The Obama Administration’s apparent agreement to shield current DoD bloat at essentially a 1% annual level while proclaiming dramatic cuts is chutzpah even for them. Given our general fiscal collapse, Obama’s proposed budget is actually just a pre-emptive token for political optics. This budget preserves intact the perpetual militarization launched by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Obama ironically really *is* Sovietizing America in this regard.
It’s a proposal. So we shouldn’t get too worked up just yet. Why? Whenever anyone talks about ‘out year savings’ or ‘projected fiscal year savings’ they’re babbling for political cover. DoD budgets are approved annually, as you know. Authorizers and appropriators alike always have rejected budget reform proposals like two-year budgets to improve management and savings. This Tea Party crowd reading Gilberts ConLaw to each other won’t cede any of that annual power to the illegitimate Obama. Plus, neither party got worked up over running two wars off the books. Out year projections like statistics are often fibs.
Second, a rational government would link DoD budgets to U.S foreign policy and security goals. Obama’s vaunted new look foreign policy? Offers tone and tenor differences from Bush. Welcome. What’s jarring — but predictable — about this Administration DoD proposed budget? It enshrines the essential irrational global militarization of 2001-2008. Obama also doesn’t threaten any major rice bowls. Existing political-economic constituencies may complain but they escape largely unscathed. Bush Lite. It’s classic Obama Goldilocks Syndrome — go for lukewarm pudding. Adams in the NYT may say ‘I think the floor under defense spending has now gone soft’. If he means unchecked irrational growth is over, he might have a point. Nonetheless, when we cut through all the smoke and mirrors, Obama proposes an aggregate overall package concealing about 1% actual real growth or at worse a steady state. Some floor.
How ‘Republicans’ and the Movement factions reconcile their fiscal and security memes among themselves remains unknown. 2008-2010 tells us that Obama and Democrats are incapable of bold conceptual initiatives. The worst outcome for America and the world? To fudge the hard questions and ‘muddle through’ on tactical politics of the moment. The Tweetyverse applauds Obama for saying tax reform will regain his mojo. That’s our point. The responsible play for America and history (what Obama claims to value) is to do the hard work and re-evaluate American strategic interests first in our new incarnation. Then reconfigure the purpose of American power and its budget accordingly.
Consider the British experience post-1918. Seemingly a victor of the Great War, Great Britain was already no longer ‘great’ even by 1920. Nonetheless, successive governments left unchanged her Imperial commitments. Meanwhile, her actual outlays fluctuated according to disassociated tactical domestic and internal political-economic logic. Her ‘ends means gap’ between her global commitments and what she was able to do? A significant contributor to 50 million people dying 1939-45.