We’re not done yet. And I don’t see the end coming anytime soon. Last Wednesday, in a prime-time speech addressing the nation, President Obama announced that he was opening a new chapter in the War on Terror and in our involvement in the Middle East. The new campaign would be limited to air strikes and military advisers and supported by what Obama referred to as a “broad coalition” of partners. Despite his pledge that “we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq,” an American Delta Force unit conducted a heliborne raid deep into Syria in late August. This can be viewed either as a once-off operation, rightly conducted in an attempt to rescue the late journalist James Foley, or a sign of greater involvement to come. Either way, the U.S. military is going to be called upon again and again in the near future.
Last February, the U.S. Department of Defense announced sweeping cuts to the defense budget. These reductions need to be lessened or at least reconsidered. The cuts are significant, and once complete, they will cut Army troop totals to pre-World War II levels while cutting other services nearly as dramatically. Supposedly because our nation had pulled out of Iraq and is almost gone from Afghanistan, we’d be at peace for the first time in over a decade and should cut our forces accordingly. This was before the sky in the Levant was darkened by rockets and war planes, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was playing nice at the Olympics in Sochi and before ISIS had swept across the Syrian border into Iraq.
The cuts made a lot of sense at the time — our military budget is huge, so why not roll some of that money into, say, education, where it is desperately needed? And some of the more specific moves made sense, like cutting the aging A-10 Warthog program. A jet designed to hunt Soviet tanks on the plains of Northern Europe didn’t make much sense in the fight against the Taliban. End the F-22 program, too — we’ve already got the best fighter jets in the world, so why spend billions more to replace them? Transfer the National Guard’s Apache helicopters to the active duty Army and instead give the Guard more versatile transport helicopters.
But then reality happened. Putin invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine. ISIS drove almost all the way to Baghdad. Israel invaded Gaza. China is trying to grab islands in the Pacific. America is once again ramping up military operations in the Middle East, American power is bolstering the NATO Alliance in Europe and American ships and planes are deterring aggression in the Pacific. Our service men and women are again being called upon to defend our allies and our interests, and we need to make sure our budget makes their needs a priority.
The spending cuts were a nice idea. I would love to see billions spent on bullets and bombs instead spent building schools and highways or reducing the deficit. But we are the world’s police. That phrase has been somewhat tarnished after our long stay in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I’ll use another metaphor that was coined by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. “America is the tent pole holding up the whole world of order.”
There is no other nation, or coalition of nations, that can enforce order, ensure security or defend freedom like we can. If the United States were to withdraw the Army back to our borders and call all our ships back to port, who would fill the vacuum? Would Putin keep his tanks rolling past Ukraine? Would ISIS finish off the rest of Iraq? Would China gobble up Taiwan? Would North Korea start shelling Seoul? I’m pretty sure I don’t want to find out.
As Americans, we have to face the reality that we live in a world where we are the sole superpower. Friedman painted a clear picture in his three-part opinion piece “Order vs. Disorder.” There is the world of order and freedom supported by American military might, and then there is the mess that falls outside of it.
I’ll admit that we sometimes make mistakes, and our best intentions fall victim to military adventurism, or we back the wrong leader. There can also be local disillusionment with our presence, especially when it is long-term in places like Okinawa or Cuba. But if we dramatically cut our military and step back, no one good will take our place.
We can’t even leave Europe to fend for itself — the NATO Alliance has become little more than a four-letter acronym for the U.S. military. In 2013, the United States spent over three times as much on the military than the other 27 member states combined. And in the Pacific? We’re what keeps South Korea free — we have almost 30,000 troops permanently based in Korea and along the Demilitarized Zone. Japan also benefits from U.S. support. For decades, the United States has kept over 15,000 Marines on Okinawa as a tangible deterrent to Chinese aggression.
The U.S. government needs to reconsider these cuts in military size and funding. I believe that after 13 years of continuous war in the Middle East, we should be thinking critically about our military spending and make sure we are getting the most value possible out of every dollar spent. We certainly cannot afford to offer anyone a blank check — even our military. But we must also realize we are not at peace. We do not have the luxury of slashing our military spending. Obama made this clear in his speech on Wednesday, promising that “We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are.” That’s an expensive promise. It’s one we need to keep and make sure we can back up.
Walker Mills ’15 is a senior concentrating in history and archaeology. He intends to commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation. He can be reached at walker_mills@brown.edu.
ADVERTISEMENT
