By Ron Paul
March 4, 2014
Last week Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
proposed an additional 40,000 reduction in active duty US Army personnel, down
to 450,000 soldiers. As US troops are being withdrawn from the recent wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, it might make sense to reduce not only the active duty
military but the entire military budget. However, from the interventionists’
reaction to Hagel’s announcement you might think President Obama announced he
was shutting down the Pentagon!
Rep. Michael McCaul, Chairman of the
House Homeland Security Committee, claimed that this slight reduction in
personnel would hurt our military readiness. He blamed the exploding spending
on welfare entitlements for the proposed military cuts, stating, “It’s all
being sacrificed … on the altar of entitlements. This president cannot take on
mandatory spending, so all we’ve done in the Congress — and this president — is
basically cut discretionary spending.”
McCaul is partly right. Welfare
spending is bankrupting the country. But military spending is also welfare: it
is welfare for the well-connected military-industrial complex, which enriches
itself manufacturing useless boondoggles like the F-35 fighter. We should never
confuse legitimate defense spending – which I support – with military spending,
which promotes interventionism overseas and actually undermines our national
security.
Neoconservative Senators Lindsey Graham
and John McCain were also quick to criticize Hagel’s announcement. They said
the cuts were dead on arrival in the US Senate. “We are going to kill it, not
let it happen,” said Graham. McCain added, “We live in an ever-increasingly
dangerous world and this budget is out of touch with reality.”
What McCain and Graham won’t admit is
that much of the reason we are in an increasingly-dangerous world is that the
neocons keep inviting blowback with the interventions they are constantly
pushing. If we minded our own business we would live in a far less dangerous
world.
Nevertheless, although the neocons make
a big deal about this small cut in military personnel, in reality these are not
military cuts at all. These are token proposed cuts in troop levels which
Congress won’t allow the administration to do anyway. What Hagel proposes is
not cuts, but instead a shift in spending away from personnel and toward new
high-tech weapons which are favored by and profitable to the
military-industrial complex.
The
F-35, for example, will continue in production according to Hagel’s plan,
despite the numerous cost over-runs and design flaws. This is likely because
the F-35 is built in 46 US states and nine foreign countries! That makes it
particularly popular in Congress, regardless of its flaws and expense.
We do need real cuts in military
spending, not just moving spending around from troops to new weapons systems.
But what we really need is for the president to downsize US foreign policy.
Maintaining a military presence in 140 countries while continuing to stir up
trouble can lead to problems when the military is downsized. So, it’s our
intervention that needs downsizing.
A proper foreign policy would mean a strong
national defense, but a huge reduction in interventions and commitments
overseas. Why are we stirring up trouble in Ukraine? In Syria? In Africa? Why
are we defending South Korea and Japan when they are wealthy enough to defend
themselves? A proper sized foreign policy would defend the United States
instead of provoking the rest of the world.
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