Wars sometimes begin for ideological or "strategic" reasons but in the end they are largely about money. The present situation is illustrative. The neocons and their presidential puppet desperately wanted to invade Iraq. They started serious plotting for the invasion as soon as they achieved power in 2000. (See my article "Drinking the Koolaid" in MEP) Afghanistan began as an exercise in punitve vengeance. It was successful. Now both wars are continued as supposed paradigms of yet another "Guerre Moderne," and useful practise at "swamp draining." This is designed to make the swamps inhospitable for dangerous critters. That, in itself, is laughable, a kind of cosmic replay of the old film "The Man Who Would be King" but this time with real armies. The truth is easily glimpsed beneath the veil of misdirection. Many people both in "the region" and at home are becoming immensely rich from the "leakage" of government contracts both for equipment and for performance in the field of logistics. Why would anyone benefiting want to put a stop to that? 2014? What a joke!

John Lehman has been interviewed in this magazine as advocating a reduction in veterans' and military retiree benefits. (Sob!) Now there is a place to look for savings.

This morning’s Washington Post reports that a company of M1 Abrams main battle tanks will deploy to Afghanistan. The current orders call for only about sixteen of the 70-ton monsters, but it’s still a dramatic departure, since we’ve never used any of them in Afghanistan before. (Or, for that matter, not even any of the less well-armed and protected 35-ton M2 Bradley infantry carriers, to my knowledge).

What on earth does this have to do with defense budgets? Some “COINistas,” the more revolutionary advocates of a counterinsurgency (COIN) approach, argue that future conflicts will only involve lightly armed guerrillas and that the future ground forces, both Army and Marine Corps, will not require the kind of expensive heavy weaponry which spearheaded conventional fights in 1991 and 2003. This faction argues we can become more effective with cheaper forces – which of course is immensely attractive to the budget-conscious.

Except now the arch-proponent of counterinsurgency doctrine, General Petraeus himself, wants 70-ton main battle tanks, which are expensive just to transport and keep fueled, let alone upgrade or replace. I think this deployment is long overdue. I’ve read the Canadian after-action reports about the value of their equally massive Leopard II tanks in their sector of Afghanistan, and I’ve talked to a US Army officer whose Special Operations unit had to rely on Canadian armored cars for backup because the Americans, all foot troops, were often outgunned by the Taliban. I’ve talked to another officer who did neighborhood-based counterinsurgency patrols and meetings with informants in his area of Baghdad, but he had to do them in tanks because of the threat from roadside bombs. Future guerrilla adversaries may well be even deadlier, if we take warning from Hezbollah’s use of disciplined fighters, strong defensive positions, and long-range anti-tank missiles in 2006. For that matter, the “Black Hawk Down” battle in Somalia in 1993 would have gone very differently if Defense Secretary Les Aspin had not refused requests to deploy heavy armor; instead we ended up borrowing infantry carriers from the Pakistanis. So tanks, helicopters, and heavy artillery all have a place in so-called “low-intensity” warfare.

The bottom line is all this hardware costs money. The Pentagon budget needs to be big enough to pay for it.

'Tis the season for deficit reduction and debt control. And not for the first time. From 1985 to 1998, defense resources went down 36% in constant dollars, procurement funding dropped 50%, 700,000 military left the force, and 300,000 left the Pentagon's civil service. And for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, the remaining force was globally superior and took down the Iraqi military in weeks. Deficit control was only possible if everything was on the table; and a political deal was only possible with everything on the table.

Look for Congress to shilly-shally for a year or so, then get serious, because it is time. And don't expect Republicans to automatically support higher levels for defense or to exempt defense from deficit reduction. The last big defense budget cutter wasn't Bill Clinton, it was none other than Dick Cheney, at the end of the Cold War. In fact, every build down has been done by a Republican. And the Tea Party is going to give the old war horses a run for their money; there is enough waste and slush in defense to make the going possible.

For some ideas, you can also look to the new Domenci-Rivlin Debt Task Force Report, released Nov. 17 aby the Bipartisan Policy Center. I led the team that crafted their defense options, which would save $1.1 trillion in defense outlays between FY 2012 and FY 2020. It is a policy-driven option, not a shopping list. A quick summary is available on the Stimson Center weblog, The Will and the Wallet. Let the debate and the games begin!

Chris Preble writes, as his punchline, that "it is simply crazy to be spending more in real, inflation-adjusted dollars on the military today than we did during the height of the Korean or Vietnam Wars. " Point taken, but that was the draft era, when the US military had essentially a limitless pool of cheap labor, its cost held low by federal law -- something which Preble, as a Cato libertarian, should consider a great wickedness. The true cost of conscription would include the foregone income of those drafted and the lost value of their labor in economically productive occupations, a calculation I've never seen anyone make. Without that calculation, any comparison of defense spending pre- and post-1973 is highly subsidized apples to full-price oranges.

Today's all-volunteer force has to compete for talent on the open labor market, with requirements for a high school diploma and physical fitness that rule out most of the population, and at a time when occupational hazards include people actively trying to kill you. And yet it is far more professional, highly skilled, and motivated than the hastily conscripted, scantily trained short-term draftees of past wars ever had the chance to become.

I'll also note that defense spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) just recently breached 5 percent, compared to 10% at the peak of Vietnam and 15% in Korea. So while we are spending a lot, we have a lot more to spend.

All this does not beg the essential question that Preble, Brenner, and others have raised: How long can the US continue as the "world's policeman" / "sole superpower" / "last empire"? But in practice, in the day to day decisions of presidential policy, Preble's distinction between "defending the United States and its vital national interests" -- which he advocates -- and intervening as "the world's policeman and armed social worker" -- which he decries -- is a lot harder to make in real life than in theory.

As usual, I find myself in agreement with Paul Sullivan. If the country is serious about reducing the deficit, and it should be, then all spending must be on the table. The primary driver of our long term fiscal imbalance is entitlements. The demographic trends make it impossible to continue along our current path, which will have a shrinking pool of workers paying increasingly generous retirement and health care benefits for retirees who live longer and longer lives. The deficit reduction commission's end product simply must include some programmatic reforms to deal with the generational imbalances if it is going to be taken seriously. And the early opposition from a handful of special-interest groups suggests that there is a lack of seriousness all around.

Other spending must also be on the table, however, and that includes the roughly 23 percent of the federal budget that goes to the military. This often poses a particular challenge for Republicans given their traditional support for military spending and their professed commitment to fiscal discipline. But it need not be particularly difficult. If Republicans reaffirm that the core function of government, many would say one of the only core functions of government, is defense (strictly speaking), then the path to a politically sustainable and economically sound defense posture is clear: a military geared to defending the United States and its vital national interests, and not permanently deployed as the world's policeman and armed social worker. Such a posture would allow for a smaller Army and Marine Corps as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawn to a close (as they should be), deep cuts in the Pentagon's civilian work force, which has grown dramatically over the past 10 years, and sensible reductions in the nuclear arsenal. More modest cuts are warranted in intelligence and R&D. Finally, significant changes in a number of costly and unnecessary weapons and platforms, including terminating the V-22 Osprey and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and greater scrutiny of the F-35 program, for example, must also be in the mix. My colleague Ben Friedman and I provide an overview of such cuts here, with more detail provided in our recent Cato paper. (We'll be discussing these issues at a public forum featuring Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as well as the Lexington Institute's Loren Thompson this Friday at Cato. Details can be found here.)

Serious cuts to military spending -- in other words, far deeper cuts than those proposed last week by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the president's debt reduction commission -- must be part of a broader strategic reset that ends the free-riding of wealthy and stable allies around the world, and that takes a more balanced and objective view of our relative strategic advantages and our enviable security.

Not so long ago, the United States was staring across two oceans at a globe-straddling Soviet empire, one that was sometimes allied with a pugnacious China anxious to settle scores for past injustices. But the international environment is considerably less threatening today, and it is simply crazy to be spending more in real, inflation-adjusted dollars on the military today than we did during the height of the Korean or Vietnam Wars.

If deficits, which have been around for a while, mobilize a significant number of voters to take spending seriously, and force a long-overdue strategic reassessment, then I say all the better. But we could have, and should have, had this conversation long before it reached the point of crisis.

I'm not afraid that the Tea Party can't take on the defense budget. It was Dick Cheney, no leftie peacenik, who hacked the first big slice out of the Pentagon in what became the drawdown of the 1990s. Even the GOP's patron saint, Ronald Reagan, had begun to apply the brakes on defense spending before he left office. (Just as Jimmy Carter actually began what became the Reagan buildup). Republicans of whatever stripe can cut defense just fine. And if anyone right now has both the political momentum and the everything-on-the-table mindset needed to make real cuts, it's the Tea Partiers.

What worries me is that maybe Congress, as an institution, can't cut defense. There are too many contracts in too many districts -- as part of deliberate "political engineering" by contractors and their Pentagon allies, as well as earmarking and logrolling by legislators -- and not enough political incentives to offer up YOUR program that employs people in YOUR district on the altar of fiscal prudence. We all agree it's a good idea, but who bells the freakin' cat? It's like any other federal spending program, only with a big flag wrapped around it. Congress is made of 545 individuals who have a lot of trouble sacrificing individual goods for the collective good, and no wonder.

Historically, the only player with both the power and the perspective to cut defense is the one person responsible for the whole budget, and that's the President. I voted for Obama -- reluctantly, having started as a Hillarist deeply worried about his credentials and deeply skeptical about the whole "hope" thing. ("Hope is not a plan.") I admire the man but I doubt he has the national security credibility or the political inclination to fight and win a big battle over defense cuts.

And, to be honest, when I looked at the defense budget, I wasn't sure where to begin myself.

There will obviously be big savings when we draw down in Afghanistan, where each deployed servicemember historically costs, on average, about twice what one does in Iraq, which means the Afghan surge will probably wipe out any savings from teh Iraqi drawdown. But I worry that rushing a withdrawal will cost us more in the long run if the situation in South and Central Asia spirals downhill. Even after the big combat brigades are gone, I think we're going to need advisors there for a generation to come, as in Iraq. The military can't sustain the surge for more than a year whatever we spend -- its people can't take this pace any more -- so we'll be forced to cut back by 2012. I'd expect serious savings by the proposed handoff to the Afghan security forces in 2014. But most of the key factors are not under our control, and while we won't be preemptively invading any other countries soon, wars happen when they happen and sometimes we really do need to intervene. So savings in the "overseas contingency operations" budget are a matter of informed hope rather than a definite plan.

Then I look at things like Professor Sullivan's handy summary of the Fiscal Commission's cuts and go, hoo boy.

$28 billion from Secretary Gates's nebulous overhead savings? Good f*cking luck.

$27 billion from cutting weapons procurement 15% and research by 10%? Hell, most of the Air Force's fighters were built in the 1980s, and those things wear out; as for bombers, we're still flying B-52s built in the sixties. The Navy doesn't have enough ships or the right types to chase Somali pirates. The Army's armored vehicles were never built to accomodate modern electronics like communications networks, GPS maps, or IED jammers.

$7.9 billion if we reform (read, privatize and cut) military personnel benefits like healthcare, commissaries, and Defense Department-run onbase schools? Military families are going to get upset, and when families say "we're done," expensively trained troops say "I'm gone."

So I took a walk and thought about it. Here's where I would cut:

1) Personnel benefits.

Yes, we have to take these on. Our people are our greatest asset but they're also our greatest expense, and frankly the whole benefits system -- from retirement at half-pay around age 40 to Pentagon-run grocery stores (called commissaries) -- grew up like topsy over the last 150 years and could use rationalization and reform. A more flexible compensation system that offered more money up front and less extensive retirement benefits would be a good start -- but we have to grandfather in everyone who's already retired, or the breach of trust will cost us dearly with the current force, so this will take a while to pay off. Likewise reorganizing healthcare and commissaries won't save money in the short run -- i.e. for a few years -- because during a transition we'll have to sustain both the infrastructure for the current in-kind benefits and the new cash benefits. An outright pay freeze would send an ugly signal to the troops, but slowing down the annual pay increases makes sense and should save most of the $9.2 billion the commissioners want from the total freeze.

As for the elephant in this room, the total number of personnel in uniform, the Air Force and the Navy have already cut people, and I'm deeply skeptical of reversing the increases in Army and Marine Corps manpower because I think that every time we do that, we find out we need to buy them back again a few years later. Keeping the military about the size it is now puts a hard limit on how much we can cut personnel costs.

　

2) The Joint Strike Fighter and aircraft carriers.

Most of the weapons programs I think can be sh*tcanned outright are either relatively small -- like the Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), a waterskiing tank -- or so far in the outyears their demise doesn't affect real budgets -- like the Army-Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), a next-generation replacement for the uparmored Humvee that was facing requirements creep and cost growth. (I would prefer a smaller number of the better-armored Stryker eight-wheel-drive armored cars, myself). The Army needs its new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) to replace aging M2 Bradley infantry carriers. The Air Force needs a new long-range bomber to deter the Chinese -- our mainstay B-52s were built in the Kennedy Administration and are about as stealthy as a barn door, while we have only 20 stealth B-2s -- and that's a program that's not even IN the budget right now. The Navy needs Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to hunt pirates, show the flag, and generally patrol the planet.

But I think we are overinvesting in huge fleets of short-ranged fighter-bombers -- F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, the infamous F-22 and the forthcoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (advertised in the banner ad on top of this web page when I was posting this comment). They're overkill for low-threat scenarios where we really needed dedicated ground attack planes (like the aging A-10 "Warthog"), and they're underkill for high-threat scenarios where enemy missiles can deny us close-in airbases or unmolested mid-air refueling. So the immense buy of the Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's largest single procurement program, can be cut back -- again. (And it's politically feasible because the JSF is a compromise, with both the Air Force and the Navy preferring other planes). Then the Navy's aircraft carriers, which exist to launch short-range fighters, can be cut back by a ship or two in favor of long-range bombers and unmanned aircraft, both sea-based -- to replace some of the fighters in the remaining carrier air wings -- and land-based -- to replace the missing carriers. (Now, for raising my hand against the sacred cow carriers, I expect hatemail).

　

3) The nuclear arsenal:

Who are we kidding? So instead of destroying every living thing on the planet ten times over, as in the Cold War, we've cut back to killing everyone a mere two times? Sure, we need some excess capacity so the Russians (remember them?) know they can't wipe our our arsenal with a preemptive strike. But between our investments in missile defense and their lack of investments in their own weapons, enough Soviet-made missiles should either be shot down or simply glitch on launch to render the Kremlin too uncertain of the outcome of any such stunt, if they ever get crazy enough to consider it. Negotiated bilateral cuts are nice, and we certainly need to restore our lapsed verification and mutual inspection protocols, but honestly we can cut unilaterally once more -- and that includes the Energy Department weapons complex as well.

Are these three areas enough? Not enough to save our fiscal ship -- but that was always about the entitlements side of the budget, anyway. What I've proposed here is maybe half of the commissioner's savings, but it makes a dent.

-- Sydney Freedberg

www.PolicyAtTheSharpEnd.com

Eventually the tough decisions will need to be made. The most sizable elephants in the room are entitlements spending and how these are expected to soar in the coming years. The population is aging. There are less people working to pay off the benefits to retirees, which also would include Medicaid and social security. The recent report out of the President’s Fiscal Commission points to some answers on these issues. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJ_CoChair_Draft.pdf. Even with all of the hoopla about this report many of its prescriptions seem like baby steps compared to what needs to be done.

The fiscal commission draft report also has some ideas for defense cuts. These include with the numbers to the right being the 2015 benefits in billions from such cuts.

Apply the overhead savings Secretary Gates has promised to deficit reduction

28

Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at the Department of Defense for three years

5.3

Freeze noncombat military pay at 2011 levels for 3 years

9.2

Double Secretary Gates’ cuts to defense contracting

5.4

Reduce procurement by 15 percent

20

Reduce overseas bases by one-third

8.5

Modernize Tricare, Defense health

6

Replace military personnel performing commercial activities with civilians

5.4

Reduce spending on Research, Development, Test & Evaluation by 10 percent

7

Reduce spending on base support

2

Reduce spending on facilities maintenance

1.4

Consolidate the Department of Defense’s retail activities

0.8

Integrate children of military personnel into local schools in the United States

1.1

As you can see these cuts will be politically problematic. Some could also cause serious recruitment and retention problems for the civilian services and the uniformed services.

They are also somewhat irrelevant when it comes to the real problem of DOD spending: choosing the right operations and the right way of doing those operations. All of these dramatic accounting statements are a far cry from the real drama that must occur: a complete rethink of our strategic posture with a serious amount of realism added into the mix. We cannot, and politically for some time, will not, be able to be involved in discretionary actions. And speaking of discretionary: we need to remember that the DOD budget is year-on-year and is discretionary.

Entitlements are mandatory, as are payments on the interest and principle of our growing debts. Please see http://www.concordcoalition.org/files/uploaded_for_nodes/WebSiteTalk092010.pdf and http://www.usdebtclock.org/.

Business as usual is not sustainable without taxes going through the roof and claiming an ever increasing amount of our GDP and of the incomes of our people. It is time to be tough minded on the budget. Everything is up for change. Everything is on the table. As the American people get angrier and angrier about the expected non-decisions out of Congress then more and more radical politicians may walk into power. When times are tough and leadership is lacking then the vacuum could be filled by those who may not have the proper education and training to decide what is best, but most certainly play to the crowd.

We should all be worried about where this is going. In the long run, if real tough decisions are not made at the department, agency, and leadership levels then decisions will be forced on them by even more austere circumstances in the future.

However, the biggest issues are not within DOD, but involve entitlements gone haywire and already at the unsustainable stages.

There needs to be a calm, educated, grand strategy based approach to the budget analyses of the future that includes objectives that are based on the peace, prosperity and betterment of the people of the country. Human capital investments will be key elements. Reducing unemployment will be key elements. Improving our infrastructure will be key elements. Transitioning to new energy, resource and strategic futures will be key elements. Being careful and thoughtful will be so important. We are heading toward some inflection points for the future of the country. I hope our leadership is up to the task of making sure we get on the right paths upward after we hit those inflection points.

The time for extra care and greater thoughtfulness are upon us. Let us all hope that leaders will arise out of the noise we see now who can bring us to a better, more hopeful and more sustainable strategic future.

Perhaps the proverbial 400 lb. gorilla in the room in the fiscal debate is what appears to be a profound contradiction in the thinking of many conservative lawmakers and their supporters: the simultaneous desire to lower taxes while trying to achieve far lower fiscal deficits.

As Ron Marks has noted, in order to make a significant dent in the federal deficit, serious thought must be given to taking on many previous political sacred cows. And, yes, Republicans and Democrats doubtless will clash sharply over which ones to tackle because each side will target those important to the other side as most expendable. This is likely to be one major source of gridlock in Washington.

Yet, especially damaging is the widespread belief that lower taxes will bring enough fiscal stimulation to offset a considerable amount of budgetary red ink. This concept failed badly during the 1980's when initiated by the Reagan Administration, instead causing deficits to balloon. And the US economy was far more vigorous and balanced 25-30 years ago. Following that course now, as with the renewal of tax cuts--possibly even across the board--may well add hundreds of billions of additional dollars to the already dizzying fiscal deficits to be tackled.

Moreover, the political will to define and deal effectively with the sheer magnitude of the fiscal challenge ahead does not yet appear to exist. With the Obama Administration now apparently willing to give ground on putting a stop at least to the tax cut for higher income Americans, it would appear as we begin to enter the pre-2012 election period that all sides already have little or no stomach for mapping out a more realistic and tougher stance on the taxation aspect of overall fiscal responsibility. This leaves only the realm of deep, even some potentially damaging cuts in spending spanning practically all areas of budgetary activity and entitlements.

I sense most all sides are prepared to make at least some tough choices with respect to reducing spending, but continued pandering to the popular desire for lower taxes, whether sustainable or not, will complicate greatly an already daunting fiscal challenge (particularly in light of only modestly encouraging economic growth projections). And unless Republicans are prepared to tackle spending cuts across the board--including the really hard choices on defense--we may once again find that the only thing more fiscally dangerous than the so-called "tax and spend" Democrats are "don't tax, but spend anyway" Republicans.

Assessing how the changing political climate in Washington may affect the Pentagon’s budget is uncomplicated. The Republican austerity hawks will be offset by the national security hawks. With both potential agents of change neutralized, we shall continue indefinitely along the course of regular annual real increases in defense spending. The same for the national intelligence budget.

American strategy (or, more accurately strategies) also will show little if any deviation from the current flight plan. Inertia is at work on this plane as well – albeit of quite a different kind. For the greater part of a decade, the United States has been pursuing two audacious projects that intersect and mutually reinforce each other. The one is a global campaign to destroy or neutralize anyone who may seek to attack the United States and its citizens by unconventional means and methods. The conjectured persons and groups are broadly defined as all those with an inferred intent to execute a terrorist act, to organize one, to plan one or even to imagine one. This constitutes the ‘war on terror.’ It engages the US military in various formations, the CIA and assorted mercenary outfits. The State Department is a bemused sideline supporter – for the most part.

The other project is to establish a network of tangible American assets in every part of the globe thereby permitting and favoring the application of Washington’s force/influence on a constant basis. It has no termination point or time horizon. This grand enterprise encompasses a number of components. One is airbases, e.g. the Middle East network embracing Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain. Kirgizstan, Turkey (until now), and Pakistan hopefully. A second is Special Forces units operating with the overt or tacit backing of local governments in dozens of places ranging from Mauretania and Niger to Yemen, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines. A third is comprised of CIA para-militaries reinforced by contract specialists. These last two coordinate at times, compete at times, and ignore each other often. Finally, at the less kinetic end of the scale are more or less conventional Pentagon missions that train local military units, bond with the native security forces generally, and collect diverse intelligence on all manner of political matters.

What is the rationale for creating this stealth empire which has been conceived, directed and monitored by the Pentagon or Intelligence services with little outside oversight? Or public debate? The publicly stated purpose is to eliminate all those forces who can be associated directly or indirectly, tangibly or intangibly, with terrorist threats against American assets: the homeland, facilities abroad, or citizens. Within that loose conception of the threat, there is no way to gauge definitive success and, therefore, to set time limits. Indeed, this is viewed as a never ending project. The tents of we have staked around the world will not be folded. For the nation’s political leaders are preoccupied with only two things: being seen as doing more to root our terrorism than their predecessor or possible electoral rival; and avoiding incidents – however amateurish – that suggest otherwise. This is the thinking that has motivated Barak Obama to give the green light to expanded black ops in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and several other places.

At this moment, the White House is discussing whether to press harder in Yemen in the light of the recent Fed Ex episode. That would mean squeezing the precariously positioned President Ali Abdullah Saleh to give wider latitude to Special Forces already in the country, to the deployment of drones and to dealing directly with the local tribes and political formations elbowing one another in Yemen’s crowded political space. The logic of a deepening commitment there is less than persuasive. But the cardinal truth is that we are not talking about strategic logic in a cool headed fashion. Psychological, organizational and political momentum are so strong as to deny any place to logic except at the tactical level. The arguments against wading into Yemen are these. One, the action could be counter productive insofar as it could well generate sympathies for the factions we’re after, weaken sympathies for the current leadership that is holding on by its improvisation wits and the skin of its oil revenues, and lend further credibility to the al-Qaeda narrative that Islam is under assault buy the West. Two, the potential gains are uncertain and slight. Eradicating the bad guys will be no easier than elsewhere. These amorphous groups are hard to kill, especially when you do things that give them a big recruiting boost.

Finally, how much security against terrorism would the United States actually gain? Yes, there is the American born cleric, Imam Anwar Al-awlaki, who records inflammatory CDs and You Tube clips; his supposed allies have some small skill at building simple explosive devices; and access to enough pocket change to buy some confused young soul with a martyrdoml streak a one-way ticket to Detroit or to register a package with Fed Ex in Sa’ana. A moment’s reflection should tell us that these conditions could be replicated almost anywhere in the Islamic world, in European cities or – for that matter –in the United States. Moreover, the graver threat posed by a few willful people with brains, technical skill and experience is always out there; it will not be affected one iota by a repeat performance in Yemen of our futile efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Following this line of policy, should we begin to visualize Mr. Obama cajoling Chancellor Merkel to accede to Special Forces operations in Hamburg? Or, enticing President Sarkozy to allow Xe,Inc gunslingers to secure the cargo zone of Charles de Gaulle airport? Fed Ex ships to the U.S. from 209 countries, by the way.

Beyond terrorism, there are more obscure security motivations that explain our enormous, growing investment in a global network of bases, missions and influence buying. Terrorists of any stripe, after all, will be unaffected one way or another by the Air Force’s huge, state-of-the-art airbases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor will they be subdued by whatever goes on in our billion dollar Vice-regal embassies in Baghdad and Kabul. In truth, there seems no enemy on the horizon, apart from Iran, against whom we could launch a massive assault requiring those bases. Even an air campaign against Iran could manage without them. One is left with the queasy feeling that we are extending military reach into realms known before only as the subject of photo features in National Geographic because the opportunity exists and we have the means to do so. Little short of pioneering the conquest of Everest because it is there. Viewed through a darker lens, we may have created an uncontrollable juggernaut that is just lumbering forward impelled by its own momentum and the absence of an effective braking mechanism.

There is yet another aspect to post-modern imperial expansion that deserves comment. It is the substitution of the military for diplomats and related civilian agencies for promoting American interests. Africa Command was added to the galaxy of regional Commands a few years ago. They are at once the planning cells, intelligence units and operational support arms (staffed by thousands) of the Pentagon. We face no security threat from Africa (Somalia included, although it falls under Central Command). The only violent Islamic groups are off-shoots of the Algerian outfits that fought a protracted civil war in the 1990s. Lodged in the Sahara wastes, they have little evident interest in the United States as a target. American Special Forces have been advising Malian, Niger and Mauritanian security units for some time without much success – or failure. The integrity of the United States is unaffected one way or the other. Yet, the Pentagon managed to sell the idea that Africa was the next potential source of mayhem. Better to get in there sooner rather than later. Build ties with the local security elites, get the lay of the land – literally and figuratively, i.e. better safe than sorry. Two questions: shouldn’t civilian agencies be doing almost all of this as a matter of course? And as for the military to military bonding element, couldn’t a modest number of attaches and a few invitations to Fort Leavenworth serve the purpose at less than 1% of the cost?

The answers are obvious. But that is not the way the post-modern imperial mind thinks – or, more accurately, feels. A heady brew of anxiety, ambition and a perceived vacuum at the head of the United States government pushes our national security professionals to plunge ahead. That impulse, and those noted above, will not be affected by the goings-on in Congress, prattle on the talk show circuit or the high minded exchanges in the echo chambers frequented by the Washington political class.

Old story: A dog runs down the road chasing cars. Never catches one. Then, one day, the dog finally catches a car’s bumper. Oops, says the dog, now what?

So, the Tea Party Republicans have now captured the bumper of the American government. They have persuaded a justifiably angry portion of the electorate they can do the job of running the Federal government. Sadly, the Party folks are now faced with the ugly prospect that follows running for office – they now have to run the government. And, boy, are they ever in for it now.

There will be nothing pleasant about dealing with Washington’s budget problems. We are not in crisis yet, but we are sure drifting there fast. Our budget deficit is not sustainable. The economy is unlikely to provide relief for the immediate period by growing quickly enough and providing additional revenue. And, the Federal government outlays are just not that politically easy to cut – rhetoric be damned.

The basic facts are ugly. Two-thirds of the Federal budget is tied up in social security, Medicare and debt payments, so-called non-discretionary spending. Of the other one-third “discretionary”, the Defense department and related intelligence and homeland security needs make up nearly 60 percent of that.

And the 40 percent left, financing everything from national parks to highways could be cut totally and still not make a major difference.With a $1 trillion plus yearly deficit, something sacred has got to give. (And let’s not even contemplate what happens if we have to start paying higher interest rates on our debt!)

So, you as a Tea Party Republican have promised to take the lead to cut back government spending and reduce the deficit, what are you going to do? Like it or not, the Tea Party folks are going to have to grab on to some “third rails” and hope the shock in the electorate won’t kill them. One of the golden rules of politics is about to be tested: the program that supports the other guy is wasteful. The one that takes care of you is “high priority.”

First, we are going to need to means test social security and increase the retirement age. As an aging baby boomer, this one hurts. But, social security was meant as a safety net and not a retirement plan. We have been stealing from it for years to cover our deficit problems. That too has to stop.

As for Medicare, it must be readjusted to deny and cutbacks on current benefits. Sadly, after all the arguments over health care, it will be the current deficit that will force a downsizing of the system. Older Americans will get less health care period.

The national defense of our country also needs to be cut. From Homeland Security to the Defense Department, we have ramped up our spending for nearly nine years. The time has come to justify what it is we are buying. Are we truly safer because of all this spending? The answer is no. How we cut it will be a test of wills between the vested interests and the Tea Party’s deficit hawks.

The bottom line: Like it or not, America is going to have to suck it up for awhile and cut back on its government. We will get through this period and move on to better days. In the meantime, the Tea Party folks are about to find out how that car bumper tastes.