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March 7, 2009
Exclusive: The Ten Year Rule of Military Weakness
At the end of World War I, no less a statesman than Winston Churchill urged British defense planners to adopt the “ten year rule.” This was the assumption that there would be no major interstate war for the next decade, thus military spending and force levels could be safely reduced to a minimum. When Churchill first proposed this idea in 1919 it seemed rational, as England’s enemies in the Great War were in ruins. But as time marched on, and the world changed, the illusion of a continuing “peace dividend” kept the policy in place long past the point where it was still rational. In 1934, the year after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Neville Chamberlain advocated that the “ten year rule” remain the basis for planning because, in the midst of the Great Depression, the country could not afford to rearm. The rule became a self-fulfilling prophecy as British military weakness then became a reason for pursuing a policy of appeasement toward a rearming Nazi Germany in a futile effort to prevent a major war.
The United States in essence adopted the “ten year rule” at the end of the Cold War when defense spending and force levels were drastically reduced during the 1990s. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 woke the country up to one level of danger, but the military was not rebuilt to handle threats from regional powers like Iran, let alone rising peer competitors like China. Now, in the midst of the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Obama administration will embark on a new round of defense cuts and adopt an appeasement policy to match.
Facing record budget deficits, President Barack Obama is looking for spending cuts as well as tax hikes. Major weapons programs will be targeted for reductions, delays and terminations, even as more troops are sent to Afghanistan. During his campaign Obama stated, “We must not simply recreate the military of the Cold War era.” The Cold War military was designed to fight other major powers. Instead, Obama wants to focus on wrapping up the small wars he inherited, while pursuing arms control and “dialogue” with potential adversaries.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the senate Armed services Committee on January 27th, “One thing we have known for many months is that the spigot of defense funding that opened on 9/11 is closing. With two major campaigns ongoing, the economic crisis and resulting budget pressures will force hard choices on this department….To critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements – those things that are desirable in a perfect world from those things that are truly needed in light of the threats America faces and the missions we are likely to undertake in the years ahead.”
One reason Gates was retained at the Pentagon is that he shares Obama’s view that combat at the low end of the spectrum is the only concern for the foreseeable future. Gates has backed the expansion of the Army and Marine ground forces, but has suggested that funds for current counter-insurgency campaigns come from cutting expensive projects such as the Army’s high-tech Future Combat System and the Air Force’s F-22 air superiority fighter. The Navy’s shipbuilding plan is being reduced, and will fall well below the 300-ship fleet which the admirals believe is necessary to sustain America’s global reach. And while Gates has supported missile defense, candidate Obama opposed spending money on what he called “unproven” systems.
In a speech last May, Gates said, “any major weapons program, in order to remain viable, will have to show some utility and relevance to...irregular campaigns.” Such one-dimensional thinking would endanger America’s strategic superiority against the most dangerous threats—rival major powers with the resources to expand their international influence.
The F-22 Raptor fighter is one endangered program, with critics claiming that since the air superiority fighter has not be deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, it is useless. Insurgents don’t have air forces, but rival national powers do. The F-22 is to replace the F-15 Eagle which first flew in 1972. The performance of the F-15 has been surpassed by the Russian Su-27, which the Chinese are building as the J-11. In an era of rapid technological change, American security cannot rest on aircraft designed four decades ago.
As Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute has argued,
“Command of the air is the central, indispensable mission of the F-22. It is the reason why the plane is stealthier than any other aircraft in the world, why it is more maneuverable, why it is more fuel efficient at high speeds, and why it is crammed with more sensors and computing power than any plane of similar size. Command of the air is also why it costs so much -- about $150 million for each additional plane.
What does that high cost get us? An Air Force that can use all its other planes in wartime without fear of horrendous losses. An Army that can continue to operate, as it has over the last 50 years, without suffering any casualties from hostile aircraft. And a defense posture that can deter war without threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Every potential aggressor in the world knows that if it faces the F-22 in aerial combat it will lose,”
So far, the Air Force has only ordered 183 F-22s, not nearly enough to replace the F-15 fleet. Building combat aircraft in such small numbers does not prepare the country for the rigors of war against a first-class opponent. As the prominent military writer Ralph Peters has argued, “A war with China, which our war games blithely assume would be brief, would reveal the quantitative incompetence of our forces as our assault on a continent-spanning power swiftly drained our stocks of precision weapons, ready pilots, and aircraft.”
If Obama wants to cut advanced weapons systems to pay for domestic programs, Gates could give him the same political cover as Defense Secretary William Cohen gave President Bill Clinton. Cohen had been a Republican Senator. At the Pentagon, Cohen oversaw the “procurement holiday” of the 1990s when the acquisition of new military equipment practically ceased. The American military still has not recovered from that lost decade, which also saw the drastic shrinkage of the defense industry. It should be noted that retired Marine General James Jones, who is Obama’s National Security Advisor, was Secretary Cohen’s military assistant.
For Obama to go down this fiscal road would put him more in the tradition of Herbert Hoover than Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover boosted government spending on public works and farm programs, and set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make loans to banks and industry. He ran a deficit to stimulate the economy, but sought to keep it small by military cuts. He played to isolationist opinion and pursued arms control agreements like the 1930 London Naval Treaty. Hoover opposed as “wasteful” the proposal of Georgia Democrat Rep. Carl Vinson for a 10-year construction program to build the Navy up to the London treaty limits by 1942. During the last three years of Hoover's term, not a single new keel was laid for any class of warship. Hoover also discussed with British Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald the elimination of all capital ships, tanks, heavy artillery and military aircraft----a notion that even the Labour Party leader found shocking.
In 1934, President Roosevelt signed the First Vinson Act authorizing the building of 32 warships. The next year, however, FDR agreed to the 1935 London Naval Treaty even though Germany, Italy and Japan did not participate. Then in 1937 the U.S. economy took another downturn, threatening to wipe out what recovery had been made since 1933. As part of the new stimulus effort FDR launched a major naval building program. The 1938 Second Vinson Act authorized an increase of the fleet by 20% and the construction of 100 ships. The plan would both boost industrial employment and respond to dangerous foreign trends. Unfortunately, Congress did not fully fund the Vinson program, allowing Japan to gain naval superiority in the Pacific.
The 1930s saw the rise or resurgence of powers seeking to exploit the political and economic turmoil in the democratic states that had won the First World War. The inherent material superiority of the United States was understood by the Axis regimes who wanted to overturn the global status quo. But if Washington was not going to use its strength, then the opportunity existed for successful aggression. As John Dower, an expert on Japanese imperialist thought before the Pearl Harbor attack, has written, “Westerners were assumed to be selfish and egotistic, and incapable of mobilizing for a long fight in a distant place.” The current economic crisis, and the pronouncements of many Democrats about Iraq and the war on terrorism, has awakened similar hopes from Beijing to Tehran, and from Moscow to Pyongyang and Caracas that the winner of the Cold War is unwilling to sustain its preeminence in world affairs. Obama’s budget must not encourage bad behavior overseas by sending the wrong signals about American resolve.
FamilySecurityMatters.org William Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues.
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