Fighting for Pieces of a Smaller Pie...

I have a few thoughts on how the politics of defense cuts may play out in the next five or ten years. Long story short, it's not going to be pretty; even if you think that cuts in defense spending are a good idea (and I do), the actual process of cutting is likely to be very messy.

Ideally, cuts to defense will reflect a careful, rational approach to maintaining the military means for accomplishing America's foreign policy ends. The major players would debate and evaluate the grand strategic rationale for American military power and develop a somewhat more modest political framework for the Department of Defense.

In the real world, actual defense cuts will result in bitter bureaucratic infighting and interest group mobilization in support of particular systems and programs. While service amity in the United States has managed to hold across several previous rounds of defense cuts, most notably during the post-Vietnam and post-Cold War drawdowns, there are some indications that this set of cuts may shatter the norm of collaboration that has developed between the military services.

Unfortunately, the result of this intra-constituency battle will likely be messy. Programs that lack a rationale will survive, while weapons that lack an interest group will die. The connection between means and ends will be lost, because no specific constituency has a vested interest in a rational consideration of foreign policy values or the capacity to consider value trade-offs. Little consideration will likely be given to the notion of a meaningful drawdown of U.S. military commitments, resulting in a force even more badly overstretched. In the long run, defense cuts are necessary, good for not only the economic health but also the overall security of the United States. In the short run, cuts are going to lead to bloody fights that will leave behind a diminished military and a nasty bureaucratic mess.