Following last
week's launch of a conservative think-tank
effort to argue for increased defense
spending, now a non-partisan think tank has joined the grand debate over
national defense budgets, taking the
opposing side of the argument.
The Stimson Center, a
non-profit, non-partisan research center, expanded its web presence on Tuesday.
As part of its "Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense" project, Stimson
launched a new blog called The Will
and the Wallet, which will address how to reconcile U.S. national security
with the country's horrid fiscal and budgetary situation.
"The Will and the Wallet is
part of the Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project's mission to
offer pragmatic options for strengthening the institutions of civilian foreign
policy and disciplining those of defense," Stimson said in a press release. "This
perspective comes at a critical time, as concerns about the federal debt are
growing and as policymakers begin to consider U.S. national security priorities
after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The project and the blog are led by Gordon Adams, a professor at American University's School of International Service who served as head of national security spending at
the White House's Office of Management and Budget during Bill Clinton's
administration. His work at Stimson isn't limited to this one issue, but his views on the future of defense
spending are clear.
"Now is the time to change direction and focus carefully on
setting priorities to discipline defense plans and budgets," Adams told
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 20. "Congress
and the administration can no longer ignore the reality that Americans have
neither the will nor the wallet for unprecedented spending that does not set
priorities for our statecraft."
The Stimson effort stands opposed to another new joint think-tank
effort launched last week by the Foreign Policy Initiative, the American
Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, called "Defending
Defense." That initiative, which will hold its first event in Washington
next week, seeks to make the intellectual arguments for more robust defense
budgets despite the nation's financial difficulties.
"By having several serious organizations raise
awareness about this issue, we hope to send the message that the defense budget
is not something that should be tinkered with even as some take a look at
cutting overall federal spending," said FPI's executive director Jamie Fly.
Those more closely aligned with Stimson's side of the debate
see the new effort on the conservative
side as an indication that pressure is mounting to reduce the defense budget.
"For the last two weeks, the advocates of higher defense
spending have shown their nervousness that the times may be changing -- that the
defense budget may go south after the elections," said Winslow Wheeler, head of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the
Center for Defense Information, who agrees with Adams that efficiency is what's
needed, not more money.
"Slaves to the thinking they condemn in others, that more
money means more defense, they ignore what has been happening in the Pentagon's
budget: as we spend more, we become weaker," he said. The Obama administration
requested a total of $708 billion for defense in fiscal 2011, including the
cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2001, the total cost of the
defense budget was $316 billion, according to the Congressional Research
Service.
(Your humble Cable
guy, as a dispassionate chronicler of world events, is non-aligned in this
debate, but will be speaking at
the launch event for the Stimson Center website on Friday, Oct. 15, along
with the New America Foundation's Steve
Clemons, NPR's Tom Gjelten, and
Politico's Jen DiMascio.)
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