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President Barack Obama's announced plan to include $400 billion in military spending cuts over 12 years represents a huge setback to those who understand that truly significant cuts in military spending are necessary to secure the funding to rebuild the long-neglected infrastructure of the nation and to make the kind of investments needed to create a better society. If the Obama proposal on military spending is adopted it will lock the U.S. into a huge military structure into the 2020s.
$400 billion sounds like a whole lot of money, yet spread over what the U.S. is likely to spend on the military in the next 12 years, it will mean a very small percentage decrease in cumulative military spending. Projections of future spending can be done on the basis of the base Pentagon budget and on the basis of militarily-related spending, which would include, at least, the cost of ongoing wars, the cost of the nuclear weapons complex, the cost of interest due on past deficit military spending, the cost of militarily-related intelligence funding and the cost of veterans benefits, including health care costs.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the base Pentagon budget increased by 74 percent from FY 2001 through FY 2009. This is an average of 8.22 percent annually. If military spending were to increase at the same rate for 12 years after FY 2012, the cumulative military spending would closely approach $12 trillion; however, future military spending is likely to increase by a much smaller percentage. What would the cumulative military spending be for the next 12 years with a 4 percent annual increase?
Using the base Pentagon budget for FY 2012, with 4 percent annual increases, the cumulative military spending over 12 years would be about $8 trillion, 600 billion plus. Since some military budget analysts use the figure of $1.2 trillion for militarily-related spending -- as defined above -- annual increases of 4 percent would result in cumulative military spending of close to $19 trillion. A $400 billion cut in military spending would be a little less than 5 percent of the former figure and a little more than 2 percent of the latter figure.
The $400 billion in proposed military spending cuts would, of course, significantly lower these cumulative totals if they were heavily concentrated in the first few years of Obama's 12-year plan, because they would lower the base from which annual increases were made. There are two main reasons why significant cuts are not likely to come until later. First, because Obama wants to keep the economy going and also wants to invest in a more productive, more educated and less fossil fuel dependent society, spending increases will be heavily concentrated in the first six years of the plan and spending decreases will be located in the last six years.
Second, the Obama administration has been able to identify only $78 billion in cuts through 2015. This suggests that military spending cuts will constitute less than one-fourth of the total planned cuts over the first third of the plan's duration. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has foretold that finding additional cuts could be part of a long process when he said that proposing specific overall military spending cuts are "exercises in simple math, divorced from serious considerations of capabilities, risk and the level of resources needed to protect this country's security and vital interests around the world."
When thinking in terms of deflating our bloated military we should not be thinking in terms of a cut of $400 billion or even a trillion dollars over a 10- or 12-year period: we should be thinking in the terms of former defense analyst Randall Forsberg and her disciple, George Sommaripa. Forsberg's cooperative security plan, as published in the Boston Globe in 1992, proposed a force structure costing $87 billion when fully phased-in in ten years. It would have reduced the FY 2003 military budget by about 76 percent if adopted when proposed.
Forsberg's proposed force structure was quite robust: it included, for example, ten submarines with 240 nuclear warheads, five active air wings and over 125 surface ships.
George Sommaripa's force structure would have cut the FY 2003 military budget in the range of 80 percent.
Given that the United States has vast oceans to the east and west, militarily weak nations to the north and south, close industrial allies with strong military forces, and no potential enemy power that is anywhere near being its equal in military power, we should be thinking in terms of a Forsberg or Sommaripa military force rather than a long-term cut in military spending that, at best, cumulatively, would be well under ten percent.
