You Don't Go To War With Iran With The Army You Want...

Ethan Heitner

May 03, 2006

Remember how when Don Rumsfeld came to the DoD he was going to preside over a transformational sweep of our defense establishment? As 9/11, four years in Afghanistan and three years in Iraq have proven over and again, the concern is no longer for "large-scale, conventional warfare against an enemy with power comparable to that of the United States." Rather, as Bush and Rumsfeld have correctly identified, the challenge is effectively dealing with the major threats to our security: non-state actors and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Boy, it sure was cool to realize that Don Rumsfeld was on top of that stuff. Despite being an administration of stodgy leftover dinosaurs from the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I presidencies (you know, the ones that dealt with the Cold War), with an appropriations process designed to reward close ties between industry and appropriators, the boys in charge sounded like they were ready to change with the times.

The Task Force On A Unified Security Budget For the United States begs to differ. They say that the Bush administration is still fighting Cold War battles—and that " wasteful defense spending is reckless and unpatriotic." A nonpartisan group of defense analysts dedicated to providing a comprehensive view of a security budget, they charge that because America's security spending is currently spread out piecemeal over dozens of separate subcommittees and departments, no single appropriator has an official overview of where all that money is being spent. This hides the fact that the budget relies precisely on the same old big, expensive projects that totally fail to take into account the new threat environment. As noted in their 2007 report, issued yesterday, recent administration documents like the president's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (again, five years into the administration and four years into a dandy GWOT) succeed in capturing the nature of the problem:

[The QDR] accurately characterized the complex nature of today's national security environment. It correctly recognized that the United Statesfaces a diverse array of potential military threats, including terrorists with global reach, extremist regimes, such as Iran and North Korea, and the threat posed by the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Unfortunately, despite that awareness,

The United States lacks adequate personnel, organizational structure, and expertise to wage a counterinsurgency campaign, extended peacekeeping, or post-conflict reconstruction.

Bush administration rhetoric not matching its policy? Shocking.

The explanation, as always, is in the money.

The U.S. national security budget is dominated by weapons systems designed to fight a military peer,  and fails to devote sufficient resources to the capabilities that are essential to countering 21st century threats ... at least $22 billion of the current defense budget goes for research, development or procurement of weapons systems that are better designed to defeat a military peer competitor rather than conduct operations against terrorist organizations and extreme regimes.

Excluding the emergency supplemental appropriations which have paid for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the tune of $350 billion or so, the FY '07 request by the president funds military over non-military defense tools by a ratio of 6:1. This, despite the fact that four years of military force projection in Afghanistan and Iraq have only created more terrorists. The Bush administration is once again literally not putting its money where its mouth is.

The task force proposes shifting a fraction of the proposed $450 billion appropriations for the next year, about $50 billion, from Cold War-era weapons systems such as the as-yet-nonfunctional National Missile Defense program (which recieves more money in the proposed budget than the Coast Guard), the various new fighter jets , submarines and deep-sea destroyers that serve no tactical purpose and other unneccesary pet projects. Instead, the task force report prioritizes nonproliferation programs that are proven to work, diplomacy (U.S. embassies worldwide are still understaffed), port and homeland security (the CIA estimates that the most likely arrival path for a terrorist WMD would be overseas, while the least likely would be a ballistic missile), economic development and stabilization around the world—and alternative energy, to ward off the destabilizing geopolitics of oil addiction .

It's a detailed look at the difference between substance and rhetoric when it comes to defense policy, a frightening reminder of the incompetence of those in charge and an important tool for those looking to define a progressive defense strategy—a strategy that doesn't mean not fighting, but means fighting intelligently.

As one of the principle authors of the report, Lawrence Korb, a Pentagon official under Reagan, pointed out, let's say we end up in a naval or air battle with Iran. Even after Korb's proposed reallignment of defense priorities: "We'd still have the best navy in the world. It's still no contest. And [new destroyers like] the DDX won't help with assymetric warfare." Indeed,  "It won't endanger our ability to prosecute whatever your current phrase is, the global war on terror or the long war. In fact, as we've pointed out, it will increase our ability to prevail in that struggle."

And heck, maybe with some funding for non-military programs, we'd actually be able to come up with some solutions for problems that don't require us to go to war with Iran at all.