According to a Washington Post story, the German army is so poorly funded that it cannot afford machine guns for its armored vehicles. German soldiers tried to hide the fact — and you have to give them credit for ingenuity — by using broomsticks instead. They painted the broomsticks black and mounted them on top of their vehicles during a NATO training exercise last year.
America’s military isn’t using broomsticks, at least as far as I know, but it too is in a steep decline, largely as a result of the spending cuts imposed four years ago by the Budget Control Act. The Navy should have, as a minimum, 325-346 vessels; it has about 280 ships and is headed down to 250 or below. The Air Force is smaller, and flying older aircraft, than at any time since the inception of the Service. Less than half of its combat squadrons are fully ready. The Army has been cut by 80,000 troops in the last three years and will shrink to pre–World War II levels. Other readiness and modernization issues abound, and are getting worse. I discuss the situation here and here.
It all reminds me, as so much does these days, of one of Winston Churchill’s speeches, called “The Locust Years,” which he gave in the House of Commons in 1936. Hitler had been in power for almost four years and had been systematically rearming Germany while the British were allowing their defenses to atrophy. A government minister had incautiously referred to this period of inaction as “years that the locusts had eaten.” Churchill gave a speech throwing the phrase back at the government time and again, documenting the decline in Britain’s power and the government’s apathy, and culminating in one of Churchill’s more famous lines:
“So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years — precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain — for the locusts to eat.”
The speech is well worth reading in its entirety for its parallels to the current times.
On the current budget baseline, the United States will in FY2016 spend just short of 2.7 percent of its GDP on defense — less than at any time since WWII — this despite the fact that threats around the world are obviously growing, the current baseline for the armed forces is an admitted and documented disaster, and the top constitutional priority of the federal government is supposed to be national defense.
In our system, the President has the lion’s share of authority over foreign policy. But the distribution of power is different where defense policy is concerned; Article 1 of the Constitution gives to Congress the power to “raise, support, provide, and maintain” the armies and navies of the United States. Congress exercises that power primarily through the defense-authorization bill it passes every year — which dictates the size and shape of the force — and the appropriations bills it passes to fund what it has authorized.
Of course President Obama could veto either or both of those bills if they support defense at a higher level than he has proposed, but given the proven and steep decline in American power, and the growing risks around the world, he is highly unlikely to do so; and if he does, then the responsibility for what is happening — to the security of our homeland and America’s vital interests abroad — will rest squarely with him.
The Republican House Leadership is preparing its 2016 budget resolution. That budget offers a prime opportunity to reverse the defense cuts of four years ago, return to the budget baseline Secretary Bob Gates proposed in the spring of 2011, and pass a defense increase for FY 2016 substantially greater than the president has proposed.
As a practical matter, it’s the last opportunity Congress will have to begin restoring America’s security and credibility before the end of the Obama administration. If the Leadership does not see the vital importance of that agenda, then rank-and-file members must have the clarity and purpose to act while there is still time, before two more years — years vital not only to America’s greatness but perhaps to her survival — are given to the locusts.
I wrote above about the parallels between Churchill’s times and ours. What he said, in closing his speech, about the duty of the House of Commons, is equally applicable to the duty facing members of Congress now.
Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even the Government’s own confessions of error would have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency. I say that unless the House resolves to find out the truth for itself it will have committed an act of abdication of duty without parallel in its long history.