The Long Haul:Fighting and Funding America's Next Wars

History may not repeat itself, but, as the saying goes, it does sometimes rhyme. In January 2009, as in January 1953, a newly elected president will inherit a costly and controversial foreign conflict, one that a majority of Americans have concluded cannot be won and should never have been fought. As was true half a century ago, the United States now finds itself both in the midst of a "hot war" and in the early stages of a protracted global struggle against an implacable, ideologically committed foe. Now, as then, the American people have not fully come to grips with the frightening and unfamiliar threats to their security that this enemy poses. Nor are they sure precisely how high a price in lives, liberties, and dollars they will ultimately have to pay in order to defeat it.

In 2009, as in 1953, newly chosen leaders will find themselves confronted by the conflicting demands of national security and fiscal responsibility. On the one hand, they will hear powerful arguments that despite recent increases, the nation is not yet spending enough on defense and homeland security. On the other hand, they will inherit massive budget deficits and a ballooning national debt. Bringing ends and means into alignment -- and doing so in a way that can be maintained for years, if not decades -- will not be an easy task. At the beginning of the Cold War, Dwight Eisenhower described the job as devising a national strategy for "the long haul." Whoever is elected president in 2008 will face a very similar challenge.

The books reviewed here frame the problem precisely: Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly's argues for increased defense spending; Robert Hormats' makes the case for restoring balance and restraint to the nation's finances.

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

As they looked out beyond the Korean War, Eisenhower and his generals believed they had little choice but to focus on one big and potentially imminent threat: the danger of an all-out conflict with the Soviet Union. Today's strategic environment is less immediately menacing but more varied and uncertain. In addition to waging irregular warfare against insurgents and terrorists, the United States must prepare to deal with several midsize states that possess substantial conventional forces and will likely soon have small nuclear arsenals. Looking further ahead, China's rapid economic growth and technological progress could eventually transform the country into a genuine peer competitor, able to challenge U.S. military predominance in Asia, if not beyond.

Are present and planned budgets and U.S. force levels sufficient to meet these three distinct challenges? Schmitt and Donnelly, both fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, believe the answer is a resounding no. Schmitt, Donnelly, and the contributors to their edited volume, Of Men and Materiel, are especially worried when it comes to smaller and medium-sized future threats: wars against irregular opponents or an enemy such as Iran. Since 9/11, defense spending has grown considerably, but much of the money has gone to cover the extraordinary costs of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has continued to pursue the broad priorities imposed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Driven by his vision of future warfare, Rumsfeld downplayed ground forces in favor of those designed to maintain command of the air, the sea, and space. Intent on building truly "revolutionary" weapons, Rumsfeld and his inner circle of "transformationists" cut back procurement for some of the armed services' pet projects, such as the air force's F-22 fighter and the army's massive Crusader artillery system, preferring to spend more on research and development for "generation-after-next" systems. Although some of these cuts may have had merit, the end result of Rumsfeld's transformation program, claim the authors, is a U.S. military establishment that is simply too small and too focused on the distant future to meet the challenges it confronts today and will likely face tomorrow.

Schmitt, Donnelly, and their co-authors are especially troubled by what they see as the Pentagon's excessive focus on long-term, high-level threats at the expense of dangers they regard as more pressing and plausible. In chapters on the future of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Francis Hoffman, of the Marine Corps' Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, both make the case that even after the war in Iraq, the United States will need to maintain larger ground forces equipped and trained to defeat irregular opponents in protracted conflicts. In a chapter on the U.S. Air Force, Loren Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, argues that Rumsfeld's push to develop new unmanned aerial vehicles and space-based surveillance systems came at the expense of other important projects. As a result, the Defense Department bought too few high-performance, next-generation fighter jets (such as the F-22) and unwisely eliminated funding for its proposed electronic surveillance aircraft (the E-10). In the comparatively near term, Thompson warns, these cuts could seriously erode the United States' ability to achieve and maintain command of the air over distant battlefields.