The Defense Budget Debate, Part 2

In the House, Rep. Mac Thornberry, (R-Texas) outlined his disagreement with the Democrat’s military spending plan:

“The Armed Services Committee heard repeated testimony, from Acting Secretary Shanahan, former Secretary Mattis, General Dunford, and others, that the military’s budget must grow between three and five percent through 2025 in order to restore readiness and maintain our competitive edge against Russia and China. The Chairman’s Mark does not meet that standard. In pursuing an arbitrarily lower budget, the proposal reduces or eliminates vital programs, including emergency funding to restore installations damaged by extreme weather, military requirements identified by the Services, funding to maintain our nuclear deterrence and ensure its safety, and missile defense.”

Rep. Thornberry unsuccessfully sought to have several items added to the Democrats’ legislation, emphasizing:

Modernizing to Deter Russia and China: The Chairman’s Mark makes a number of unwise cuts to modernization programs that will hamper America’s ability to maintain our competitive edge over Russia and China. These include reductions to the F-35 request, the Air Force NextGen Air Dominance Program, hypersonic development, LCS programs, 5G efforts, DIU activities, the Rapid Innovation Fund, aircraft carrier construction, and other programs validated by the Services that have earned bipartisan support. The Chairman’s mark also makes unsafe and unwise cuts to nuclear modernization programs, including NNSA programs, designed to keep our deterrent credible and safe. The nuclear deterrent is the cornerstone of our national security and nuclear modernization efforts have been a priority for Republican and Democrat Administrations.

Readiness Restoration: Between 2013 and 2017, military aviation accidents rose 40%, and military aviation deaths hit a six-year high in 2018. Following sustained, focused oversight from the Armed Services Committee and a significant targeted increase in resources, the Committee received testimony that the degradation in readiness has been arrested and accident rates have begun to decline. The Chairman’s Mark makes significant cuts to readiness programs- including to infrastructure and facilities funding- that Ranking Member Thornberry believes could slow recovery efforts. These include over a billion in cuts to military personnel accounts, significant cuts to training programs, and cuts to ammunition stockpiles. The Chairman’s Mark does not support DOD’s request for emergency funding to restore Tyndall AFB, Offutt AFB, Cherry Point MCAS, or Camp Lejeune MCB. Additionally, while many Members are concerned over the Administration’s diversion of construction projects to border barriers, Ranking Member Thornberry does not believe that our troops should pay the price for political discord in Washington. His amendment would backfill funds expected to be reprogrammed from important military projects.

The increase in financial support for the Pentagon is a So, make sure to change the filters cialis cheap no prescription on time with the help of a contractor. If you look like best price vardenafil you just fell out of bed, plan on going back there, alone. There are a generico cialis on line buying here lot of reasons of having the erectile dysfunction issues. It is also termed as viagra for erectile dysfunction. significant departure from the Obama years, when funds were stripped from defense even as the threats from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea grew.

Mackenzie Eaglen and Rick Berger, writing for the American Enterprise Institute note that the very uncertainty of budget levels has led to major problems for America’s military:

“Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said a year ago that military had operated under 1,000 days of debilitating continuing resolutions (CR) over the past decade. Yet another continuing resolution looms again this fall. Even as Congress moves ahead with its spending bills for the Defense Department, the odds remain low that both parties can agree to an overall spending level by the start of the fiscal year still…federal agencies, including the U.S. military, will almost certainly begin another year under a spending freeze at last year’s budget levels. The result? The military’s advantages continue to shrink. According to Mattis, “I cannot overstate the impact to our troops’ morale from all this uncertainty. The combination of rapidly changing technology, the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation’s history, and insufficient funding have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.”

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

Photo: The guided missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence travels in the South China Sea, June 4, 2019, while deployed to support security and stability efforts in the Indo-Pacific region. (DoD)

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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