Who Now Loathes the Military?

...To be fair, House GOP leaders in May pledged an additional $3 billion in defense funds to rebuild what they termed our "hollowed out" military...

...Listening to Republicans, you would think the answer was clear: much more than whatever we are currently spending...

...On the crucial question of military budgets, then, those who trivialize legislative opinion do so at the cost of discounting developments likely to have serious and lasting consequences for the nation's ability to defend itself...

...And just as Republicans during the 1930s and following the Second World War quite consistently aligned their defense budget requests with their reluctance to intervene abroad, a new generation has likewise established that it makes little sense to champion larger defense expenditures while at the same time condemning the uses for which those expenditures are intended...

...Mark Neumann formed the Republican Defense Working Group, an alliance whose objective is a lasting reduction in the level of defense expenditures, and whose members have repeatedly challenged military operations and new weapons systems, and demanded an immediate freeze in defense spending...

...So what animates this new generation of Republicans...

...And they are promoting this line not only for reasons of frugality but also, oddly enough, on ideological grounds...

...Representative Joe Scarborough, who has lately been making headlines with his crusade to close down the Army's School of the Americas, explained: "Any Republican president who expects the House members and probably the newer members of the Senate to merrily go along and rubber-stamp" his national security aims "will be very disappointed...

...Or, as congressman John Duncan has complained, "All we are doing is wasting billions of dollars and making enemies all over the world . . . billions and billions of dollars taken from low and middle-income Americans...

...Thirteen billion would pay Social Security benefits for every African American retiree...

...For not only had we been spending more than is necessary on defense, argued junior Republicans (reviving a canard from the 1970s), but we had been doing so at the expense of vital domestic programs that were being bled dry...

...By deleting the funds the administration requested for THAAD's engineering and manufacture...

...But when it comes to spending outlays—that is, the actual amount the Pentagon may spend in a given year, as opposed to theoretical future expenditures—they have provided the military with seven billion fewer dollars than the White House...

...As representative Ron Paul explained during debate over an emergency defense bill last May: "The more we get into quagmires around the world and the more we accept the policy of policing the world, all we seem to do is come back and say, well, if we just put more money in [the military budget...

...It is also a matter of ideology and, specifically, a manifestation of two creeds that have lately distinguished the Republican style of governance...

...Republicans in Congress, it seems, have finally discovered that the military is an instrument of foreign policy...

...True, House Republicans claim Lawrence F Kaplan is executive editor of the National Interest...

...The armed services, of course, have been plagued by budgetary shortfalls, rapidly thinning ranks, and aging stocks of equipment...

...to have added $8 billion to the president's defense request for the coming fiscal year...

...Don't send troops...

...Or as freshman congressman Doug Ose put it (echoing Jack Kemp's charge that Kosovo was an "international Waco"): "Those are my colleagues' and my tax dollars being used [by the armed forces] . . . to destroy day care centers, schools, churches and the like...

...As for the former speaker's disciples, junior Republicans have indeed been revealed as cheap, though they could hardly be described as hawks...

...If the sheer scale of this year's Republican cuts alarmed the Pentagon, the criteria by which weapons programs were scaled back to produce those cuts proved equally unsettling...

...Another reason for the Republican reversal on defense is politics...

...Still, it is Congress, and not the White House, that funds the Department of Defense...

...And when they do attend to military requirements, they habitually do so as if the armed services comprised simply another GOP voting bloc—attaching more importance to the crisis in military day care than to matters of weapons acquisition and modernization...

...The allegation has also been a staple in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, with all the major candidates scoring the administration for its meager defense expenditures...

...I'm a hawk," Newt Gingrich explained in 1995, "but I'm a cheap hawk...

...Now if only Democrats with their newly expansive foreign policy aims could be so consistent, our debates over defense spending might begin to make a little sense...

...It would have been the second, had defense hawks—many of whom were Democrats—not barely succeeded in deflecting an earlier attempt by John Kasich and 80 like-minded Republicans to kill the B-2 stealth bomber...

...Thirteen billion [dollars] is more than Social Security pays in an entire year for seniors' insurance, for benefits for kids," protested Rep...

...All the more so, as isolationism, poll-taking, and libertarian zeal erode the once vital role Republicans played in advancing the aim of a strong defense...

...Thus, the unveiling of the GOP tax plan led to an unusual bit of political theater—with the president attacking Republicans, with some credibility, for their "reckless" and "dramatic" proposed cuts in the defense budget...

...An issue or crisis comes up and [their] reaction is almost Pavlovian," observes senator John McCain of the new generation of congressmen...

...Alas, not a month later, those same leaders quietly announced a change of heart: The funds would be allocated instead to the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and other agencies...

...And the same political currents that have siphoned funds out of the defense budget have equally distorted its substance...

...And if a Republican president were to be elected in 2000...

...Demography, however, is on their side: As Republicans elected during the Cold War retire and their junior ranks—few of whose members have had extensive contact with the armed forces—move into leadership positions, conservative thrift may well supplant liberal anti-militarism as the chief obstacle to an adequate level of defense expenditure...

...That the congressional wings of both parties tend toward the unseri-ous has long been a truism of American politics—and nowhere more than in matters of national security policy, which is in any case devised mainly by the executive branch...

...If the United States today fields a hollow military, the blame lies as much with Congress as it does with the White House...

...Then, too, there was the curious spectacle of senior military leaders pleading with the White House to protect the armed services from a Republican Congress, urging Clinton aides "not to sell out the Pentagon...

...Which missile defense program Congress ought to promote is, to be sure, a question with ample room for disagreement...

...The charge that President Clinton has "hollowed out" the armed forces has become a favorite among Republican members of Congress...

...For a decade and a half, the United States has expended billions of dollars on the development of a missile defense program...

...Supporters of those ends have so far succeeded only in derailing proposals to boost the military budget...

...Even if that newly sworn-in president wished to shower the Pentagon with budgetary largesse (an admittedly remote prospect), how likely is it that a Republican Congress would appropriate those funds...

...Funding encourages a policy that is in error...

...I don't think it's fair for Republicans to sit and criticize Commerce, the Department of Education and other agencies and, at the same time, give defense what they need because 'I want to go home to the veterans and give my Memorial Day Speech,'" Rep...

...Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican, during subsequent debate on an emergency defense bill...

...And, for a decade and a half, Republicans have clamored for the deployment of such a system...

...namely, anti-sta-tism and non-interventionism...

...The budget resolution Congress passed in March actually provides for lower levels of defense expenditures over the next decade—to the tune of $100 billion— than the Clinton administration proposed...

...To provide a platform for such voices, in 1996 Foley and former Rep...

...Responding to electoral rather than strategic imperatives, congressional Republicans routinely expend scarce defense dollars on schemes of dubious strategic worth, including civilian projects, obsolete production lines, and unneeded bases...

...The most notable item to lose its funding was the F-22 jet fighter—now set for manufacture after years of research and development and $18 billion in sunk costs...

...The difference between the two is merely this: Where President Clinton has compelled the military to do "more with less," Republicans are proposing that it do less with less...

...Yet if the new anti-governmental-ism runs counter to the end of higher defense appropriations, so too do the minimalist foreign-policy aims embraced by the new Republicans...

...But the cause of rational discussion was hardly furthered when congressional Republicans chose to expend those funds on items like unrequested helicopters for the National Guard and bases the Pentagon had implored them to shut...

...Clinton, by contrast, had pledged to increase the level of military spending by $127 billion over the same time period...

...Mark Foley admonished his colleagues...

...As to the first of these, though denigration of the federal government has long been a staple in many Republican quarters, it was until recently a selective denigration, with institutions like the military and federal law-enforcement exempted as legitimate agencies of authority...

...Today, with the exception of a few Southern states that host a disproportionately large number of military bases, the defense budget claims virtually no political constituency...

...Or as fellow Republican Lee Terry put it when voting against the same bill, "The United States has domestic priorities that must be protected...

...The plane, superior in every respect to the Joint Strike Fighter, was the first such project to be canceled by Congress...

...But a further cut, one that went generally unremarked upon in the uproar surrounding the F-22's demise, most plainly revealed the emptiness of congressional rhetoric...

...Nonetheless, the Republican indictment is actually an indictment against itself...

...So when President Clinton finally conceded the need for a missile shield—and only days after the Army's Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was tested successfully—how did House Republicans react...

...But if the GOP means to excoriate federal spending and heavy-handed federal agencies, Republicans of a libertarian bent now argue, why exempt the most expensive and authoritarian of them all...

...A few weeks after that, despite predictions of a trillion dollar surplus, congressional Republicans announced that none of that windfall would be employed to strengthen the very institution whose weakness they had been deploring...

...Consider the latest Republican proposals...

...To begin with, there is the issue of military spending...

...It would be used instead for an $800 billion tax cut, which could lower defense spending a further $200 billion over the next decade...

...But the demise of the Republican commitment to the aim of an adequately funded military involves more than dollars and cents...

...At the simplest level, the explanation is fairly straightforward: In their telling, they were elected with a mandate to curtail the budget deficit, federal expenditures, and, more broadly, the government itself...