CIAO DATE: 01/2009
December 2008
Project on Defense Alternatives
A key objective of the new administration will be to "rebalance" America's foreign and security policy "tool kit", giving greater prominence to diplomacy and other elements of "soft power". And it is easy to see why. The surge in US defense spending and military activity that began ten years ago, and then sharply accelerated after the 11 September 2001 attacks, has had disconcerting results-to say the least. But setting an effective alternative course for US policy will not be as easy to accomplish as some assume.
Since 1998, defense spending has risen by 90 percent in real terms, bringing the national defense budget close to $700 billion annually, which represents about 46 percent of global defense expenditure (in purchasing power terms). All told, there are approximately 440,000 US military personnel presently overseas, which is close to the number that was overseas during the last decade of the Cold War. About 200,000 are currently engaged in combat operations and more than 38,000 have been wounded in action or killed since 2001. Despite this prodigious and costly effort, the world today seems, on balance, to be less secure, stable, and friendly than eight years ago. Terrorist activity and anti-Americanism have increased. The nation's military activity has unsettled its alliances and prompted balancing behavior on the part of potential big power competitors: China and Russia. And there remains no real end in sight for America's consumptive commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the scope of US military intervention is expanding.
What the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the world is that the United States, unimpeded by a peer competitor, cannot by its current methods reliably stabilize two impoverished nations comprising only one percent of the world's population-despite the investment of nearly 5,000 American lives and more than $850 billion. What General David Petreaus once asked of the Iraq war-"Tell me how this ends"-might be asked of the "war on terror" as a whole. The effort waxes and wanes, meandering into every corner of the earth, but shows no sure progress toward an end that might be called "victory."
No great wisdom is needed to suspect that a sea-change in method is due.
Giving greater play to diplomacy and "soft power" is advisable, but not sufficient. More fundamental is the need to roll back America's over-reliance on military instruments, which has proved both improvident and counter-productive. That the United States faces serious security challenges is not at question. Nor at question is the need for energetic global engagement. The problem is that the United States is using its armed forces and military power well beyond the limit of their utility. It is now experiencing not just diminishing returns, but negative ones. Thus, America finds itself paying more and more for less and less security.
Military moderation is also essential to the revival of America's world reputation and leadership position. This, because what most divides the United States from those it proposes to lead is the issue of when, how, and how much to use force and the armed forces. This divide helped drive the Bush administration deeper into unilateralism. It was apparent during the 1990s as well, when the rise in anti- American sentiments first made headlines. Indeed, most post-Cold War US military interventions have involved considerable contention with key allies. Even when they join the United States on the battlefield, differences over the use of force re-emerge at the tactical level and with regard to "rules of engagement".
Refiguring the role of force and the armed forces in US policy will not come easily. The current balance is well-rooted ideologically, institutionally, and politically. Some US leaders see it as reflecting America's unique competitive advantage in the post-Cold War world and as pivotal to America's strategy for shaping the process of globalization. But the costly wreck that is recent policy constitutes a strong argument for a change.
And the advent of a new administration in Washington provides an opportunity to go "back to the drawing board". Unlike the first post-Cold War administrations, the next one will have the benefit of hindsight-having seen clearly both the nature of today's security challenges and the downside of adopting an overly-militarized approach to addressing them.
Mapping a path out of the current policy cull-de-sac begins with the question, How did we get here?
Resource link: Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role of Military Power in US Global Policy [PDF] - 3.4M