Apr 11, 2016 @ 12:47 PM
Why Pentagon Priorities Will Soon Change No Matter Who Becomes President
Loren Thompson ,
I write about national security, especially its business dimensions.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Military planners and defense investors have begun focusing on the fact that President Obama is in his final year as the nation’s commander in chief. Next year, a new president will start putting his or her imprint on the nation’s defense posture. However, new leaders seldom have an immediate impact on Pentagon priorities unless something happens overseas, because the makeup of the joint force reflects political compromises arrived at over many years. Besides, it typically takes over a decade to field new weapons — longer than two presidential terms.
Nonetheless, I can predict with high confidence that sometime soon, Pentagon priorities will change markedly. Perhaps policymakers will decide they need to spend more money on defending the homeland against nuclear attack. Or maybe they will reverse the gradual unraveling of the Army that has occurred on Obama’s watch. I can’t predict precisely what shifts will occur, but I can state with near certainty that big change is coming.
How do I know this? Because during the 65 years I have been alive, such shifts have happened nearly a dozen times — in other words, roughly once every five years. When these shifts occur, the political system always responds by spending more money on dealing with the emergent threat, even if it means slashing other military priorities. The advent of new media such as Twitter has probably amplified this effect. Look at how random murders committed by two self-styled jihadists in California had the system in an uproar for months.
Let me provide a few examples of upheavals from earlier in my life — you know, back before anybody had heard of the Kardashians. I was born in 1951, at a time when Washington was reeling from multiple setbacks overseas. In August of 1949, the Russians tested their first nuclear weapon. President Truman confirmed the test in September, just as communists were consolidating their control of China. Only months after Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, North Korea invaded the South.
A Bradley infantry fighting vehicle built for the Army by BAE Systems. The Army has been starved of money to modernize the Bradley and other combat systems, but that could change overnight if a foreign crisis requires "boots on the ground." (Retrieved from U.S. Army)
A Bradley infantry fighting vehicle built for the Army by BAE Systems. The Army has been starved of money to modernize the Bradley and other combat systems, but that could change overnight if a foreign crisis requires “boots on the ground.” (Retrieved from U.S. Army)
Did these events change Pentagon priorities? You better believe they did! U.S. military spending skyrocketed from roughly 1% of GDP to 10%, and for the first time in its history the United States began to build a dedicated defense industry that is still with us today. An air of crisis pervaded Washington that pushed weapons purchases to the top of the political agenda and led to electing a former general, Dwight Eisenhower, as Truman’s successor.
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But the events unfolding in Washington in 1951 were hardly unique in recent history. In 1957, four years after an armistice was declared in Korea, Russia tested the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, complete with dummy warhead. Shortly thereafter, a modified version of the same booster was used to launch the world’s first satellite, called Sputnik. Within months, fears of a “bomber gap” were replaced by talk of a “missile gap,” and the emphasis in defending the homeland shifted from air defense to missile defense.
The fear that America was falling behind in the space race engendered by Sputnik also led to the creation of NASA, the establishment of an “advanced research projects agency” at the Pentagon, and greatly increased federal funding of science education. A different kind of crisis occurred 11 years later, when communist forces launched their biggest military campaign to date in South Vietnam during the Tet lunar new year; it didn’t succeed, but the political shock was so great in Washington that it began the unraveling of U.S. strategy in Indochina.
