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Elias Diaz
Professor Holly Katharine Guile
English 2010
May 08, 2014
Defense on Defense
In the debate spend more vs spend less in Washington Americans are divided. I believe
that we as a nation have to be prepared for the worst. We all value our security but how much is
too much spending on our security and protecting our way of life? Is the U.S. plan on reducing
troop size a vital mistake that has already been proven in the past? The answer to this question I
believe is yes and I plan to make the case that spending more money on weapons and technology
of war is no replacement for the soldiers that fight the wars. Drawing down troops and leaving us
ill prepared to fight a war in the modern age has historically been proven to be a crucial mistake.
We as Americans should better learn from our history and mistakes that have been made.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 led to a reevaluation of the nations defense
capabilities and called for increased military spending stated former Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee. He claims that the
defense budget cuts during the Cold War should have been a great example of how it left the
United States ill prepared to fight the dangers it now faces in this day and age. When the Cold
War had ended we began a very substantial draw down to forces and our budget. That draw
down went too far and instead of making new investments to address the threats of the new
century we took a step backwards. Wolfowitz argued that now is the time to begin building
forces in order to frustrate plans of enemies and give us the capabilities we need to win the wars
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of the coming decades. He reminds us that after the attacks on 9/11 our lives changed forever and
taught us that when it comes to Americas defense we have to spend what is necessary to ensure
our security (Cothran 2004).
Gary Hart has long been one of the nations foremost experts on national security. In his
book, The Shield and The Cloak, he focuses on his frustration with the spend more versus less
debate in Washington, focusing more on weapons. Those who founded military reform caucus in
in Congress in 1980 believed differently. They believe that People, not weapons, win wars.
Unless the forces are properly trained and organized, even the most superior weapons will not
guarantee victory in battle (Hart 2006). Future trends conducted by the Congressional Budget
Office forecasted that the Department of Defenses Plans, which do not include the war costs,
would average about $492 billion in FY2007 dollars from 2012 to 2024. About 12 percent more
than the obligational authority that the Bush Administration requested for FY2007. If however
the higher than average risk of war is added the CBO estimates that the average cost could be
$560 billion a year, or 27 percent higher than the FY2007 request. As CBO studies show the
DOD projections that manpower drawdown would save money in the long run is unrealistic
because they project significant cuts in end strength, savings in medical costs, and savings in
housing and other costs. However, projections based on the DOD figures show that military
personnel will consume a relatively constant percentage of the defense budget through FY2024.
In theory, end strengths will be higher and cost of benefits and entitlements per soldier will
continue to rise sharply in the future. To put this into perspective, the DOD projected that with
its planned cuts in end strength, medical spending would rise by only $1.8 million in FY2007,
rising to $2.1 billion annually in FY2024 (Cordesman 2007).
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Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S.
Army War College. When asked about his opinion on Obamas new military strategy he states,
Moreover, we have to remember the lessons of history. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes
of the past after World War II, after Vietnam when our military was left ill-prepared for the
future. Harry Truman sought to never repeat the costs of World War II by reducing the Army
from 8 million soldiers to fewer than a half a million. Without intervention from Congress he
would have done away with the Marine Corps entirely. The result was the evisceration of both
land services in Korea, a war Truman never intended to fight. With Dwight Eisenhower came the
New Look strategy that sought to reduce the Army and Marine Corps again to allow the
creation of a nuclear delivery force built around the Strategic Air Command. Along came
Vietnam, a war we never wanted to fight. Scales states that by 1970 our professional Army broke
apart and was replaced by a body of amateurs. The result was a devastating defeat leaving 58,000
of dead.
The only exception to this was President Reagan, by providing for land services that
received enough funding to equip and train themselves to fight so well in Operation Desert
Storm. President Reagan's Budget Director David Stockman had told Reagan back in the early
1980s that he must cut the defense budget in order to balance the budget. "Defense is not a
budget issue." Reagan responded. "You spend what you need." The essential part of Reagan's
statement was the word "need." The United States now spends 54 percent of the money
expended worldwide on defense, according to the Swedish-based Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute's 2010 yearbook, more than the rest of the world combined. In real dollars,
that's approximately $1 trillion per year in defense security programs. It's a cost of nearly $9,000
per household in the United States every year.The Clinton administration reduced the ground
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services, intending to rely on transformation, a program that paid for more ships and planes by
reducing the Army from 16 divisions to 10. In the George W. Bush administration, Donald
Rumsfeld continued a policy that sought to exploit information technology to replace the human
component in war. Had it not been for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Army would have gone
down to fewer than eight divisions.
The Obama administration will reduce land force to pay for something called Air Sea
Battle, a strategy that seeks to buy more ships and planes in order to confront China with
technology rather than people. This strategy shows a degree of a-historicism that exceeds that of
any post-World War II administration. So much for remembering the lessons of the past. Heres
what the lessons of the past 70 years really teach us: We cannot pick our enemies; our enemies
will pick us. They will, as they have always done in the past, cede to us dominance in the air, on
sea and in space because they do not have the ability to fight us there (Scales 2014). So they will
fight us on ground, wherein we would lead untrained men into battle against disciplined and
trained soldiers from other countries.
William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, published an opinion piece in the October 4,
2010 Wall Street Journal entitled "Peace doesnt keep itself," arguing against Paul and Frank
"Military spending is not a net drain on our economy. It is unrealistic to imagine a return to long-
term prosperity if we face instability around the globe because of a hollowed-out U.S. military
lacking the size and strength to defend American interests around the world."Americans are
about evenly divided as to whether the U.S. spends too much. 35% believe the U.S. spends too
much. 36% believe we spend the right amount and 26% say too little is being spent. This is a
closer division of opinion than in recent years. Although, given that only about one-third of
Americans think defense spending is excessive, it appears the public would not back the steep
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cuts in defense spending that are set to go into effect at the end of next week. And even some of
those who believe the government spends too much on defense may not necessarily support the
size of the planned cuts (Eddlem 2014).
Having been in the military myself I know that we can cut costs in other places. My
Army Reserve unit alone spends their budget only to make sure to obtain the same amount of
funding or more in the next fiscal year. That to me just doesnt seem right. It seems very
dishonest to spend tax dollars only to obtain more in the future. If you were to look in our storage
facilities you would see mountains of paper and obsolete technology that we dont even use. We
are only one unit out of very many. I believe we as a military do spend too much and we need to
be regulated because things are getting out of control. But I dont think that drawing down the
troops is the solution. We have to cut costs where we can and have integrity to be honest of what
we actually need. If we dont have trained personnel that are ready to defend our American
interests then as we have seen in the past this can be a miscalculation that can cost American
lives.







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Works Cited
Scales, Robert H. "Repeating a Mistake by Downsizing the Army Again." Washington Post. The
Washington Post, 05 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Eddlem, Thomas R. "Can we cut 'defense' spending? Military and security spending amounts to
$1 trillion every year, but there's a lot to 'defense' spending that doesn't defend, and can
still be cut--if America can abandon global empire." The New American 2011: 19.
Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Mar. 2014
Hart, Gary. The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.
Print.
Cordesman, Anthony H., Paul S. Frederiksen, and William D. Sullivan. Salvaging American
Defense: The Challenge of Strategic Overstretch. Westport, CT: Praeger Security
International, 2007. Print.
Cothran, Helen. National Security: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2004.
Print.






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