Max Boot has written about the “good and bad of [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates’s agenda.” Others are inclined to see more bad than good in it. But as Max points out, it is “basically an austerity budget.” Some of the changes are defensible, others less so, but when you add it all up, defense is the only part of the budget that Obama wants to cut. And the cuts are being concealed by claims that the core defense budget is increasing. That’s true, but as the spending previously covered in supplemental appropriations is being moved to the core defense budget, total defense spending will decrease.
If you think the U.S. forces are going down the wrong road, spare a thought for Britain’s. For 2009-10, the budget of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) will rise by 850 million pounds, an increase of about 2.2 percent. But, in an arrangement that parallels the U.S. elimination of supplemental appropriations, the MoD will in future be responsible for meeting most of the cost of urgent operational requirements in Afghanistan out of its own budget. That alone will devour most of the announced increase.
The result is that, as in the U.S., programs are going to be delayed or canceled. As in the U.S., some of these programs, like the presidential VH-71 helicopter, are no loss at all: the U.K. cannot stop buying Eurofighters, or participating in the endless European A400M program instead of buying U.S. C-130 aircraft, soon enough.
These programs illustrate a sad reality — one of many — about most “European” defense: it is about jobs, and nothing but jobs. It’s unrealistic to expect defense spending to be only about defense, but pace Rep. Murtha, it should at least be mostly about defense. When defense becomes nothing more than an expensive industrial program, that’s a sure sign that the cultural rot is running deep.
But other programs under threat — like missile defense in the U.S., another one of Gates’s targets — are not Euro-monstrosities. The British carrier program looks likely to be postponed again, and the successor to the Trident submarine fleet is being challenged by an alliance of unilateral disarmers, Labour tightwads, and pro-defense Tories who are under the illusion that dropping the missiles would mean more money for the Army.
But in 2010-11, bad turns to worse. Next year, the Treasury promises to cut the MoD’s budget by two billion pounds, from about 38.5 billion to 36.5 billion. That is a cut of over 5 percent. While Alastair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, aims to rely mostly on the smoke and mirrors of efficiency increases to bring the budget closer to balance — a plan the Economist describes as a “dishonest piece of pre-election politicking” — defense spending will actually be cut.
As in the U.S., these cuts will undoubtedly be described not as cuts, but as a “reshaping of our basic capability.” Right now, the U.S. and Britain are singing from the same defense songbook, and even giving each other lessons. The pity is that, by and large, they’re teaching, and learning, the wrong lessons.
