The “Transformer” That Wants to Shrink Our Military

Amid economic woes and political stalemate, Secretary of Defense Robert Gate has proposed a $100 billion cut  our military budget for the next 5 years. While his decision to cut military spending and plans to retire by next year, this could be tout as a personal decision.  His decision seems to have been pushed to soften Obama’s failure to fix the economy and  cut federal spending.  Thus, Obama’s failure has prompted Secretary Gate to propose cutting military spending to supply more funds for social federal programs enacted under the Democratic Congress such as Obamacare and more stimulus packages. This proposal will not only hurt the military and counter-intelligence operations around the world, but it will also jeopardize our ability to protect our national interests  abroad and counter China’s new economic and military power. Secretary Gates decisions are not only wrong and ill-timed but it is also politically motivated by the wrong reason–to prevent economic stress for Obama and Democrats in a contentious political issue in 2012.  Source.


In an interview with Foreign Policy Magazine, Secretary Gate casually admits that he was a political appointment with “inconceivable” expectation and a “cover act“ to sell an image. A “covert action” to convince everyone that he didn’t want to stay in the hopes that nobody would ask him to.  So the argument by Secretary Gate to cut spending is that we already have too many Air force military aircraft, cargo planes, and alternative engine planes for F-35 fighters.  According to Foreign Policy Magazine, Secretary Gate meets weekly with  President Obama,  Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Treasury,  Geithner.  Mr. Gate argues and states that he has made it clear to everybody is that he is not going to support a strategy that leads to a stalemate.  Yet, his proposal  is clear encouragement to global stalemate. Mr. Gate’s goal is to cut $100 billion over the next 5 years to save democrats from facing voters who will be demanding accountability for all the money spent on unconstitutional unfunded mandates. But what is more puzzling  and troubling about Gate’s  politically motivated decision to cut about 16% of our military spending is that he is making this move when our traditional allies are fading, our foes are becoming embolden, and Europeans are rescinding to a “soft” power model.

In his famous Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus essay, Robert Kagan believes that Europe is turning away from a military power into a self-contained “softer” power that wants problems solved and eliminated through a series of international institutions such as  the UN, so they are tolerant of failure.  The Europeans  are patient if solutions are not immediate because they believe in persuasion, international law, and diplomacy over coercion.

Kagan also argues that Europeans value power as much as Americans, but they believe they know how to better deal with conflicts through commercial and political ties. Europe’s military weakness has produced an aversion to the exercise of military power where strength doesn’t matter,  so they accuse Americans of being too aggressive. Thus, they favor international law and institutions where unilateral actions by powerful nations are forbidden. As a result, Europe hopes to constrain American power without wielding power themselves. In what may be the ultimate feat of subtlety and indirection, they want to control the behemoth by appealing to its conscience.  Why would Europe want to act with power and alone when most of the world want to negotiate?

Additionally, this European ambivalent attitude push by elites and politicians is also ubiquitous in European public opinion. For example, according the Booking Institute, Europeans are not willing to participate in a conjunction effort with the U.S to protect the free flow of trade and insure stability in Africa, the Middle Eats and Asia. Indeed, 75 % of Europeans public opinion wants to cut defense spending or leave it the same, and roughly 50 % think that the alliance (NATO) is the best structure where the US carries out the war-fighting while the Europeans stick to peacekeeping.  The US outspends the EU 5 to 1 in military spending with regard to NATO.

So the proposal by Secretary Gate is not only politically motivated, but not viable because it dismisses the realty of world affairs in which our most loyal and traditional allies are also no longer willing to partake in military conflicts to stabilize nations under devastation and to face possible foes. For instance, the British have been an unwavering loyal partners in military expedition. But the British are planning to cut their military by 40% within 5 years — levels not seen since WW II.  The government’s budget, weakened further by a persistent economic crisis, simply can’t support the present size of the British military.  The inability of the British to project military power outside the UK clearly will minimize their leverage in the UN Security Council where the US-UK and the RUSS-CHI is always at play, with French naturally aligning with the block-group favoring its regional and economic interests. As result, a 40% cut of British military will make it harder for Americans to find consensus for bilateral, or multilateral legitimacy for military intervention around the world (NATO is authorized to used forced only after the Security Council has approve it).

Europe’s ambivalence is not the only thing that Secretary Gate has overlooked for his proposal for military cuts. China just surpassed Japan as the 2nd largest world economy; China was the 6th largest economy 10 years ago, now is 2nd due a 10% consistent GDP growth. China GDP is 5 trillion, Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was about $2.3 trillion, our is about 14 trillions. This milestone ascendancy of China as the 2nd largest economy means that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic and military superpower.   China is not yet fully developed, however,  China’s rapid growth suggests that it will continue to compete fiercely with the United States and Europe for natural resources.

China’s economic growth also means a stronger and aggressive military competing for natural resources in Africa and Latin American. As businesses expand abroad it is expected that China will boost its navy to protect its assets and investments with rogue nation like Venezuela, Iran, Russia  and African dictatorships.  It is estimated that officially China spent $105 billion to $150 billion on military-related expenses to transform itself from a low-tech mass army  to fight a war to a more sophisticated capable of projecting power abroad nation.  An independent analysis by The Heritage Foundation found that China’s real military spending  could be up to 3 times more than official claims.   China’s declared military budget primarily includes personnel costs (and a 17.8 percent military pay hike is reasonable), the declared budget is only a small part of overall Chinese military spending.

Similar numbers have been projected by other intelligence reports projecting a $300 Billion military expending by China.  Thus, at a continuous 10% GDP growth in China means that China could be doubling or tripling its military budget within the next 5 years.  If the projections by the Heritage Foundation are correct China will surpass the US military budget within 5 years in her quest to project military power abroad to protect her investments abroad–Russia, Africa, Latin American.   Secretary Gate’s plan is to cut 100 billions to about $500 billions in 5 years, but even under the current $600 billions military budget, many military intelligence programs are already unfunded.

A recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out that there are unfunded “mismatch” programs for counter-intelligence, Contingency Operations, and Promotion of Security for the current 2010-11 Fiscal military budget. With the current situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran it would seem aptly to increase funding for military programs  aimed to intelligence gathering and counter-insurgency; but according to the CSIA analysis, there is 29% of “mismatch” programs under the current programs and for the 2012-15 budget proposal. Moreover, funding for such intelligence programs in will be cut  300% in the 2011 in the FY military budget.  Source.

It is possible that Secretary Gate’s recent decision to resign next year and cut our military budget by 16% for the purpose of covering up Obama’s failure to control federal spending.  Gates could also be doing this to save himself from scrutiny from a possible take over by Republicans in Congress and  the military budget should not be used as political football. More importantly, while other potential foes will be tripling their military budget, our European and most loyal allies are cutting theirs while retreating to solve military problems with a “softer” diplomatic approach through the International Institutions like the UN.  Cutting our military budget appears to be a bad decision made for pure political reasons to cover up Obama’s economic failures which will only jeopardized our national security if the military budget is cut.

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