Cut Commitments, Not Muscle
In that year of happy memory, 1972, George McGovern, the Democratic nominee, declared he would chop defense by fully one-third.
A friendly congressman was persuaded to ask Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to expatiate on what this might mean.
The Pentagon replied the Sixth Fleet might have to be pulled out of the Med, leaving Israel without U.S. protection against the fleet of Adm. Sergei Gorshkov, and provided the congressman a list of U.S. bases that would have to be shut down.
Radio ads were run in the towns closest to the bases on the Pentagon list, declaring they would be closed and all jobs terminated, should McGovern win.
Something akin to this is going on with the impending sequester.
A cut of 7 percent, $46 billion, in Pentagon spending, says Army chief Ray Odierno, will mean a “hollowing” out of his force.
The Navy? The carrier Harry Truman will not be sailing to the Persian Gulf. The Abraham Lincoln will not be overhauled in Newport News. Thousands of jobs will be lost.
Reporter Rowan Scarborough writes that the Air Force has produced “a map of the U.S. that shows state-by-state the millions of dollars lost to local economies,” should the guillotine fall.
Military aid to Israel may be cut, says John Kerry.
But if an evisceration of the national defense is imminent, why did Obama not tell us in 2012? Why were the joint chiefs silent, when they are panicked now? Are the generals, admirals and contractors all crying wolf?
Undeniably, spending cuts by sequester slicer, chopping all equally, is mindless. And with the national security, it manifests a failure of both parties to come to terms with the world we are now in.
The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union is gone. Mao’s China is gone, though a mightier China has emerged, as America’s share of the global economy is shrinking.? Moreover, as ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen contends, our greatest strategic threat is not Kim Jong Un or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the soaring national debt.
And if, as Republicans insist, we have a debt crisis because we are “spending too much,” spending will have to be cut — discretionary spending, entitlements and defense. And the only question about the defense cuts is not whether they are coming, but where.
What is needed is what America, since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, has stubbornly resisted doing: a strategic review of all U.S. commitments abroad to determine which remain vital to the national security. Before we decide what our defense forces should be, let us determine what is in the U.S. vital interest to defend at risk of war.
Start with NATO. In 1961, President Eisenhower urged JFK to bring home the U.S. forces and let the Europeans raise the armies to defend themselves, lest they become military dependencies.
Yet, more than 20 years after the Wall fell, the Red Army went home, East Europe broke free and the Soviet Union fell apart, we have scores of thousands of troops in Europe.
Why? The European Union’s economy is 10 times that of Russia. Europe’s population is twice Russia’s.
Why are we still there?
Though we have given NATO war guarantees to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, our McCainiacs want them handed out to the Ukraine and Georgia. Yet no president in his right mind is going to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over some Caucasus dustup or Baltic brawl.
If Richard Nixon could achieve a modus vivendi with Chairman Mao, have we no statesman who can patch it up with Vladimir Putin? A first step might be to pull all U.S. missiles out of Eastern Europe and put our democracy-meddlers on the next plane out of Moscow.
Even as Ike was telling JFK to bring the troops home from Europe, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was urging JFK not to put his foot soldiers in Asia — advice not taken there, either.
On retirement, Robert Gates said any future defense secretary who advises a president to fight another land war in Asia ought to have his head examined. So why do we have 28,000 U.S. troops in Korea and 50,000 in Japan?
In his Guam Doctrine, Nixon declared that in any future Asian war, we should provide the weapons to our Asian allies and they should do the fighting. Does that not still make sense today? Before we can decide the size and shape of our defense budget, we need a consensus on what we must defend.
And if Republicans wish to remain a viable party, they cannot delegate these decisions to the “We-are-all-Georgians-now!” crowd that plunged us into Iraq and is bawling for intervention in Syria and war on Iran.
The GOP desperately needs a credible, countervailing voice to the uber-hawks whose bellicosity all but killed the party in the Bush era.
Obama is president because of them. And his most popular act, according to voter surveys from 2012? Ending the war in Iraq.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
Read more by Patrick J. Buchanan
- What Should Americans Die For? – May 16th, 2013
- Who Are the War Criminals in Syria? – May 6th, 2013
- Their War, Not Ours – April 29th, 2013
- Is War With North Korea Inevitable? – April 4th, 2013
- Goading Gullible America Into War – March 21st, 2013
Johnny in Wi.
February 21st, 2013 at 11:26 pm
I agree 100% with Pat. It is long since time to bring the troops home and shut down our alliances. This country is broke from needless Defense and other spending. We should do what Warren Harding did after WW1, cut spending and taxes at least 50%. He also worked to slash the world's navies at The Washinton Naval conference. That conference saved the world's peoples much money.
persnipoles
February 21st, 2013 at 11:32 pm
If they have few countervailing voices anymore, it's because because GWoT/Likud chased them from what's now a bona fide loony bin. We'll say things like 'I didn't leave conservatism, conservatism left me.' And good riddance to those that left on board.
Zephyr Global Report, 2/22/2013 | Zephyr Global Report
February 21st, 2013 at 11:47 pm
[...] Cut Commitments, Not Muscle by Patrick J. Buchanan [...]
richard young
February 22nd, 2013 at 12:02 am
Good article. I would only add that our Government needs also to examine all of the many non-defense activities of our "Defense" Department. Increasingly our Government is utilizing our Armed Forces for purposes of destabilization or outright "regime change" where the existing regime has not even threatened our nation, much less attacked it. Libya and Syria are the most recent examples of non-defensive "defense" activities. Of course because we citizens have no right to know what our Government is doing on our behalf ("national security" don't you know), we can only guess as to the extent of US covert military activities now being conducted by Special Forces (and who knows what other Government agents) in various nations around the world. But the question of whether we really have a functioning democracy, where citizens/voters are deemed unworthy of knowing what their elected Government is doing in their name, is another subject too big to tackle here. Anyway, thanks Pat, for daring to say what most other "leaders" of public opinion will not say.
John V. Walsh
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:51 am
This moment presents a golden opportunity for the GOP to return to its anti- interventionist, anti-war and anti-Empire roots.
But the disturbing fact is that the effort is stalled, to put it mildly.
Ron Paul has retired and he cannot remain the only principled, public voice against interventionism if the libertarian wing of the Conservative movement is to gain traction.
Meanwhile the impotent and unprincipled pwogwessives move ever deeper into the camp of "humanitarian" imperialism. Worse, those progressives with some touch of integrity resolutely refuse to join hands with libertarians and "paleoconservatives" in a bid to stop war – and the US is planning a mighty conflict with China.
Great opportunity and great failure. A tragedy is in the making – and everyone of us who fails to act now will be a contributor to that tragedy, a tragedy which will bring untold tears to the human race.
jingles
February 22nd, 2013 at 1:07 pm
J.F.K. was going to pull out the troops out of Vietnam after the 1964 election, he did want to appear weak on Communisim.
Sam
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:38 pm
the empire business is very tiresome. A little break would do wonder.
JoaoAlfaiate
February 22nd, 2013 at 4:32 pm
"Military aid to Israel may be cut, says John Kerry. " Sounds like BS to me. Congressmen would sooner sell their Grandmothers' bones than cut aid to israel.
Eileen Kuch
February 22nd, 2013 at 6:12 pm
Pat Buchanan is right on target with this story. While the US military is traipsing all around the world in "humanitarian" interventions, the nation's borders and infrastructure are suffering from severe neglect.
The late Gen. Douglas MacArthur warned us against waging any further land wars in Asia back in the early 1950's; but, did anyone listen? Apparently not, since the Vietnam War resulted in a fiasco, with both remaining US forces, as well as scores of Vietnamese allies, wound up scrambling in sheer panic to leave that war-torn country.
In 1972, the late Senator and former Presidential candidate George McGovern had promised to cut Defense spending by around 50%; and, this was still during the Cold War. Of course, he had lost in a landslide to then President Richard Nixon.
Well, the Cold War ended over 20 years ago, with the demise of the former USSR and the Warsaw Pact along with it; so, why are we continuing to spend more on militarism than most of the other nations COMBINED? Are we trying to emulate the ancient Roman Empire, which lasted longer than any other at 500 years, or the British Empire, which lasted approximately as long? Not very good role models. Rome was finally destroyed by barbarian invasions after generations of decline; the British Empire simply declined, and, finally shrunk into a fraction of its former glorious self.
So, how long has the US actually been an Empire? Two centuries? It was the Spanish-American War that brought this nation into the list of empires that began eons ago; and, empires don't usually last as long as Rome or the UK had.
gmc1987
February 23rd, 2013 at 4:27 pm
I have to agree with Mr B. on this one. Although this would be just a starting point on reducing the Federal budget in my opinion. Billions could be saved as mentioned above, however, where then would that money go? I remember a Colonel in the Army once telling me that he had a budget, that budget could not be reduced; if it was, the following year would then be set at this lower number. So he would buy thousands of pens, and other non essentials just to keep his budget inflated. This was in 1975. We need change, and less government. Mr. B's proposals are all valid