Vice President Kamala Harris, in last week’s debate with former President Donald Trump, repeated her call for the US to maintain the world’s most “lethal” military. It’s a good thought, given today’s menagerie of geopolitical malcontents.
Russia is slugging away at Ukraine as part of a long, bitter struggle against the West. China’s military buildup, and hoarding of food and energy, suggests that President Xi Jinping is putting his country on a war footing, too. North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenals are improving. Iran and its proxies are roiling the Middle East and the neighboring sea lanes. But far from arming up for what looks more and more like a prewar era, America is slouching toward disarmament, as it struggles to maintain the (insufficient) military strengths it has.
The Pentagon is undertaking a multidecade project to modernize the US nuclear arsenal — put plainly, to ensure that the US has nuclear weapons and delivery systems that really work. But all three aspects of that modernization — the bomber force, land-based missiles and ballistic-missile submarines — are behind schedule and over budget. The US is struggling to update missile silos and other vital infrastructure.
In the years ahead, America will be hard pressed to keep its arsenal from atrophying, at a time when it may need more nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence in a world in which both Russia’s and China’s forces rival its own.
US conventional forces face similar problems. The Navy is sidelining 17 logistical-support ships, further straining a fleet that is already too small to handle a vexing global mission. The Navy needs more nuclear-powered attack submarines to maintain its undersea dominance over China, but it is having trouble simply keeping the existing boats in service, given the maintenance shortfalls a decrepit shipbuilding industry creates
Things are going to get even worse. Many Ronald Reagan-era ships, submarines and planes are nearing, or already past, retirement age. In many cases their replacements will not be available until the 2030s. The creative warfighting concepts the military services are developing for a high-intensity fight with China — such as the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment, or the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations — will also take time to mature. So the US is facing a firepower gap in the late 2020s, just when China’s military aims to be ready for a potential assault on Taiwan.
It seems incredible that America could possibly be falling short on defense when its military budget is creeping closer to $1 trillion. But that’s the wrong way to think about it.
The US is presently spending roughly 3% of gross domestic product on defense — a smaller share than at nearly any time since World War II. Much of that money — around half, by some estimates — is consumed by personnel costs, which could rise further as the services find it harder to recruit and fill their ranks. The integration of new capabilities is hindered by a cumbersome and costly acquisition process. And because the US is a global power, its forces are spread across many regions, whereas Russia or China can focus primarily on one — Europe and the Pacific, respectively.
The upshot is a set of dangerous dilemmas. The Pentagon is making painful tradeoffs between nuclear and conventional modernization — even though weakness in the latter area can make catastrophic escalation in the former more likely. The military lacks the money to develop capabilities that may win a war that erupts a decade from now, while at the same time stocking the arsenal for conflicts that could occur at any moment: US defense strategy is being strained by zero-sum competition between the present and the future.
The report of the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission warns that the US could lose the next great-power war, perhaps because it runs out of vital munitions after a few days or can’t replace the ships, planes and other capabilities such a conflict would consume in vast numbers. Restoring the margin of safety, argues Senator Roger Wicker, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would require defense outlays rising to 5% of GDP
That number seems daunting by today’s standards, even though it is less than the 7.5% of GDP the US spent on average during the Cold War, the 6% of GDP that was reached during the buildup that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the 14% of GDP the US spent after the outbreak of the Korean War. Unless we wanted to blow up the national debt even further, such increases would require tax hikes, entitlement cuts or both — a politically toxic package that neither Harris nor Trump supports.
Yet the pattern of history is that the US underspends on defense until it suffers some strategic shock — think Korea and Afghanistan, or even Pearl Harbor and 9/11 — that shows just how “lethal” its enemies have become. It’s time for a more serious debate about the costs of national security, lest America suffer the greater pain its slide into military insolvency could, one day, exact.
Russia is slugging away at Ukraine as part of a long, bitter struggle against the West. China’s military buildup, and hoarding of food and energy, suggests that President Xi Jinping is putting his country on a war footing, too. North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenals are improving. Iran and its proxies are roiling the Middle East and the neighboring sea lanes. But far from arming up for what looks more and more like a prewar era, America is slouching toward disarmament, as it struggles to maintain the (insufficient) military strengths it has.
The Pentagon is undertaking a multidecade project to modernize the US nuclear arsenal — put plainly, to ensure that the US has nuclear weapons and delivery systems that really work. But all three aspects of that modernization — the bomber force, land-based missiles and ballistic-missile submarines — are behind schedule and over budget. The US is struggling to update missile silos and other vital infrastructure.
In the years ahead, America will be hard pressed to keep its arsenal from atrophying, at a time when it may need more nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence in a world in which both Russia’s and China’s forces rival its own.
US conventional forces face similar problems. The Navy is sidelining 17 logistical-support ships, further straining a fleet that is already too small to handle a vexing global mission. The Navy needs more nuclear-powered attack submarines to maintain its undersea dominance over China, but it is having trouble simply keeping the existing boats in service, given the maintenance shortfalls a decrepit shipbuilding industry creates
Things are going to get even worse. Many Ronald Reagan-era ships, submarines and planes are nearing, or already past, retirement age. In many cases their replacements will not be available until the 2030s. The creative warfighting concepts the military services are developing for a high-intensity fight with China — such as the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment, or the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations — will also take time to mature. So the US is facing a firepower gap in the late 2020s, just when China’s military aims to be ready for a potential assault on Taiwan.
It seems incredible that America could possibly be falling short on defense when its military budget is creeping closer to $1 trillion. But that’s the wrong way to think about it.
The US is presently spending roughly 3% of gross domestic product on defense — a smaller share than at nearly any time since World War II. Much of that money — around half, by some estimates — is consumed by personnel costs, which could rise further as the services find it harder to recruit and fill their ranks. The integration of new capabilities is hindered by a cumbersome and costly acquisition process. And because the US is a global power, its forces are spread across many regions, whereas Russia or China can focus primarily on one — Europe and the Pacific, respectively.
The upshot is a set of dangerous dilemmas. The Pentagon is making painful tradeoffs between nuclear and conventional modernization — even though weakness in the latter area can make catastrophic escalation in the former more likely. The military lacks the money to develop capabilities that may win a war that erupts a decade from now, while at the same time stocking the arsenal for conflicts that could occur at any moment: US defense strategy is being strained by zero-sum competition between the present and the future.
The report of the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission warns that the US could lose the next great-power war, perhaps because it runs out of vital munitions after a few days or can’t replace the ships, planes and other capabilities such a conflict would consume in vast numbers. Restoring the margin of safety, argues Senator Roger Wicker, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would require defense outlays rising to 5% of GDP
That number seems daunting by today’s standards, even though it is less than the 7.5% of GDP the US spent on average during the Cold War, the 6% of GDP that was reached during the buildup that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the 14% of GDP the US spent after the outbreak of the Korean War. Unless we wanted to blow up the national debt even further, such increases would require tax hikes, entitlement cuts or both — a politically toxic package that neither Harris nor Trump supports.
Yet the pattern of history is that the US underspends on defense until it suffers some strategic shock — think Korea and Afghanistan, or even Pearl Harbor and 9/11 — that shows just how “lethal” its enemies have become. It’s time for a more serious debate about the costs of national security, lest America suffer the greater pain its slide into military insolvency could, one day, exact.
. Money is certainly not the problem then. But hey every year they have to come out with a bs excuse to increase military budget then end up with the same problem. Over budget projects and more corruption.
