Defense Secretary Robert Gates, one of Obama’s holdovers from the Bush administration, warned Congress and the nation against cutting defense spending too aggressively in the quest to reduce the deficit.
America’s military might and its global foreign policy are, he said, “an essential safeguard of global stability.”
President Obama had an-nounced in April plans to hold national security spending to the rate of inflation for the next 12 years. A step he said would result in a spending reduction of about $400 billion, mostly from defense department budgets.
Sec. Gates said, “Our military credibility, commitment and presence are required to sustain alliances, to protect trade routes and energy supplies and to deter would-be adversaries.”
He said across-the-board cuts are not the way to go. That approach was taken after the Vietnam War in 1970 and after the Cold War in the 1990s and resulted in a hollowing-out of the armed forces, which re-quired massive new spending to remedy.
“Make no mistake,” he told the graduating class at Notre Dame, “the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power — the size, strength and global reach of the United States military.”
Sec. Gates recognized the need for budget control, saying the country’s fiscal imbalances and mounting debt could be-come a “deep crisis for our nation.” With economies in mind, he said it is important for the Pentagon and Congress to “separate the desirable or optional from the essential.”
But, he added, the U.S. military should not shrink from the world and quoted Winston Churchill as saying, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”
IN NORMAL political times, it would not be necessary for a secretary of defense to lecture a Republican House of Representatives on the need for a strong military. These are not normal political times.
It will not be possible to cut trillions from the federal budget — as House Speaker John Boehner insists must be done — without sharp cuts in the Pentagon’s spending. And, as Sec. Gates warns, it will not be possible to maintain America’s place in the world — or, for that matter, the West’s place in the world — without a strong military backed by political leaders with a global sense of mission.
Gates is right to be gravely concerned that these elements of U.S. leadership, so essential to global security, are at risk. The twin goals of massive budget cuts and the continued exercise of global responsibility are incompatible.
Sec. Gates knows his place. He made no getting-and-spending policy suggestions. But the choices the nation faces are plain. We can back away from our global responsibilities, and the responsibilities government has to the governed, or we can raise the money it takes to meet those responsibilities. Which will it be, folks?
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
