Matt Yglesias

James Fallows vs The F-22

James Fallows is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever have occasion to interact with, and he’s got all that niceness on display in this post brushing back on his colleague Mark Bowden’s F-22 boosterism in the pages of the Atlantic.

Fallows’ 2002 article “Uncle Sam Buys an Airplane” is a must-read tale of defense aviation follies.

The Think Tank Industrial Complex

Steven Walt says:

Here’s why it won’t happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a large domestic constituency: there are 1.4 million men and women in uniform, 850,000 paid members of the National Guard and Reserve, and 650,000 civilian employees. Forget GM, Ford and Chrysler: the Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the whole country. Now add the companies that provide goods and services for the military. Their employees amount to about 5.2 million jobs, which is a pretty impressive domestic constituency. And don’t forget those 25 million veterans, who are hardly shrinking violets when defense spending is concerned. Finally, a well-financed group of Beltway bandits and Washington think tanks stand ready to question the patriotism of any politician (and especially any Democrat) who tries to put the Pentagon on a diet.

It seems unlike a realist to cite domestic political dynamics as the cause of national security policy, but clearly this is correct. And I would note the last point about the think tanks has implications that go beyond the budget. People don’t like to be dishonest — to advocate for policies they disagree with purely in order for money. And actually the think tank lifestyle isn’t very lucrative. Which means that if people and firms who profit from high levels of military expenditures want to support think tanks that support high levels of military expenditures they need to identify individuals who genuinely believe that high levels of military expenditures are good and properly. Naturally, people who think that kind of thing tend to be people who have a somewhat paranoid attitude toward foreign countries and who are strongly predisposed to favor aggressive use of military force by the US and our allies alike.

That in turn comes to be a serious distortion in the public conversation.

And it goes further. Many members of congress don’t represent districts that particularly benefit from high levels of military spending. And those members tend not to seek out assignments on the congressional committees that deal with military expenditures. But those members whose districts do benefit from said expenditures do seek out those assignments in order to maximize the share going to their folks. That has a distorting effect all its own, but it also re-enforces the think tanks issue. Members of congress like to call experts in to testify who they know are going to agree with them. So if the armed forces committees are dominated by people who favor big military spending, they’ll tend to call in “experts” who agree with that agenda — hawks.

This, in turn, gives hawkish think tank types more juice and credibility. And this, in part, is where the Very Serious People come from. Frank Gaffney gets on TV all the time but you’ll never see Carl Conetta. Gaffney’s a crank, but Conetta’s something much worse — a peacenik.

The Pentagon Team

I think there’s a lot of logic to keeping Bob Gates on as Secretary of Defense. But I also thought Chris Bowers’ concerns about this are reasonable:

The most important appointment decision Obama will make during the transition, bar none, is who becomes, or remains, Secretary of Defense. As I have noted in the past, the Department of Defense oversees the expenditure of 52% of all discretionary spending, rendering it literally impossible for any other cabinet Secretary to oversee as much federal money. Further, keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can’t run the military. [...]

Secretary of Defense is the big enchilada. Arguably, due to the vast percentage of federal spending it receives, it is more important than all other cabinet secretaries combined. The President may be Commander in Chief, but it is the Secretary of Defense who is decides how most federal revenue is spent. We need change in the Department of Defense, and keeping Gates along with his entire team of advisors and assistants doesn’t fit the bill.

The first step to meeting these concerns is to observe that it’s not actually the case that the Secretary of Defense just “decides” how the Pentagon’s giant budget is spent. It’s largely determined by congress, and budget requests have input from OMB and of course the president needs to agree. But this isn’t a crazy set of concerns. I think you meet the concerns two ways. One has to do with staffing the other civilian slots at the Defense Department.

Thus far, this seems to be going right. Gates’ Deputy will be Richard Danzig according to Mike Allen. Danzig was Secretary of the Navy under Bill Clinton and is an o.g. Obama supporter, a totally solid guy. And Gates’ most pernicious subordinate, Cheney aide Eric Edelman, is on his way out. Spencer Ackerman reports that his successor as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (the number three job, used to be Doug Feith) will be Michèle Flournoy, who simultaneously held two subordinate positions in the Policy undersecretariat under Clinton, and cofounded CNAS. She’s the right woman for the job.

Of course personnel is personnel, and then there’s policy. As I said, I think there’s a huge opportunity to coopt Republican realists by enlisting Gates in an Obama administration. But that’s based on the presumption that a Gates-led Pentagon will be assisting in the pursuit of sound policies — withdrawal from Iraq, a tighter focus on al-Qaeda, a new diplomatic approach in the broader Middle East, and sensible budget priorities — rather than just being a Cohenesque abdication of responsibility. Budget issues will be, as Bowers highlighted, especially important. I’ve been distressed for months now about reports of a looming defense budget ambush and it’s crucially important that Gates be part of the pusback rather than part of the problem.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Sea-Based Missile Defense But Were Afraid to Ask

Admittedly, if you’re normal you haven’t had a ton of such questions. But sea-based missile defense systems are the thinking person’s missile defense — less provocative and less grandiose than National Missile Defense schemes, but they actually work. Andrew Grotto and Rebecca Grant can fill you in.