The State of the Military: An Introduction

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience... We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

...Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

--President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961



Eisenhower's worst fear, total dominance of government by the arms industry and its political backers, has not been realized. However, the military-industrial complex plagues us still.

While its unwarranted influence may not be responsible for the subversion of our domestic or international political goals, it has undoubtedly reinforced and disseminated its requirements across American society to the point of impeding our government’s ability to achieve its political and military goals.

With the beginning of the Korean War and the reformation of the U.S. armed services following their post-World War II drawdown, the US military elite began to see the need for a fully formed professional army, ready to serve at a moment’s notice. The years of a tiny peacetime military had ended, and the burgeoning Cold War and its accompanying arms race required massive military spending that inevitably encouraged an environment of waste and complicity at the Pentagon.

Even by Cold War standards, however, the past eight years have left an army once capable of flexible, worldwide response now hamstrung, eroded, and overstretched. Yet vastly expensive weapons programs designed to fight yesterday’s battles continue to plod along in the bowels of the Pentagon, sucking up valuable funding and resources. Meanwhile, the services of America's military faces dramatic tasks of a seriously different nature.

The Obama administration has found its power projection capability outside of Iraq and Afghanistan hampered, up to the point that its ability to conduct strategic diplomacy in general is seriously impeded. On top of this, President Obama has given himself perhaps the most difficult task of all: a complete overhaul the entire defense procurement process, the military-industrial complex itself.

The years preceding George W. Bush's presidency marked a period of simultaneous decreases in military spending and increases in the number of military operations abroad. While President Clinton is said to have been reluctant to deploy the U.S. military to intervene abroad, international events often forced U.S. intervention. In such cases he employed a flexible response, often involving the use of cruise missiles and the Marines.

This strategy, however, made for a poor match with available U.S. military forces, but the lessons of such conflicts never managed to penetrate the walls of the Pentagon. As such, development of weapons systems irrelevant to these conflicts and the tactics required to fight them continued.

We at the Internet Bullhorn plan to run a series of posts on these issues and how the Obama Administration might best address them. Each issue can be roughly divided into two parts: reorganizing military forces and procurement methods in order to craft a more efficient and effective fighting force, and the interplay between this process and the United States’ role on the international stage.

An Obama Military
The latest copy of Obama's budget plan for the Department of Defense provides for a 4 percent increase in funding. Among other things, this includes funds for a larger Army and Marine Corps, increased benefits for enlisted families, continuing operational costs for the two major theater operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans intended to 'leverage allied support to help struggling states such as Pakistan, which are the keystones for regional stability.'

However, this 4 percent rise in defense spending also masks an overall reallocation of spending to focus on operational costs, as opposed to purchasing new weapons systems. This then implies budget cuts, at least for the Navy and Air Force.

Overall, the focus of defense spending under an Obama administration looks to be based on pragmatism and logistical practicality, stressing the tactical needs of counterinsurgency warfare insofar as they secure strategic goals. This may well exclude the need for major technological spending on programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, freeing up money towards increasing troop levels, improving the integration of theater command, and ensuring all troops in current war zones are properly equipped.

On March 4th , President Obama officially opened the door to the axing of one or more of these high end weapons systems with a memorandum giving the Office of Management and Budget the ability to cancel any development program or contract it deems wasteful.

The Road Ahead
The United States can only afford a foreign policy that is backed with teeth, and if it cannot afford the armed forces that serve as those teeth, it must reexamine its foreign commitments. An inability to project power abroad stilts any administration's ability to respond to international events and threatens the international status of our Union.

Military power exists solely to produce political results, war being merely an extension of politics. A military unable to meet the requirements set by political necessity is no longer a fully capable armed force. Determining which programs are prime candidates for cutting, and which programs stand to ultimately ensure national security in proportion to cost will be the objective of this study.