the security of its members and stability of its region.

The president should deliver a similar message when he continues on to Poland.  Part of “New Europe,” which worries more about the possibility of revived Russian aggression, Warsaw has cause to spend more on its own defense and cooperate more closely with its similarly-minded neighbors on security issues.

In fact, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, members of the “Visegrad Group,” recently announced creation of a “battle group” separate from NATO command to emphasize regional defense.  The president should welcome this willingness to take on added defense responsibilities.

Let Europe Be—and Defend—Europe is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

If you like bloated nuclear arsenals, executive discretion to wage endless war, large checks to countries that aid our enemies, and institutionalizing hostility toward gays in the military, you will love the defense authorization bill passed yesterday by the House Armed Services Committee. Below are the lowlights. For slightly better news from the Appropriations Committee on homeland security spending, skip to the end.

• The bill contains a provision replacing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and their hosts. The Committee evidently found that legislation, which the last two administrations have used to justify all manner of power grabs, insufficiently open-ended. They add groups “affiliated” with al Qaeda and the Taliban to the list of certified enemies. Though disinterested in authorizing the war in Libya, the Congress may now give the President new authority to start new ones. Somewhere John Yoo is ruefully imagining all the creative ways he could have affiliated bombing targets with al Qaeda and Taliban. Certainly Pakistan would qualify, given its barely hidden support for elements of the Taliban and the suspicion that some of its intelligence agents have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on the whereabouts of al Qaeda leaders.

• Nonetheless, the bill authorizes all $1.1 billion in military aid requested for Pakistan. An amendment intended to trim it failed.

• Speaking of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the Committee’s Republicans are determined to prevent its repeal from letting homosexuals feel comfortable in uniform. The bill outlaws gay marriage on military facilities. It also defines “marriage” in military regulations as the union of a man and a woman. The aim is to deny marriage benefits to gay couples. The bill also includes a provision sponsored by San Diego Republican Duncan Hunter that would keep Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in place until all four service chiefs agree that it will not impair combat effectiveness. That last provision will not become law, but it sends unfortunate messages. Beyond its implication that gays undermine military effectiveness, it reflects a tendency to defer to the wishes of the force on issues of its composition and use, at least rhetorically. That tendency erodes the traditional U.S. view of civil-military relations, driving a wedge between the military and the society it serves.

• The bill contains several measures that will prevent future cost savings. It would block the executive branch from reducing nuclear weapons force levels in various ways unless the secretaries of defense and energy certify that the White House makes good on its offer of increased nuclear weapons modernization funding. Incidentally, the administration promised those funds in exchange for New START treaty votes that Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) did not deliver, including his own. The bill would buy the Army more Abrams tanks than it wants, to keep the production line open. It requires the government to remain prepared to build the Joint Strike Fighter’s second engine and would reopen competition between the two engines should the administration request more funds for the first (Pratt & Whitney) engine, which seems likely.

• The Committee made a modest effort to control government health care costs by mildly increasing annual premiums for retired military of working age. That’s progress. Premiums have not increased in 15 years. They are low enough that many retirees keep Tricare, the Military Health System coverage, rather than getting private health care via their new employer, thus shifting costs onto the taxpayer. But the Committee rejected the administration’s effort to peg future premium increases to medical costs rather than general inflation.

The full House or Senate will likely eliminate most of the damage. The taxpayer will get no relief from the House Appropriations Committee, however, which just released its planned spending levels for FY2012.  Defense will grow by about $17 billion from FY 2011, not including the wars, Department of Energy nuclear weapons spending, and military construction. No surprise there.

House appropriators deserve credit, however, for keeping the bloated Department of Homeland Security budget on the cutting board. The National Journal reports that appropriators would give the department $40.6 billion—$1.1 billion less than last year and $2.7 less than it requested. The bulk of the cuts come by providing less than half ($1.7 billion) of the requested spending for local security grants. The grants would now be distributed at the department’s discretion rather than requiring them to go to certain subcategories (e.g., ports) and using a formula to insure that every state get a taste.

Hopefully this is a step toward eliminating federal homeland security grants, which have grown into a seemingly permanent subsidy even for regions where the terrorism threat is wildly remote. If states think it worth sacrificing something to buy local counterterrorism capabilities, they ought to pay for it with their own budgets. Federalization of the spending takes those decisions from those in the best position to weigh local priorities and encourages states and cities to chase federal dollars by exaggerating their peril.

The Defense Authorization Bill Is Awful is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings—yes, that Michael Hastings—has written another investigative article on U.S. operations in Afghanistan, centered again on a general in the theatre.  The revelations are perhaps more shocking than those that resulted in General Stanley McChrystal’s dismissal last summer.

His newest bombshell alleges that the U.S Army illegally engaged in “psychological operations” with the aim of manipulating various high-level U.S. government officials into believing that the war was progressing in order to gain their continued support.  The list of targets includes members of Congress, diplomats, think tank analysts, and even Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff.  Over at The Skeptics, I attempt to put this in context:

While American soldiers and Afghan civilians continue to kill and be killed in Afghanistan, the Pentagon seeks to provide the illusion of progress, systematically misrepresenting realities on the ground to bide more time, gain more troops, and acquire more funding. It’s bad enough that the American media uncritically relays statements from U.S. officials portraying “success” on the ground. Now the Pentagon is using its massive propaganda budget to blur the line between informing the public and spinning it to death. In fact, several years ago the Associated Press found that the Pentagon had spent $4.7 billion on public relations in 2009 alone, and employs 27,000 people for recruitment, advertising and public relations, nearly as many as the 30,000-person State Department. Essentially the Pentagon is trying to influence public policy and lobby civilian officials to shift policies toward their own ends while dispersing the costs onto the American taxpayer.

Luckily, it appears that Americans have come to learn that despite the media’s frequent adulation of their uniformed military, the Pentagon operates just like every other bureaucracy in the federal government. According to a poll released earlier this month by Gallup, 72 percent of Americans want Congress to speed up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Much like the McChrystal flap from last summer, there is a very fine line between military officials offering their honest opinion and threatening civilian control of the war.

Click here for the full post.

The Pentagon Propaganda Machine Rears Its Head is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama might want it to appear as though he is reining in defense spending with his budget submission for FY 2012, but his approach to the Pentagon’s budget reveals the opposite.

Perhaps the president hopes that his adoption of the faux cuts that Secretary Gates put on the table last month will be seen as responsible. Perhaps he is taking a prudent first step and signaling to the military, and its suppliers and contractors, that the days of double-digit increases are over. That may be; but far deeper cuts are warranted. . If the president had truly wanted to send a signal, he would have followed the advice of his own deficit reduction commission and endorsed far deeper cuts in military spending.

The Department of Defense will spend $78 billion less over the next five years than previous projections. This amounts to a drop in the bucket — technically just over 2% — of total Pentagon spending over that period. Nonetheless, in Washington-ese, this constitutes a cut. But the base budget (excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) will increase — from $549 billion to $553 billion, the largest budget in the department’s history. In the past 12 years, the budget that has doubled in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

Deeper cuts should be made along with an effort to lessen worldwide defense commitments, reducing the strain on the force. It will be up to outside pressure — either from Congress or from interested groups outside of government – to force Washington to cease acting as the world’s policeman, and forcing other countries to take responsibility for their own defense.

The Pentagon’s Faux Cuts is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A Seattle police officer was caught on tape kicking a man who was lying face down on a sidewalk with his hands already handcuffed behind his back.   Whether the off-duty cop was drunk and badgering some women, as some witnesses claim, would make the incident even worse–because the handcuffed “suspect” may well have believed he was coming to the woman’s defense from some creepy guy.  In any event, kicking handcuffed persons who are not doing anything is unprofessional and illegal.

Cato held a forum on filming the police and that event can be viewed here.

Seattle Cop Caught on Tape is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Although the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission has come up short of the 14 votes among its members that it needs to force Congress to vote up-or-down vote on implementing its recommendations, the debate over ways to cut spending will certainly continue. Of particular note is the emerging consensus that military spending cannot be held sacrosanct in the search for savings.

Over at The National Interest Online, I try to shed some light on the actual scale of the cuts proposed by various deficit reduction reports. Kim Holmes and others affiliated with the Defending Defense alliance claim that the cuts are deep, indisciminate, and dangerous. I show that the proposed cuts, even if they were to materialize, would bring U.S. military spending back to 2006 or 2007 levels, and this would still be more than we spent on average during most of the Cold War.

But the more relevant point pertains to why military spending can safely be cut, not merely in Washington’s “slower growth” terms, but in real terms; historically, military spending comes down when our perceptions of threats change.

I predict a similar scenario playing out in the next decade. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw to a close (and that should move more swiftly than currently planned), recent increases in the ground forces could be rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. Additional savings can be realized if the United States were to terminate its outdated deployments in Europe. We could also revisit the role played by U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. The Pentagon’s civilian workforce could be cut, chiefly through attrition, and save tens of billions of dollars. Finally, tighter scrutiny over the Pentagon’s spending, beginning with an audit, would allow taxpayers to realize additional savings, while ensuring that our men and women in uniform are provided with the highest quality equipment at the lowest possible price.

You can read the rest here.

Cuts, Slashes, and Savings at the Pentagon is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Libertarians often debate whether conservatives or liberals are more friendly to liberty. We often fall back on the idea that conservatives tend to support economic liberties but not civil liberties, while liberals support civil liberties but not economic liberties — though this old bromide hardly accounts for the economic policies of President Bush or the war-on-drugs-and-terror-and-Iraq policies of President Obama.

Score one for the conservatives in the surging outrage over the Transportation Security Administration’s new policy of body scanners and intimate pat-downs. You gotta figure you’ve gone too far in the violation of civil liberties when you’ve lost Rick Santorum, George Will, Kathleen Parker, and Charles Krauthammer. (Gene Healy points out that conservatives are reaping what they sowed.)

Meanwhile, where are the liberals outraged at this government intrusiveness? Where is Paul Krugman? Where is Arianna? Where is Frank Rich? Where is the New Republic? Oh sure, civil libertarians like Glenn Greenwald have criticized TSA excesses. But mainstream liberals have rallied around the Department of Homeland Security and its naked pictures: Dana Milbank channels John (“phantoms of lost liberty”) Ashcroft: “Republicans are providing the comfort [to our enemies]. They are objecting loudly to new airport security measures.” Ruth Marcus: “Don’t touch my junk? Grow up, America.” Eugene Robinson: “Be patient with the TSA.” Amitai Etzioni in the New Republic: “In defense of the ‘virtual strip-search.’” And finally, the editors of the New York Times: ”attacks are purely partisan and ideological.”

Could this just be a matter of viewing everything through a partisan lens? Liberals rally around the DHS of President Obama and Secretary Napolitano, while conservatives criticize it? Maybe. And although Slate refers to the opponents of body-scanning as “paranoid zealots,” that term would certainly seem to apply to apply to Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of the Nation, who stomp their feet, get red in the face, and declare every privacy advocate from John Tyner (“don’t touch my junk”) on to be “astroturf” tools of “Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians.” (Glenn Greenwald took the article apart line by line.)

Most Americans want to be protected from terrorism and also to avoid unnecessary intrusions on liberty, privacy, and commerce. Security issues can be complex. A case can be made for the TSA’s new procedures. But it’s striking to see how many conservatives think the TSA has gone too far, and how dismissive — even contemptuous — liberals are of rising concerns about liberty and privacy.

Conservatives, Liberals, and the TSA is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) believes that cutting the military means rethinking the purpose of our military. He argues that the far-flung adventures that have killed thousands of American soldiers and consumed trillions of dollars simply haven’t been justified by U.S. defense needs. He also takes issue with President Obama exempting military spending from his so-called “spending freeze” proposed earlier this year. He spoke at the Cato Institute November 19, 2010.

Barney Frank: Cut Military Spending by Following Cato Plan is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron announced Britain’s biggest defense cuts since World War II. The cuts affect the British military across the board.

The Army will shed 7,000 troops; the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force will each lose 5,000 personnel; the total workforce in the Ministry of Defence, including civilians, will contract by 42,000. The Navy’s destroyer fleet will shrink from 23 to 19. Two aircraft carriers — already under construction — will be completed, but one of the two will be either mothballed or sold within a few years. Whether the one remaining flattop in the British fleet will actually deploy with an operational fixed-wing aircraft is an open question. They’ve decided to jettison their Harriers; a technological marvel when it was first introduced, it has a limited range and a poor safety record. In its place, the Brits still intend to purchase Joint Strike Fighters, but not the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) version.

And right on cue, Max Boot argues in today’s Wall Street Journal, following the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano’s example, that fiscal conservatives should not use these cuts as an example of how to reign in deficits. According to Boot and Carafano, military spending is off-limits. Period.

But as I note at The Skeptics, most Americans do not buy into this argument:

In Boot’s telling, Cameron’s decision inevitably places a heavier burden on the shoulders of American taxpayers and American troops.

But why should Americans perform a function for other governments that they are obligated by tradition, law and reason to perform for themselves? Defense is, as Boot notes, “one of the core responsibilities of government.” I would go one better: defense is one of the only legitimate responsibilities for government. So why does Max Boot think that Americans should simply resign themselves to take on this burden, doing for others what they should do for themselves?

I suspect that he fears that most Americans are not comfortable with the role that he and his neoconservative allies have preached for nearly two decades, hence his preemptive shot across the bow of the incoming congressional class that will have been elected on a platform of reducing the burden of government. True, the public is easily swayed, and not inclined to vote on foreign policy matters, in general, but as I noted here on Monday, it seems unlikely that the same Tea Partiers who want the U.S. government to do less in the United States are anxious to do more everywhere else. And, indeed, such sentiments are not confined to conservatives and constitutionalists who are keenly aware of government’s inherent limitations. Recent surveys by the Chicago Council of on Global Affairs (.pdf) and the Pew Research Center (here) definitively demonstrate that the public writ large is anxious to shed the role of global policeman.

Click here to read the entire post.

British Military Cuts, Conservatives, and Neocons is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Kudos to the Financial Times (subscription may be required) for figuring out what most other journalists and editorial writers haven’t seemed to grasp concerning Robert Gates’s economy initiative at the Pentagon.

[H]is aim is not to cut the overall budget radically; it is merely to achieve savings in the military bureaucracy and thus, against a background of broader fiscal constraint, protect spending on new weapons and other outlays.  (my emphasis)

The reforms in and of themselves are “commendable,” the FT notes, but they don’t amount to very much in the grand scheme, and they therefore do not go nearly far enough. Indeed, as I and others have noted, U.S. military spending will continue to rise if Bob Gates gets his way. This isn’t good enough.

The FT editors agree:

The US needs a much more searching review of its military spending, one that aims to do more than merely curb its growth.

Anyone interested in a comprehensive proposal (three, actually) for substantially reducing U.S. military spending by revisiting the roles, responsibilities, and missions that are currently assigned to Gates’s department can find it here.

The Financial Times on Robert Gates is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Over at National Journal’s National Security Experts blog, this week’s question focuses on the recently released Hadley-Perry “alternative QDR.”

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. of NationalJournal.com asks:

The U.S. military is already unaffordable — and yet it needs to be larger to sustain America’s global leadership, especially in the face of a rising China. That’s the bottom line from a congressionally chartered bipartisan panel, co-chaired by Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush’s national security adviser, and William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Defense secretary. The report, released July 29, is the independent panel’s assessment of and commentary on the Pentagon’s own Quadrennial Defense Review, released earlier this year.

…

Frequent expert blog contributor Gordon Adams, among others, has already blasted the Hadley-Perry report for making the underlying assumption that the U.S. can and should continue to invest heavily in being a “global policeman.” Is Adams right that the Hadley-Perry report calls for an unaffordable answer to the wrong question? Or are the report’s authors correct when they argue that the U.S. must be the leading guarantor of global security? And if the U.S. must lead, has the Hadley-Perry panel laid out the right path to doing so?

My response:

Dan Goure says that U.S. military preeminence is not unaffordable. That is probably correct. Even though we spend in excess of $800 billion annually on national security (including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs) we could choose to spend as much, or more, for a while longer. We could choose to shift money out of other government programs; we could raise taxes; or we could continue to finance the whole thing on debt, and stick our children and grandchildren with the bill.

But what is the point? Why do Americans spend so much more on our military than does any other country, or any other combination of countries?

Goure and the Hadley-Perry commissioners who produced the alternate QDR argue that the purpose of American military power is to provide global public goods, to defend other countries so that they don’t have to defend themselves, and otherwise shape the international order to suit our ends. In other words, the same justifications offered for American military dominance since the end of the Cold War.

Most in Washington still embraces the notion that America is, and forever will be, the world’s indispensable nation. Some scholars, however, questioned the logic of hegemonic stability theory from the very beginning. A number continue to do so today. They advance arguments diametrically at odds with the primacist consensus. Trade routes need not be policed by a single dominant power; the international economy is complex and resilient. Supply disruptions are likely to be temporary, and the costs of mitigating their effects should be borne by those who stand to lose — or gain — the most. Islamic extremists are scary, but hardly comparable to the threat posed by a globe-straddling Soviet Union armed with thousands of nuclear weapons. It is frankly absurd that we spend more today to fight Osama bin Laden and his tiny band of murderous thugs than we spent to face down Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao. Many factors have contributed to the dramatic decline in the number of wars between nation-states; it is unrealistic to expect that a new spasm of global conflict would erupt if the United States were to modestly refocus its efforts, draw down its military power, and call on other countries to play a larger role in their own defense, and in the security of their respective regions.

But while there are credible alternatives to the United States serving in its current dual role as world policeman / armed social worker, the foreign policy establishment in Washington has no interest in exploring them. The people here have grown accustomed to living at the center of the earth, and indeed, of the universe. The tangible benefits of all this military spending flow disproportionately to this tiny corner of the United States while the schlubs in fly-over country pick up the tab.

In short, we shouldn’t have expected that a group of Washington insiders would seek to overturn the judgments of another group of Washington insiders. A genuinely independent assessment of U.S. military spending, and of the strategy the military is designed to implement, must come from other quarters.

U.S. Military Power: Preeminence for What Purpose? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

John Lee still has his life and four children still have a father because Mr. Lee  had a handgun when three criminals tried to kill him and take his money.

When John Q. Citizen takes out a gun and the criminals flee, reporters don’t consider the incident “news” (at least when there are no injuries)–so guns are typically on the evening news when they are used by criminals.  As a result of that skewed coverage, it is no wonder that many people have a negative view about firearms.

On June 17, Cato will be hosting a forum about guns, crime, and self-defense.  Speakers include John Lott, Jeff Snyder, and Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign.

For related Cato scholarship, go here.

Guns Save Lives, Part XXXIVXX is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has resigned, just eight months after leading his party to a landslide victory.  The Democratic Party of Japan meets Friday to replace him.  The finance minister, Naoto Kan, is the favorite, though nothing is certain.  The party is an amalgam of factions and the party secretary general, Ichiro Ozawa, who did the most to bring the DPJ to power, also is stepping down.

Prime Minister Hatoyama was hit by a campaign scandal—a regular of Japanese politics.  But the most important cause of his resignation was his botched handling of American bases on the island of Okinawa.

In early 1945 Okinawa became the first part of the Japanese homeland to fall as the U.S. closed in on imperial Japan.  Washington held onto the island after the war and loaded it with military installations.  Only in 1972 was Okinawa returned to Japanese sovereignty.  Despite some reduction in U.S. forces, American military facilities still account for roughly one-fifth of the island’s territory.

Okinawans long ago tired, understandably, of the burden and have been pressing for the removal of at least some bases.  The DPJ campaigned to create a more equal alliance with America and promised to revisit plans by the previous government to relocate America’s Futenma facility elsewhere on the island.

However, under strong U.S. pressure Hatoyama reversed course.  He said the rising tensions on the Korean peninsula reminded him about the value of America’s military presence.

Japan’s military dependency is precisely the problem.  American taxpayers have paid to defend Japan for 65 years.  Doing so made sense in the aftermath of World War II, when Japan was recovering from war and Tokyo’s neighbors feared a revived Japanese military.  But long ago it became ridiculous  for Americans to defend the world’s second-ranking power and its region.

Of course, having turned its defense over to Washington, Tokyo could do no more than beg the U.S. to move its base.  After all, if Americans are going to do Japan’s dirty defense work, Americans are entitled to have convenient base access.  Irrespective of what  the Okinawans desire.

Unfortunately, Hatoyama’s resignation isn’t likely to change anything.  The new prime minister won’t be much different from the old one.  Or the ones before him.

If change is to come to the U.S.-Japan security relationship, it will have to come from America.  And it should start with professed fiscal conservatives asking why the U.S. taxpayers, on the hook for a $1.6 trillion deficit this year alone, must forever subsidize the nation with the world’s second-largest economy?

Cliches about living in a dangerous world and defending freedom are no answer.  America is made not only poorer but less secure when it discourages its friends from defending themselves and when it accepts their geopolitical conflicts as its own.  To coin a phrase, it is time for a change.

And not just with Japan.  There’s also South Korea.  And especially the Europeans.  It’s not clear who they have to be defended from, but whoever their potential adversary or adversaries may be, the Europeans should defend themselves.  The Obama administration is impoverishing Americans to support a growing welfare state at home.  Americans shouldn’t have to help pay for the Europeans’ even bigger welfare state at the same time.

The U.S. should maintain a strong defense.  Of America.

Washington should stop subsidizing the defense of prosperous and populous allies.  When the Constitution speaks of “the common defense,” the Founders meant of Americans, not of the rest of the world.  A good place to start ending foreign military welfare would be Japan.

Needed: A New U.S. Defense Policy for Japan is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The key theme that the Obama administration wants us to take away from the National Security Strategy (PDF) is “burden sharing.” The United States, the document explains, can no longer afford to be the world’s sole policeman. We need capable and willing partners to preserve global peace and prosperity.

These are valid concerns. Unfortunately, the Obama administration lacks a vision for addressing them.

Real change can only come from a fundamental reorientation of our current approach. We need a new grand strategy predicated on restraint both at home and abroad. Instead, for all the talk of new directions, the Obama administration has given us more of the same.

In geopolitics, as in life, actions speak louder than words. So long as the United States spends nearly as much on its military as the rest of the world combined, and so long as it deploys its military in ways that discourage other countries from defending themselves, Americans will continue to shoulder the burdens of policing the planet.

In a cover letter accompanying the NSS, President Obama explains “The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone.” But they most certainly will, so long as the United States maintains a massive military oriented more towards defending others than to defending Americans.

There are common security challenges, to be sure, and many other nations in Europe and East Asia should share an interest in addressing them. They lack the capacity to do so, however, because they have diverted resources away from defense and into social welfare programs. The capabilities gap between the United States and the rest of the world will only grow wider as other countries continue to reduce force structure, cut military procurement, and short-change defense-related R&D, while the U.S. military budget climbs higher and higher.

But other countries also lack the will to play a larger global role. US policies for the past few decades have impeded such activity, and it is naive in the extreme to think that the latest round of exhortations will make a difference.

Obama’s National Security Strategy: Long on Rhetoric, Short on Change is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Ed Morrissey kindly mentioned The Struggle to Limit Government and responds to the advice for Tea Partiers in my video.

Morrissey says:

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that some Tea Partiers “like” big government; it’s more like some aren’t enthusiastic about dismantling as much of the federal government as others, especially the more doctrinaire libertarians.

In the video I noted that polls showed a majority of the people who identify with the Tea Party movement also thought the entitlement programs were worth their cost. My colleague, Jagadeesh Gokhale, has estimated that paying for current entitlements would require 9 percent of GNP in perpetuity. This is unlikely. Entitlements will have to be changed since too much has been promised. People who think the programs have been worth their cost are not likely initially to support reining in the entitlements. In saying that, I expressed a concern, not a prediction. It may be that Tea Party people will also come to recognize, as Ed Morrissey does, that the entitlement state cannot continue.

I said in the video that Tea Party people should recognize that “Democrats are not always the enemy.” Morrissey rightly says I should not talk about enemies in domestic politics. He adds that the current House Democratic caucus does not deserve support because its leaders favor expanding government. He’s right. Divided government is what we need now. However, I had in mind the more centrist Democrats that supported the tax and spending cuts of 1981 and the tax reform of 1986. I am urging Tea Party people to avoid becoming too partisan. Perhaps some of them will still be in Congress in 2011.

Then there’s the question of foreign policy and defense spending. In the video I said that a limited government movement like the Tea Party should start thinking outside the box on spending. I suggested rethinking America’s expansive commitments in foreign affairs as a way to reduce our military spending.  I did not deny — who could deny it? — that the Constitution entrusts the common defense to the federal government. I also recognize that the United States continues to have enemies. The question is: what should the government do to provide the common defense consistent with limited government?

In the past decade, we have spent enormous sums trying to transform two nations and the entire Middle East into liberal democracies. This was our “forward strategy” for dealing with terrorism. It reminded me of past Progressive crusades at home and abroad.   The strategy was a domestic political disaster, and we shall see whether our massive outlays eventually produce stability in Iraq or Afghanistan. For my part, I remain partial to the conservative virtues of realism, restraint, and prudence in dealing with other nations.

The United States is currently spending about half of all military spending in the world. We have some room for restraint without endangering American lives. We will still have a Navy that protects trade routes to the extent they are threatened. As I said in the video, we need to rethink our overall place in the world if we are to corral the big government beast. The Tea Party folks can lead the way here.

The Pentagon is not most of the federal budget. It is the only part historically, however, that can vary downward as well as upward. Sometime soon, the non-defense parts of the budget are going to have to vary downward rather than just upward.  Being serious about limiting government, however, requires that all spending be considered. Since I think the Tea Party movement is serious about cutting government, it would be better if they had a look at all spending from the start.

Ed Morrissey on The Struggle to Limit Government is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I’m saddened to hear of the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens. Whatever you might say about his jurisprudence in other areas, one place where Justice Stevens really shined was in his defense of high-tech freedom.

Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion in some of the most important high-tech cases of the last four decades. In other cases, he wrote important (and in some cases prescient) dissents. Through it all, he was a consistent voice for freedom of expression and the freedom to innovate. His accomplishments include:

• Free speech: Justice Stevens wrote the majority decision in ACLU v. Reno, the decision that struck down the infamous Communications Decency Act and clearly established that the First Amendment applies to the Internet. In the 13 years since then, the courts have repeatedly beat back attacks on free speech online. For example, Justice Stevens was in the majority in ACLU v. Ashcroft, the 2004 decision that struck down another attempt to censor the Internet in the name of protecting children.
• Copyright: Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion in the 1984 case of Sony v. Universal, the case in which the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the VCR by a 5-4 vote. The decision, which today is known as the “Betamax decision” after the Sony VCR brand, made possible the explosion of digital media innovation that followed. When the recording industry tried to stop the introduction of the MP3 player in 1997, the Ninth Circuit cited the Betamax precedent in holding that “space shifting” with your MP3 player is permitted under copyright’s fair use doctrine. The iPod as we know it today probably wouldn’t exist if Sony had lost the Betamax case. Justice Stevens also wrote an important dissent in the 2003 decision of Eldred v. Ashcroft, in which he (like the Cato Institute) argued that the Constitution’s “limited times” provision precluded Congress from retroactively extending copyright terms.
• Patents: The explosion of software patents is one of the biggest threats to innovation in the software industry, and Justice Stevens saw this threat coming almost three decades ago. Stevens wrote the majority decision in the 1978 case of Parker v. Flook, which clearly disallowed patents in the software industry. Three years later, Stevens dissented in the 1981 case of Diamond v. Diehr, which allowed a patent on a software-controlled rubber-curing machine. Although the majority decision didn’t explicitly permit patents on software, Stevens warned that the majority’s muddled decision would effectively open the door to software patents. And he has been proven right. In the three decades that followed, the patent-friendly U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has effectively dismantled limits on software patents. And the result has been a disaster, with high-tech firms being forced to spend large sums on litigation rather than innovation.

So if you enjoy your iPod and your uncensored Internet access, you have Justice Stevens to thank. Best wishes for a long, comfortable, and well-deserved retirement.

John Paul Stevens, Defender of High-Tech Freedom is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

M. Todd Henderson of the University of Chicago Law School has a brief but important essay making the case for Citizens United.  As they say, read the whole thing.

An Important Defense of Citizens United is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Paul Starobin at the National Journal‘s Security Experts Blog has kicked off a spirited debate surrounding Europe’s military capabilities (or lack thereof). The jumping off point in the discussion is Robert Gates’s speech to NATO officers last month, in which Gates lamented that:

“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.” [Justin Logan blogged about this here.]

Starobin asks: “Can America Count On Europe Anymore?”

Is Gates right? What exactly does “the demilitarization of Europe” mean for U.S. national security interests? Should Americans care if Europe has to live in the shadow of a militarily superior post-Soviet Russia? Is NATO, alas, a lost cause?

[...]

In short, should the U.S. be planning for a post-Europe world? Does Europe still matter? Can we count on Europe any more?

My response:

It would be unwise for Americans to write off Europeans as a lost cause, congenitally dependent upon U.S. military power, and unable to contribute either to their own defense or to policing the global commons. We can’t count on Europe — right now — but that doesn’t mean we can never count on Europe in the future.

Americans who complain about Europe’s unwillingness to play a larger role in policing the globe, and who would like them to do more, should start by exploring the many reasons why Europe is so weak militarily.

Consider, for example, Europe’s half-hearted and inconsistent steps to establish a security capacity independent of NATO — and therefore independent of the United States — since the end of the Cold War. Such proposals have failed for many reasons, but we shouldn’t ignore the extent to which Uncle Sam has actively discouraged Europe from playing a more active role. Most recently, Hillary Clinton expressed the U.S. government’s position that political and economic integration would proceed under the EU, but security would continue to be provided by NATO. This echoes similar comments made by the first Bush and Clinton administrations with respect to European defense. (See, for example, Madeleine Albright’s comments regarding European Defence and Security Policy (EDSP) in 1998).

We can dismiss such comments as useful cover for Europeans who were looking for an excuse to cut military spending in the first place. The demographic pressures of an aging population consuming a larger share of public resources are being felt in many advanced economies, but are particularly acute in Europe.

But the problem goes well beyond the fiscal pressures associated with maintaining an adequate defense. Washington has been openly hostile to any resurgence of military power in European, no matter how unlikely that might be, on the basis of what political scientists call hegemonic stability theory. That theory holds that it is better for security to be provided by a single global power than by regional players dealing chiefly with security challenges in their respective neighborhoods. The argument is that such self-sufficiency is dangerous, that it can lead to arms races, regional instability, and even wars. One can think this a smart philosophy or a dumb one, but we can’t ignore that it has guided U.S. foreign policy at least since the end of the Cold War.

It could be argued that the costs to the United States of providing such services for the rest of the world are modest, but that is ultimately a judgment call. To be sure, the dollar costs will not bankrupt us as a nation, but Americans spend $2,700 per person on our military, while the average European spends less than $700. The bottom line is that Europeans have little incentive to spend more because they don’t feel particularly threatened, and they aren’t anxious to take on responsibilities that are ably handled by the United States. The advocates of hegemonic stability theory would declare that a feature, not a bug. Mission accomplished.

And that might be true, if the greatest threat to global security were a resurgence of conflict in Europe, and if it is truly in the U.S. interest to forever have allies with few capabilities and many liabilities. But that seems extremely shortsighted. The sweeping political and economic integration in Europe has dramatically reduced the likelihood of another European war. In the meantime, the fact that we have many allies with little to offer by way of military assets, and even less political will to actually use them, is forcing the U.S. military to bear the disproportionate share of the burdens of policing the planet. And in the medium- to long-term, while I doubt that we will be facing “a militarily superior, post-Soviet Russia,” allies with usable military power might ultimately serve a purpose if Moscow proves as aggressive (and capable) as the hawks claim.

In short, Secretary Gates’s comments last month suggest that he has stumbled upon the realization that being the world’s sole superpower has its disadvantages. This by itself would be a significant shift of U.S. policy, and therefore drew favorable comments by others who welcome such a change. (See, for example, Logan, Steve Walt, and Sean Kay.)

Getting Europeans to take a more active role — even in their own backyard — will be difficult, but not impossible. It starts with blunt talk about the need to take responsibility and to assume a fair share of the burdens of policing the global commons. But we’ve heard such comments before. What is also needed is greater restraint by Washington, behavior that over time will force the Europeans to play a more active role.

Is Europe Irrelevant? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog