With plans for military spending on a new Cold War — as well as on old fears about terrorism — spinning out of control, the next U.S. president will face a budgetary time bomb, explains Chuck Spinney.
By Chuck Spinney
Pentagon spending has not really been an issue in the 2016 Presidential campaign. With the exception of Ted Cruz, the positions of the remaining candidates have been vague about even the size of the defense budget.
As near as I can tell: (1) Hillary Clinton’s position on the size of the Pentagon’s budget is that she will establish a blue-ribbon commission to review defense policy and spending levels; (2) Trump claims without detail he can make the military great again but cut the budget at the same time; (3) Cruz says he will copy President Ronald Reagan’s spending spree by using tax cuts to stimulate the economy and ramping up defense spending to 4 percent of GDP (more on this plan in a subsequent blaster); and (4) Bernie Sanders seems to want to cut the Pentagon’s budget, but has not detailed how.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
No candidate appears to have noticed that President Obama has allowed the Pentagon to plant a defense budget time bomb in the form of modernization bow wave, although Obama’s bow wave has been reported repeatedly in the defense circles. [See 1, 2, 3, 4.]
Mr. Obama’s bow wave is similar to those planted during the exit from Vietnam in the early and mid 1970s while Vietnam was winding down and at the end of the Cold War in late 1980s through the mid 1990s. Each of those earlier budget time bombs blew up, the first after 1978 and the second after 1997, albeit the latter explosion was masked over by the politics of fear and budget gimmicks unleashed by 9/11.
The time bomb bequeathed by Mr. Obama is now being wired to explode during the next presidential administration, with ripple effects lasting perhaps to 2030.
This essay introduces an early propagandistic aspect of setting the fuse. Job 1 is to set the foundation for budget future growth by building a psycho-political barrier to further budget reductions. The Secretary of Defense’s recent testimony explaining President Obama’s…