Fool Me Twice Read Free

(SDTF), expanded on the recommendations for military cuts from the 2010 Unified Security Budget (USB) report.
    The report revels in the overlapping membership between the two policy groups: the “Unified Security Budget and Sustainable Defense task forces share several members, including both USB principal authors.”
    We do not believe Obama would adopt every defense recommendation in the 2012 Unified Security Budget, including some shocking suggestions we will soon reveal. But what is certain—given these groups’ influence within the administration until now—is that the report would serve as a defense policy wish list for a second Obama term and that its concepts will inform Obama’s military approach if he wins reelection. We will even show how much of the report has already been incorporated into key progressive House and Senate legislation.
W HO N EEDS A S TANDING A RMY , N UKES , M ISSILES, OR S UBMARINES ?
    The Unified Security Budget proclaims its goal as the “rebalancing” of our country’s security resources to “strengthen our capacity to prevent and resolve conflict by non-military means, and to constrain terrorist threats not by waging a ‘war on terror’ but by finding and isolating terrorists and bringing them to justice, protecting ourselves from future attacks, and strengthening the capacity of the United States and other nations to resist terrorism.”
    Of immediate concern is the stated objective of transforming our armed forces to stress conflict resolution and diplomacy. For most Americans, the entire purpose of military spending is to maintain the capability of using force when such action becomes necessary. The resolution of conflict by non-military means—diplomacy, economic aid, technical assistance—is the proper focus of other government (and nongovernment) agencies. In other words, the very premise of the report—minimizing defense capacity and redirection of resources—is deeply flawed and dangerous.
    The report sets the tone of its lofty agenda by demanding immediate reductions in the military’s already heavily slashed budget. But there is one interesting exception requiring massive
increases
in funding—any spending that funds “alternative energy” or that focuses Defense Department resources on combating “climate change as a security threat.” The report authors recommend investing “the lion’s share” of the few allotted increases in addressing the “threat” of so-called climate change.
    Half of all savings from military cuts, the report recommends, should be used for investing in “job creation,” while the other half is to be allocated to deficit reduction. The report does not spell out exactly how Obama should “invest” this money in “job creation.” Perhaps this is an allusion to a future massive “stimulus” or to various other second-term progressive economic machinations and spread-the-wealth schemes to be exposed in our coming chapters.
    The report takes issue with the use of forces on the ground in various countries to secure or influence the longer-term strategic position of other nations. And how to minimize that influence? For starters, by scaling back all U.S. ground forces by 20 percent; reducing the Navy’s surface fleet by 20 percent (including two carriers and carrier combat air wings) and reducing the Air Force by two combat air wings—while cutting standing peacetime overseas deployments (Europe, East Asia) by up to 50,000 troops at a time.
    The Unified authors are just getting warmed up. Another recommendation, which the report claims will save $21 billion, is to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile—a process President Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of