by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/em><\/p>\n President Obama has just ordered massive cutbacks in defense spending, eventually to total some $500 billion. There is plenty of fat in a Pentagon budget that grew after 9\/11, but such slashing goes way too far.<\/p>\n Fairly or not, the cuts will only cement the now-familiar stereotype of Obama\u2019s desire to retrench on the world scene. They follow symbolic apologies for purported past American sins, bows to foreign royals, and outreach to the likes of Iran and Syria. Abroad, such perceptions can matter as much as reality, as our rivals begin hoping that Obama is as dubious about America\u2019s historically exceptional world role as are they.<\/p>\n In contrast, a robust military keeps the peace by deterring aggressors through the appearance of overwhelming force. We often forget that the appearance of strength in peace is almost as important as the reality of strength in war. When wars end, we scale back (think 1919 or 1946) \u2014 only to kick ourselves once tensions arise again out of nowhere, and we must scramble to catch up and rearm for an unimagined World War II or Cold War.<\/p>\n America\u2019s armed forces spend about 80 percent of their budgets not on bullets and bombs but on training and compensating troops. Often, they do a far better job of shaping the minds and character of our youth than do our colleges. Somehow the military can take an 18-year-old and teach him to park a $100 million fighter on a carrier deck, but our colleges cannot ensure that his civilian counterpart will show up regularly for classes. Young men and women leave the service debt-free and with skills. Too many of our college students pile up debt and become increasingly angry that by their mid-20s they still have received neither competitive skills nor real education.<\/p>\n The reason why our deficit is more than $1 trillion is not just that we have multimillion-dollar jet fighters or tens of thousands of Marines. Defense outlays currently represent only about 20 percent of federal budget expenditures and are below 5 percent of our gross national product. Those percentages are roughly average costs for recent years \u2014 despite an ongoing deployment in Afghanistan. In contrast, over the last three years we have borrowed a record near-$5 trillion for vast unfunded entitlements \u2014 from a spiraling Social Security and Medicare to an expansion of the food-stamp program to include one-seventh of America. Yet many Americans would probably prefer a new frigate manned by highly trained youth to discourage our enemies, rather than another Solyndra-like investment or a near-$1 trillion stimulus aimed at creating jobs in \u201cshovel-ready\u201d projects.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, defense cuts do not occur in isolation. They feed a syndrome best typified by an insolvent and largely defenseless socialist Europe. The more prosperous societies cut their defenses to expand social programs, the more the resulting dependency leads to even less defense and even more benefits. Once the state promises to take care of the citizen, the citizen starts to believe that more subsidies are still not enough. And once voters believe that defense spending is an impediment to greater entitlements, they will pay for fewer and fewer impediments. The net result is something like the squabbling, soon-to-collapse European Union: with trillions in unfunded entitlement liabilities, and unable to defend itself.<\/p>\n Many of the Obama administration\u2019s new cuts are aimed at the traditional ground forces, given that we are in a high-tech age of missiles, sophisticated drones, and counterinsurgency missions. But the nature of war is neither static nor predictable. After World War II, Harry Truman wanted to do away with the Marines \u2014 and then was glad he had not when they largely saved the reputation of the U.S. military during the unforeseen disaster in Korea in December 1950. After the Gulf War of 1990\u201391, we cut back on our ground forces, only to build them back up so that the Marines could deal with enemies in awful places like Anbar Province in Iraq.<\/p>\n The decline of civilizations of the past \u2014 fourth-century-bc Athens, fifth-century-ad Rome, 15th-century Byzantium, 1930s Western Europe \u2014 was not caused by their spending too much money on defense or not spending enough on public entitlements. Rather, their expanding governments redistributed more borrowed money, while a dependent citizenry wanted even fewer soldiers so as to guarantee ever more handouts. History\u2019s bleak lesson is that those societies with self-reliant citizens who protect themselves and their interests prosper; those whose citizens grow dependent cut back their defenses \u2014 and waste away.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama has just ordered massive cutbacks in defense spending, eventually to total some $500 billion. There is plenty of fat in a Pentagon budget that grew after 9\/11, but such slashing goes way too far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[285,271],"tags":[1051,72,12,258,115,488,320,1016,1030,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-hf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":127,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-year-in-america-will-we-continue-down-the-road-to-decline\/","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":0},"title":"A New Year in America: Will We Continue Down the Road to Decline?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine \u00a0 Looking back over 2012, one could be forgiven for thinking that if America goes on at this rate, the nation must be ruined. But as Adam Smith replied to a young man who said those same words about British losses during the American Revolution,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8263,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-audacity-of-weakness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":1},"title":"The Audacity of Weakness","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s morally confused foreign policy is making the world more dangerous by the day. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress on Tuesday to warn Americans of the anti-Western threats from theocratic \u2014 and likely to soon be nuclear \u2014 Iran. Netanyahu\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7757,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democracies-like-military-cuts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":2},"title":"Democracies Like Military Cuts","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thorton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine President Obama has been rightly chastised for his proposed cuts to our military budget. Critics have gone after his Quadrennial Defense Review and its plan to shrink the armed forces, not to mention the clumsy optics of issuing pink slips to thousands of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/cuts.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-next-president-will-face-a-dangerous-predicament-abroad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":3},"title":"Why the Next President Will Face a Dangerous Predicament Abroad","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online For a time, reset, concessions, and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm, and face down enemies. That gets dangerous. 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