[R-G] Hawks gunning for more military money

[Anthony Fenton]

   Front Page
      Feb 6, 2009
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KB06Aa03.html
	
Hawks gunning for more military money
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Despite a shrinking national economy and a record defense  
budget, United States neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks are  
mounting a spirited - if misleading - campaign to persuade Congress  
that the military should get a bigger slice.

They are calling on Congress and President Barack Obama to boost  
military spending next year even beyond the projections made by the  
administration of former president George W Bush as to what would be  
needed.

They are also arguing for devoting tens of billions of dollars of the  
nearly US$1 trillion economic stimulus package Obama is trying


to push through Congress by mid-February to defense spending,  
insisting that increased orders for largely US-based military  
contractors will translate quickly into more jobs at a time when  
official unemployment rate is moving quickly toward double digits.

"These kinds of expenditures not only make economic good sense, but  
would help close the large and long-standing gap between US strategy  
and military resources," wrote Tom Donnelly, a military analyst at the  
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a predominantly neo-conservative  
think-tank, last month.

"If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military  
fights," he argued, adding that Congress should increase defense  
spending by at least $20 billion a year. "A critical element in any  
recovery will be strengthening the foundations of a global economy,  
built upon US worldwide security guarantees."

The campaign, which coincides with increased spending by major defense  
contractors for lobbying activities, comes at a critical moment for  
the new administration, which is focused more on getting the stimulus  
package passed quickly than on its precise content and on getting its  
key appointees confirmed and in place in the sprawling bureaucracies  
that make up the government.

The administration is also still putting together its fiscal year (FY)  
2010 budget and is not expected to release details until next month,  
less than seven months before the fiscal year begins.

For now, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is  
insisting that the Pentagon's budget's be set at $527 billion for next  
year, consistent with the Bush administration's estimates as to its  
needs for FY 2010, an 8% increase over the current year's military  
budget.

That amount, which does not include the roughly $170 billion  
Washington is spending this year on ongoing military operations in  
Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in what the Bush administration called  
the "global war on terror", already makes up more than 40% of the  
world's total military expenditure.

But, as pointed out this week by the influential Congressional  
Quarterly, the Pentagon's bureaucracy and hawks in think-tanks and  
Congress are insisting that OMB's request actually amounts to a 10%  
cut to the $584 billion recommendation which was submitted by the  
Joint Chiefs of Staff last autumn in an apparent attempt to pressure  
the incoming president into a major increase.

On January 30, the far-right broadcast outlet, Fox News, quoted what  
it called a senior defense official as saying that the administration  
was demanding a $55 billion cut in defense spending.

At that point, other voices jumped in. Max Boot, a neo-conservative  
military analyst at the influential Council on Foreign Relations  
(CFR), asserted that Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, had opposed the  
OMB's ceiling and warned that if Obama did not overrule it, "he could  
be doing terrible damage not only to our armed forces but also to his  
carefully cultivated image of moderation."

The following day, Robert Kagan, a leading neo-conservative ideologue  
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, joined the outcry  
in his monthly column in the Washington Post, offering five reasons  
why a "10% cut in defense spending" could have disastrous geopolitical  
implications by signaling to US enemies that "the American retreat has  
begun".

"At a time when people talk of trillion-dollar stimulus packages,  
cutting 10% from the defense budget is a pittance, especially given  
the high price we will pay in America's global position," he wrote.  
"... [T]his is not the time to start weakening the armed forces."

"It's pretty remarkable," said William Hartung, director of the Arms  
and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation (NAF). "Obama  
agrees to Bush's [defense budget] increase, and the neo-cons are  
running around saying, 'Oh, he's gutting the military'."

Hartung and other defense analysts see this latest maneuver as part of  
a larger campaign by the Pentagon bureaucracy and the defense  
industry, which anticipated growing pressure on the defense budget  
even before the outbreak of the current financial crisis in September.  
They are seeking to protect their interests even at a time when the  
Pentagon's political leadership recognizes that huge increases in  
military spending they enjoyed during the Bush era are not sustainable.

Overall, military spending increased by about 60% since Bush took  
office in 2001, not including the costs of the wars in Iraq and  
Afghanistan.

In addition to the apparent disinformation about the alleged "cut" in  
defense spending, the Pentagon's allies in the media have been pushing  
hard for increased military spending to be made a part of the stimulus  
package.

That campaign was launched in late December when Martin Feldstein,  
former president Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser and an AEI  
fellow, argued in the Wall Street Journal for at least $30 billion to  
expand military procurement, research and recruitment. Such an  
expansion could create some 330,000 jobs, he estimated in an article  
entitled "Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus".

"Military procurement has the further advantage that almost all of the  
equipment and supplies that the military buys is made in the United  
States ... " he noted. "Because of the current very high and rising  
unemployment rates among young men and women ... now is also a good  
time for the military to increase recruiting and training."

Frank Gaffney Jr, president of the far-right Center for Security  
Policy, quickly echoed that message in his weekly Washington Times  
column. "I have long believed it is mistake to use the defense budget  
as a jobs program. We should buy military hardware because it is  
needed for our security, not to boost employment," he wrote.

"That said, where increased employment follows from making necessary  
investments in our armed forces' capabilities to fight today's wars -  
and, no less important, tomorrow's - it would be absurd not to include  
the Pentagon in an economic stimulus package."

Meanwhile, the major military contractors have stepped up their  
lobbying efforts. According to the Wall Street Journal, three of the  
biggest companies - Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and Northrop-Grunman -  
boosted their multi-million-dollar lobbying budgets by between 54% and  
90% beginning in 2008 as it became clear that the Bush spending binge  
was nearing an end.

According to Hartung and other Pentagon critics, now is the critical  
moment for a reformist administration to begin cutting the defense  
budget, notably by canceling expensive conventional-weapons systems,  
such as the F-22 fighter jets and the V-22 Osprey aircraft that have  
proved both hugely expensive and of dubious utility.

"They have a chance to stop the train and start moving back in the  
right direction," he told Inter Press Service. "If they don't take it  
now, it'll just get harder down the road."

"The problem they're not getting huge public pressure to cut, whereas  
they are getting a lot of pressure to spend more," he said.

Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/ 
.

(Inter Press Service)