Issue Position: Defense

Issue Position

"This is not a cause any of us can resist. It is our destiny, it is our mission. As America goes, so goes the world. We are the light of freedom in a dark world, and it's time we start acting like it. I will not be intimidated from talking about the fact that radical Islam is evil and must be destroyed." -Bobby Jindal

After World War II, the leaders of the United States, on a bipartisan basis, made a deliberate decision to change America's approach to global affairs. The disasters of the 20th Century to that point, and especially the two World Wars, had made clear that the United States could no longer play a secondary role in the world. To protect America's homeland and her vital national interests, and to prevent a third World War, it was necessary for the United States to assume a global leadership role, and to build a national security architecture that allowed her to execute that role effectively.

To that end, the United States built alliances and partnerships with like-minded nations, and developed and maintained robust standing tools of power, hard and soft, with a view towards anticipating and deterring the risk of aggression before it directly threatened America's vital interests. That policy eventually bore fruit in the late 1980s, when the United States won the Cold War without firing a shot.
Disengagement is not a Prescription for American Security

Since that time, however, American policy has drifted. An increasingly multipolar world has brought with it myriad new threats -- global terrorist organizations, rogue states like Iran and North Korea seeking access to nuclear weapons, a resurgent Russia looking to re-establish a sphere of influence on its eastern and southern borders, and a Chinese regime expanding and modernizing its military at a rapid pace. Yet even as threats continue to multiply, the Obama Administration has repudiated the operating principles of the post-war strategy that kept America safe by allowing our alliances and power to atrophy and disengaging from a global leadership role.

But disengagement is not a prescription for American security, nor is it the basis for a
successful American foreign policy. We cannot continue to pretend that the world will get safer, or that risk will go away, if we respond to threats with rhetoric or attempt to ignore them entirely. The tumult of the last six years -- and the last several months in particular -- have demonstrated the failure of President Obama's attempts to "lead from behind."

"Containment is a strategy for losers. But as General George S. Patton famously observed -- "Americans play to win all the time." Americans don't play to lose. President Obama has it wrong, Secretary Clinton has it wrong, our allies need to trust us. Our enemies need to fear us. It's time we play to win again." -Bobby Jindal

Instead, to preserve America's security, our leaders must explain that America must remain active in the world, that her strategic interests must be protected, and that the way to protect them isn't to deploy at every sign of trouble, but to maintain the robust tools of a great power, both hard and soft, both military and diplomatic, and use those tools thoughtfully to protect America and deter or contain conflict.

Unfortunately, the past several years have witnessed a significant erosion in America's military capabilities. In 2011, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, recognizing both the growing threats to our national security and the fragile state of our military force structure and readiness, proposed modest increases in the overall defense budget. In response, President Obama took the unprecedented step of disregarding the recommendations of his own Defense Secretary, implementing nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the defense budget over the next decade. At a time when our armed forces were already stressed from frequent combat deployments, these additional cuts have further undermined a military in desperate need of repair.
Rebuilding the American Defense Consensus

Rebuilding our military begins with establishing a confident and workable foreign policy that Americans understand and support -- a vision -- and a sober understanding, that few good things happen in the world today unless America helps shape them. The paradox of American military power is that there's less of a need to use it when it is feared and respected. Therein lies the great economy: peace through strength costs infinitely less in American blood and treasure than does war precipitated by weakness.

By any standard, funding defense at the Gates baseline, and without a tax increase, is fully affordable, given the following:

The first priority of the federal government is the nation's defense, not only as a matter of prudence but constitutionally. But the federal government has grown so large that it tries to do everything. This results in our exploding national debt, and in failure to do those things which are absolutely necessary. We must abandon any sense of moral equivalence when it comes to our budget priorities. If we fail to defend ourselves, all else is indeed lost. So the question is not -- how much can we afford when it comes to ensuring our security and defending America? The question must be, how much will it require for us to do so.
The current baseline for defense amounts to only 2.9% of the nation's GDP -- the lowest percentage of the nation's wealth spent on defense since World War II. Even the Gates baseline budget would constitute only 3.5% of GDP -- still a historically low figure. In 2009, the government spent $830 billion -- not including debt service costs -- on the "stimulus" bill. In 2010, it passed Obamacare, which by 2024 will spend $235 billion per year on its coverage expansions alone. If the government could afford these programs, it can afford the funding which is so manifestly necessary to protect the nation's security.
It always costs more to rebuild military readiness than it would have cost to sustain it in the first place. The short term savings produced by the defense cuts will evaporate; the Pentagon spends more to recruit and retrain new personnel than it would have spent retaining the people it had. The up and down nature of defense budgeting is not only dangerous but inefficient; it makes planning difficult and usually costs more than if a consistent funding level had been maintained in the first place. For that reason, the government should adopt a guideline for defense budgeting at approximately 4% of GDP. The United States has urged the same principle on its NATO partners, and for the same reason: to keep those countries from reducing their defense budgets in the mistaken belief that the end of the Cold War meant the end of threats to which NATO should be capable of responding.
The United States is a wealthy nation with interests around the world on which its economy and way of life depend. Moreover, given the availability of asymmetric weaponry, Americans are now more vulnerable to a direct and devastating attack on their homeland -- their families and communities -- than at any time in recent history. In that sense, the defense cuts are self-defeating; they will make it impossible to sustain the kind of stability on which American prosperity depends, and without prosperity we cannot hope to solve the budget challenges facing the government.
The Department of Defense needs to redouble its efforts to eliminate waste, both to provide extra funding and to increase efficiency. One promising area is reduction of the number of civilian personnel and contractors. As the National Defense Panel noted, the number of civilian employees in the DOD grew by 15% from 2001 to 2012, while the number of active duty military personnel grew by only 3.4%. The number of civilian contractors in the Department grew to 670,000 in the same period.

But the area where reform is most needed is acquisition. Rebuilding the military will require that new weapons programs stay on schedule and within budget. This point is nonnegotiable. The following steps should be taken:

First, the requirements process -- the process by which each service determines the need and justification for new weapons and other equipment -- should be streamlined. Today, over 100 meetings are required within the Pentagon bureaucracy before a major acquisition program can progress to the next milestone or stage in the development process. Program managers must be focused on their programs, not on briefing literally hundreds of Pentagon officials.
The chain of command within the acquisition process should be simplified and consolidated, with major programs overseen by the service Secretaries and Chiefs of Staff of each service, reporting to the Undersecretary for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, all ultimately responsible to the Secretary of Defense. At present, there are countless officials and agencies that possess, in effect, a veto authority over the progress of a major weapon development program. Authority and responsibility must be vested with the program manager and the immediate chain of command, not dissipated across the Pentagon's vast bureaucracy.
Second, the Department should commit to designing and procuring new programs in no more than a five to seven year window, and the new inventory should be engineered so that, after it is deployed, it can be upgraded with new technologies as they are developed. Shortening the design/build cycle will minimize changes in requirements, reduce delays, and control costs.
The primary need now is for new equipment with reasonable capability in the field as soon as possible. Technology older than seven years is likely to be obsolete upon delivery anyway. This kind of "spiral development" was common during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s. As an example, the F-16 fighter aircraft was designed in the mid-1970s and first deployed in 1980. The aircraft was continually upgraded over time and will be operationally relevant for another decade. The Department has procured over 4,000 F-16s. In contrast, it took 14 years to design the F-22, the technology was obsolete by the time it was deployed, and the cost overruns were a factor in its cancellation after only 187 were procured.
Finally, programs should be competed whenever possible, not just in the design phase but also in production. The Department should make every effort to ensure that key parts of key programs are dual sourced, both to hold down costs and to ensure the vitality of the defense industrial base. The Department should make much greater use of multi-year procurement contracts. Members of Congress may resist because it diminishes their year-to-year control over programs, but buying in volume over time, when a program has a stable design, will produce savings for the Department and the American taxpayer.

Conclusion

Our nation's defense should be the top priority of the federal government. Without a secure nation and economy, America cannot hope to overcome the other challenges which face us.

The postwar generation of leaders understood this principle -- and the need for a robust military as a primary tool to deter threats before they grow. Having witnessed firsthand the effects of passivity in failing to protect the American people from attack, and the cost in men and material that our lack of preparation bred, politicians from both parties supported a strong national defense as a key way of deterring Soviet aggression, and protecting American interests.

While the specific threats have evolved, and in many cases multiplied, since the end of the Cold War, the principle that a strong defense will best protect the country remains valid. It is time for America's leaders to return to that principle, and commit to rebuilding a weakened military infrastructure. The American people will support that effort, and the United States is more than strong enough to make it a success. What is needed is leadership, on a bipartisan basis, committed to the idea that clarity, purpose, and power remain the keys to peace and security.

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