Matt Yglesias

52 Responses to “Good News”

1. Big Chuck Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

   I agree, Matthew. If military spending is reallocated for these means, I’d feel that progress is being made.

2. pseudonymous in nc Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

   One data point: there are more musicians in US military bands than there are Foreign Service officers.

3. El Cid Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 11:05 pm

   Pseudonymous: You realize, though, that the conservative response is to immediately become indignant about the swollen numbers in our U.S. military bands.

4. DCreader Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

   I think there will be some support for this in certain sectors of the military as well. From accounts of the war I have read, one of the big shocks to military planners was how totally unable other parts of the government were to step up to administer post-war Iraq. They imagined themselves handing the keys over to the State Dept. and going home. The fact that State and US-AID and everyone else didn’t have nearly the “deployable manpower” to do anything of the sort wasn’t something they were aware of prior to being faced with the necessity of doing the task themselves.

5. Jeff S. Says:
   November 30th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

   I can’t imagine the military industrial congressional iron-triangle types are going to be really excited about this. Expect heavy artillery to be deployed, figuratively and perhaps literally. That this is even being considered, much less floated in the NYT, makes me more hopeful than I’ve been in a good long time.

6. raft Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am

   Jeff S:

   you’re right. that’s why Obama has assembled some heavy firepower of his own.

   this is a really, really encouraging story.

7. chombajr Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 12:16 am

   @pseudonymous:

   BTW, the military bands are not only bigger than the Foreign Service, they are also by far our largest government expenditure on the arts - much larger in budget size than the entire NEA. Perhaps Obama can take a look at this in the context of federal arts and humanities funding as well….

8. Thomas Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am

   The current version of the article changes the narrative a bit:

   “However, it is unclear whether the financing would be shifted from the Pentagon; Mr. Obama has also committed to increasing the number of American combat troops.Whether they can make the change — one that Mr. Obama started talking about in the summer of 2007, when his candidacy was a long shot at best — “will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisers said recently.”

   In other words, we’re moving from an administration that didn’t care much about the deficit to one that’s committed to demonstrating that it doesn’t care at all.

   I’m sure it takes great courage to refuse to make hard choices.

9. RockRichard Says:
   December 1st, 2008 at 12:45 am

   Is it fair to assume, at this point, that a “senior advisor” speaking anonymously is always going to be Rahm?

10. Kolohe Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 1:31 am

    We must not allow a Musical Gap!

    Also, military bands play a song dedicated to the Washington Post. How can Foggy Bottom compete with that?

11. Gabriel Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 1:38 am

    However, it is unclear whether the financing would be shifted from the Pentagon; Mr. Obama has also committed to increasing the number of American combat troops.

    There’s no inherent conflict between wanting to increase the number of combat troops and wanting to reduce the overall Pentagon budget, as long as you are willing to cut spending in other parts of the budget, such as development and procurement of new weapons systems.

12. makkale.blogcu.com Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 3:57 am

    Is it fair to assume, at this point, that a “senior advisor” speaking anonymously is always going to be Rahm?
    http://www.makkale.blogcu.com

13. Hopefully Anonymous Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 5:43 am

    So in the case of Hillary Clinton as Secretary Of State, is this ideology masking lack of technocracy? If one is going to implement sweeping diplomatic change, I think it would be reasonable to have significant demand to have an experienced diplomatic administrator oversee the change. Although Clinton has clebrity, I think many others have a better resume for this job. How come there’s such silence on this aspect by the punditry?

    http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com

14. bjk Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 5:51 am

    Maybe we could downsize the bands to solitary bugle players. Just a lonesome taps on the bugle is good enough. No need to bring in the whole Army reserve to do Souza.

15. Russell Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 6:06 am

    The only project Obama could be talking about are permaculture projects.
    If that is the case, we win, if not then we loose. Bottom line.
    Permaculture is feeding more people than food aid.
    I pray that America does not die. Its in big big trouble.
    If you think I am worried about the economy. That is the last thing on my list. i will leave with the worst on my list. Erosion and deforestation. California salted soils that cant be repaired for a 1000 years. Peak oil leads to peak water from peak population. Thats my evidence. Whats yours?

16. Dan Kervick Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 7:49 am

    Well, part of this seems like a political victory then for what Matt used to call, I beleive, the “incompetence dodge”. There have been those on the Democratic side of the foreign policy establishement who have long argued that our interventions abroad would be more successful if we put more resources into post-conflict operations.

    I hope you are all ready for the new round of foreign interventions that will inevitably flow from the building of a shiny new Post-conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction Force. And what wondrous new nations we will be able to build with a new Failed State Fix-it Brigade. If we create these capabilities, we will use them.

    Why is the United States stretching its stressed budget to build unilateral capabilities that belong with the UN or other international agencies?

17. cd Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 8:13 am

    Wait, Obama is making smart choices? Whoa!

18. Don Williams Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Actually, I think it was Petraeus who came up with the insight that if you can’t beat them, buy them off. Wasn’t that how the Sunni resistance in Iraq was mollified. For the moment at least.

    And all those CIA officers running around Northern Afghanistan in early 2002 with suitcases of $100 bills were probably as effective at overthrowing the Taliban as were the bombs.

    I myself think that forcing captured Al Qaeda to listen to our military bands would have broken their resistance more quickly than waterboarding.

19. S.P. Gass Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 9:09 am

    My favorite military band is Country Current, the Navy’s Country/Bluegrass group. I saw them at Fairfax High School a few years back. I haven’t heard their current lineup, but Bill Emerson could really pick a good banjo when he was with the group.

20. makkale.blogcu.com Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 9:44 am

    The only project Obama could be talking about are permaculture projects.
    If that is the case, we win, if not then we loose. Bottom line.
    Hertha Berlin - Galasaray uefa cup match http://makkale.blogcu.com/h-berlin-galasaray-uefa-kupasi-macina-italyan-hakem_30157301.html

21. DMonteith Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am

    In other words, we’re moving from an administration that didn’t care much about the deficit to one that’s committed to demonstrating that it doesn’t care at all.

    Hmmm. Should I pay attention to Thomas, notorious idiot troll, or this guy, Nobel Prize winning economist?

    Do I even have the courage to avoid making such a tough choice?

22. Brett Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    There’s no inherent conflict between wanting to increase the number of combat troops and wanting to reduce the overall Pentagon budget, as long as you are willing to cut spending in other parts of the budget, such as development and procurement of new weapons systems.

    Only if you want to create a Garrison Army that will get rolled over the next time it encounters anything worse than poorly trained militiamen. The Chinese already have us beat in the “ranks of cannon fodder” category, so we need those new weapons systems (particularly ones like the F-22, which will replace the aging F-16s and F-15s) to maintain the strategic edge in conventional warfare that will allow us to only fight these kinds of nation-building enterprises (although I find it ironic that a President who criticized nation-building and the venture in Iraq is trying to create a State Department that will allow him and his successors to do exactly that in other countries - assuming our conventional warfare edge doesn’t shrink to the point that we can’t).

    I hope you are all ready for the new round of foreign interventions that will inevitably flow from the building of a shiny new Post-conflict Stabilization and Reconstruction Force. And what wondrous new nations we will be able to build with a new Failed State Fix-it Brigade. If we create these capabilities, we will use them.

    Indeed. What strikes me as ironic is that many of the people who criticized the Iraq venture for even taking place in the first place are gung-ho about creating the capabilities to do exactly that type of thing in the future (plus act as the World Policeman).

23. Brett Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    To add-

    You can train a conventional army to successfully do counter-insurgency and peacekeeping; witness the Surge in Iraq. You can’t do the reverse (training a peacekeeping army to do conventional warfare) so easily; it takes time and a considerable amount of money.

    I suppose I should at least be grateful that Gates wants to modernize the nuclear arsenal and keep ABM Defense. He’s been chomping at the bit to weaken the other modernization programs, while hiring thousands more troops (at a time when non-coms and lower ranking officers are in short supply), which will lead us to the joyous situation of having an army with lots of personnel but no firepower (by the way, the largest share of cost for the military is in field operations, not in weapons programs). A less kind man would call it an army that is more or less an expensive jobs program.

24. Paul Anderson Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Besides putting more resources into diplomacy and aid, might this also lead to questioning the seemingly inviolable split of the military budget 33%/33%/33% +/- one or two percent between the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy including the Marine Corp?

25. RL Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    Sometimes I have trouble remembering whether personnel = policy. Today, it seems, the answer is yes.

26. Brett Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    We will likely stay well ahead of the Chinese in terms of the likely outcome in any plausible conflict scenario (meaning excluding things like us trying to invade China) for a long time, even if we somewhat lower levels of spending on future weapons. In that sense it is a bit of a strawman to suggest that reducing such spending means entirely giving up on maintaining this advantage.

    You won’t stay ahead if you slash and slow the modernization programs that keep the US ahead in terms of conventional warfare, and that means things like the F-22. I mentioned that the F-15s and F-16s are already aging; that’s only half the battle. The other half is that outside military technology (aka the Russians and others) is catching up; the latest Sukhois can go toe-to-toe with said planes (F-15s and F-16s).

    I know the point you’re trying to make - that we’ll likely hang on to our military advantage for while at least, even if we slow down spending on the modernization. The problem is, DTM, is that that comes back to bite you in the behind, because of the nature of modernization in modern warfare. If you want to have air superiority in the future (and superiority in general with regards to conventional warfare), then you can’t simply procrastinate on this type of stuff. Stuff just takes a lot longer to design and build these days; one of the reasons that the MRAPs in Iraq took so long to get going, for example, is because nowadays you have to spend considerable time both finding all of the component pieces (particularly the electronics), as well as specially setting up the tooling, and that can take years (frequently at least five years, for example).

    And that’s ultimately the problem. We need to get these modernizations going right now, or you’re apt to find quite a few of the US’s conventional enemies holding on to enough conventional weaponry that they can inflict heavy losses on US conventional forces.

    The “Surge” did not just involve retraining the U.S. military (and increasing their numbers). It also involved a number of other factors, such as making allies out of former enemies, the effects of forced segregation, and so on.

    Obviously, it wasn’t the only factor. But it was a major factor in terms of turning around the counter-insurgency, and the type of strategy used has precedent of sorts; in Thailand, in Malaysia, and so forth. Again, the key point is that we were able to train US conventional troops to do this kind of stuff, and to do it relatively quickly once the US leadership decided that they wanted to train and use the US forces in Iraq to protect the population as opposed to the hodgepodge of “Search and Destroy” missions combined with “letting the Iraqis take the burden on themselves.”

    Do you think a peacekeeping force could be as quickly trained for conventional warfare, much less equipped for it, in that amount of time? Not with the way current modern warfare is supplied.

27. Bengt Larsson Says:
    December 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    The fact that State and US-AID and everyone else didn’t have nearly the “deployable manpower” to do anything of the sort wasn’t something they were aware of prior to being faced with the necessity of doing the task themselves.

    Really? I thought it was policy by Rumsfeld and Bush that State wouldn’t do anything.

28. Brett Says:
    December 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 am

    Again, you seem to be painting this as a choice between keeping current funding levels the same, or having no investment in future weapons at all. So yes, I agree we need some ongoing investment in future weapons. I don’t think that proves that the current level of funding for such projects can’t be reduced.

    Don’t try to strawman my point. I said that the nature of these programs and their development is that it takes considerably longer to get them going and built these days, since they are considerably more complex (I also pointed out, in an earlier post, that one of the reasons why we keep getting cost overruns is precisely because Congress keeps slashing the funding for them, thinking “Why do we need 300 F-22s? Why not 180?” and so forth, all of which brings out delays). Slowing them down at this point would simply make it more expensive in the long run, and delay implementation.

    By the way, there are good reasons to believe you can overshoot on such spending as well. The basic argument to that effect is that if you overspend on these projects, it can slow down economic growth (because you aren’t investing that capital in productive things). And in the future, a country with a larger economy may be able to rapidly catch up and surpass in military capabilities a country with a smaller economy, even if the smaller country had in the past spent more on the military.

    Oh, please. R & D and the procurement of the latest stuff in the modernization process all costs under $200 billion - less than the yearly service payments on the National Debt from last year (much less this year). That’s not going to make a dramatic difference in the economy and capital markets.

    You also missed my point about how all of this modernization and build-up takes much longer these days. Again. Like I said, these days, you can’t simply design a tank in one year and have it built and ready to mass-produce in two years like in World War 2 (or even Korea and Vietnam later on); it can take upwards of five, six years just to get the assembly line tooled and set up, and that’s only if you have a sufficient supply of all the neat little components that make modern equipment what it is (especially the special armor and electronic components) - as I pointed out earlier, the MRAP delay is a good example of this.

    Rumsfeld was a bad Secretary of Defense, but he was right when he said that you go to war with the “army that you have, not the army that you want”. You go to war with what you have at hand in terms of stockpiles, and hope they last long enough for you to get production going on the replacements.

    So, while spending enough to maintain a decent gap in capabilities may be a decent strategy, you have to balance that against the strategic need to grow your economy. Hence, it isn’t enough to point out spending on future weapons has benefits–you also have to show those benefits outweigh the costs.

    Again, R & D plus procurement of said weapons represent a slender fraction of the federal budget, hardly enough to drastically force a trade-off between new weapons and a bigger economy. That’s not to mention that the above isn’t even the greatest expense the military has; that’s Operational Expenses, like having your military running around doing nation-building exercises and in the field.

    As for your training argument: I don’t think either group can quickly be converted into the other group. We did adopt some better tactics and training in Iraq, but that just made our military a bit better at doing the military part of the mission. What it didn’t do is turn them into trained diplomats, development workers, and so on.

    So? We weren’t trying to turn our troops into jacks-of-all-trades for nation-building purposes; we were trying to train them to do counter-insurgency, which involves things like development aid but is based around protecting the population - which the Army picked up with aplomb once it actually became an objective on the US’s part. Again, why don’t you show me an example of a counter-insurgency focused army being trained as quickly to do conventional warfare?

29. Brett Says:
    December 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    I’m saying that there are very strong upsides towards continuing certain kinds of modernizations (like the F-22 purchase) right now, because once we do it, we’re essentially set for the next 20 years barring some totally out-of-the-blue technological innovation (AKA cheap solid-state lasers). The same way paying for what was state-of-the-art hardware back in the 1980s (the F-16s, F-15s, and M-1 Abrams tanks)has helped maintain America’s edge in conventional military power up to today, more than 20 years later.

    I think we’re talking past each other. You’re rightfully pointing out that you could put $50 billion of that to good use elsewhere, and I’m trying to point out that if you want to maintain the edge in conventional military superiority, we really ought to just get these modernizations over with right now, rather than drag them out and fool around with their budget (which makes them take longer and be more expensive).

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