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Sunday, March 15, 2009
This wasn't the Reset Button we had in mindA strident Russian
military challenges a young, untested U.S. President with a provocative move into the Caribbean. Nearly
five decades after the escalation that led to President Kennedy’s Cuban Missile Crisis showdown with Soviet General
Secretary Khrushchev, Moscow is again threatening to use airfields in Cuba and Venezuela – offered by the respective Governments -- to support Russia’s newly-restarted
long-distance strategic nuclear-capable bomber patrols in the region. While no one’s talking –
at least for now -- about permanent bases, but rather only occasional use of existing facilities, the challenge comes as Mr.
Obama has his hands full with pressing domestic business. How the White House deals with this provocation
will tell the world a great deal about what it can expect from an Obama White House and may signal whether the Monroe Doctrine
(the Western Hemisphere is the realm of the U.S.) will remain a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st Century.
Seems to us that if Moscow’s looking to help make the case for sustaining current levels of U.S. defense funding,
this is a good place to start.
link
Friday, March 13, 2009
In defense of earmarks.... Just hours before signing
a $410 billion omnibus appropriations bill containing some 9,000 Congressional earmarks on Wednesday, President Obama stepped
to the podium to malign them in a major address. His comments were quickly echoed by House Democratic leaders who rolled out an expanded anti-earmark manifesto. At the core of the argument on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is that earmarks -- which the President
himself noted constitute less than 1% of the overall spending -- are corrupting the political process. In
case we’ve somehow forgotten Civics 101 as the current wave of self-righteousness has swept over Washington, it bears
repeating that it’s the Constitutionally-granted responsibility of
the Congress to control the national purse strings. The Congress is not, and should
not be a rubber stamp on the Adminstration's requests. Rather, the Congress -- Members and thousands
of personal and professional staff who advise them -- are to provide an essential and final check on Executive (and bureaucratic)
prerogative. And indeed, Mr. Obama -- who was no stranger to earmarks while he served in the Senate – acknowledged
their place when he noted on Wednesday: "Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal
money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts. And that's why I've opposed their outright elimination."
More than that, earmarks have provided a check against the power and sway of the bureaucracy,
including the largest defense contractors, those who play significant roles in developing the budget request itself... you
know, the 99% of the budget that goes untouched. You see, at the heart of the anti-earmark
crusade is the implicit assumption that the budget request as it comes to the Congress is somehow pristine and that any alteration
to the request is, by definition, corrupt. This is nonsense. Defense budget requests themselves
are a composite of a wide range of institutional and yes, special interests. Earmarks provide an essential
(if exceedingly modest) check on the sway not only of the incumbent contractors,
but also of incumbent ideas. (Would the pilot-led Air Force have aggressively
advanced the Predator UAV -- a system which has over the past decade fundamentally altered the U.S. military's approaches
to both ISR and strike -- without Congressional direction? Really?) "The President proposes, Congress disposes" is the guiding principle from the framers... and this principle
is in jeopardy when the Congress disenfranchises itself. Full transparency
for the earmark process? By all means. Elimination of earmarks? Nothing less than a dereliction of duty.
link
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The emerging Obama Doctrine – The Return of Ethical Realism and the end of Crusades Gordon Lubold writes in the Christian Science Monitor that President Obama is leaning towards a pragmatic approach to foreign and defense
policy issues where, unlike during the Bush Administration, consideration of military power’s potentially more limited
contribution to the ultimate attainment of US goals are assessed prior to engaging our adversaries. Obama’s campaign
slogan, “no drama Obama,” appears to also be the underlying theme in what some conservative defense analysts (see
AEI’s The Not-So-Great-Game) call the President’s overly cautious approach to designing security strategies as in the cases of dealing with
Afghanistan and Pakistan. But while realism and pragmatism and a “go slow” approach to national security affairs
can be considered a virtue, nevertheless, there is a growing need for rapidly identifying key assumptions and making informed
judgments on expanding the diversity of capabilities available to the President to respond to tough foreign policy and defense
challenges. As Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, the Administration must provide the funding to other government
agencies, i.e. State/USAID, Treasury, FBI, and Commerce, to generate and maintain the requisite capabilities to aid in achieving
the most desirable strategic environment. Thus, early on in the Obama Administration, if methodically conducting
multiple strategic reviews along with a quadrennial defense review give the President, the SECDEF, the SECSTATE, and the National
Security Advisor the opportunity to ask hard questions of senior civilian officials as well as senior military officers and
to receive thoughtful options related to balancing risk between competing strategic objectives, then President Obama may indeed
mitigate, or possibly even avoid, some foreign policy drama. (MJS)
link
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Pushing the Tanker Decision out five years - Another DoD punt or is it floating a balloon? Secretary
Gates, via the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), today is signaling a "fair catch" of his own punt on last year's tanker
decision. Gates knows the decision to go ahead with a tanker competition could
become the most politically charged decision of his tenure and in a budget-constrained environment, with all the normal
political shenanigans associated with defense procurement, we bet he'd rather deal with small perturbations from
unwelcome earmarks from Congress over the next year rather than be consumed by a large conflagration that might
rise out of the KC-X competition. So the leak on potentially pushing off the tanker decision will give Gates and
OMB Director Peter Orszag a sense of the Congress' appetite for confrontation while also indicating how the
Hill may view the possible demise of other defense programs in exchange for releasing the tanker RFP later this year.
Gates is committed to reprogramming the Pentagon to a balanced strategy and in doing so he must keep Congress' fingers
off the scale as best he is able. Having Congress chase floating trial balloons is one way to keep them preoccupied. Here's
hoping that the game of putting off again the Air Force's long-standing #1 acqusition priority is just that. (MJS)
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