As Defense Secretary Robert Gates heads toward the exit, there’s a blivet‘s worth of challenges facing his successor. Unlike Gates, the next secretary of defense won’t be following the unpopular Don Rumsfeld. Just as Jerry Ford benefited from not being Richard Nixon, Gates benefited from not being Rumsfeld. Despite such historical accidents, as unfair as they are, the next defense chief is already getting lots of unsolicited advice to help him (or her) out.
A pair of new offerings comes at the threat from two different angles. The more traditional version cites the danger posed by overseas foes. The second posits that the real threat is that caused by U.S. government over-spending.
Andrew Krepinevich, a savvy retired Army officer now running the centrist Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, warns of trouble ahead in a new CSBA piece. “The spread of guided weapons, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to unstable states in the developing world, and the rapidly growing menace of cyber warfare suggest a future in which the U.S. military’s current ways of projecting power and defending the American homeland are likely to be severely challenged,” Krepinevich writes. “Arguably the U.S. has not confronted such a combination of growing security challenges from such a weak economic position since the 1930s. And although history rarely repeats itself, it often `rhymes.'”
Another retired Army officer, Joseph Collins, offers a more provocative prescription in the latest issue of Armed Forces Journal. “Because much of defense spending is contingency-oriented, defense accounts can always be mentally `adjusted’ by accepting more risk to the national interest,” Collins argues. “Because the U.S. outspends all major and all emerging powers on defense, and our armed forces have no peer competitors, the leadership of both the legislative and executive branches may find that accepting greater risk is an increasingly attractive option.”
Obviously, both positions have merit. But read the two pieces and sound off: which guy do you think comes closer to the truth?