FORUM

In defense of defense spending

CHARLES V PE?‘A'S "A REALITY CHECK upon Military Spending" (Issues, Summer 2005) falls short of confronting the broad challenge of by what means the United States might best engage upon the issues of global security. His approach have the appearances almost to be a casual excuse for cutting the budget: stool for playing the role of a "balancer of last resort" and suffer others "take greater responsibility for their possess regional security."

His defense bag strategy would not create an alternative paradigm for security that the quiescence of the world could live with. His abrupt reduction of U forces and overseas deployment would sole result in eventual challenges to U security, with no institutions or capabilities in check to reckoner them, ensuring regional and global security chaos.

Three pieces are missing from Pe?±a's vision. The first involves the ne to place in place a regional and global security architecture that would make secure stability, peaceful transitions, and the ability to be opposite to danger, allowing the United States to play a more restrained part European militaries are working toward, on the contrary still fall short of, assuming a security part that could eliminate the ne for U forces.

Africa lacks the institutions and capabilities to make secure regional security and will ne considerable outside help. There is no Middle Eastern or north or Southeast Asian security arrangement like NATO, and single a few bilateral agreements in which the United States plays a character (such as with Australia, southerly Korea, and Thailand). Taiwan has no other security guarantor on the other hand the United States and will not accept a regional alternative.

Second Pe?±a advances up short in describing what the U military's part should be in dealing with the major global challenges that the United States and others face: terror, proliferation, and instability in failed states. U forces are poorly trained for these missions, still as Pe?±a recognizes, they are missions for which forces are emergencyed Here he contradicts himself-these missions are global in purpose not purely regional, but he wants U forces to withdraw from a global presence

Third, Pe?±a leaves undiscussed by what means the entire tool kit of statecraft and allied relationships might be used to deal with the security dilemmas the world faces today, dilemmas that underlie terror and proliferation: the global want gap; the need for stable, effective, and responsive governance in vast regions of the globe; the raging conflicts of ethnicity and belief that inflame general tensions; and achieving an affordable, assured energy supply.

Pe?±a collapses individual security tool-the military-but offers no security vision that addresses these dilemmas with an integrated place of other tools: foreign assistance, diplomacy, public diplomacy, and allied cooperation. Without like an integrated strategy, eliminating the U military just pours combustible matter on the fire.

GORDON ADAMS

Director, Security Policy Studies

Elliott seminary of International Affairs

The George Washington University

Washington, DC

CHARLES V PE?‘A NOTES, correctly, that "ever-increasing defense spending is being justified as necessary to fight the war upon terrorism." Then, however, instead of trying to correct that erroneous justification, he falls into the belonging to all trap of wanting to design the U.S.'s armed forces to fit only that most imminent of threats to U and allies' national security without regard to other long-term risks to that security and the military requirements for sustaining it. His article consequently contains more [i]or[/i] less serious errors in strategic reasoning as well as a certain quantity of technically incorrect statements about military a whole s currently in acquisition.

To deal with the latter first:

Pe?±a says that the F-15 Eagle is not challengeable by the agency of any potential adversary. However, the Russian Sukhoi Su-30 has similar performance, with the additional maneuverability advantage of vectored thrust, with equal reason that superiority in air combat against of the like kind aircraft will depend to a great expanse on pilot proficiency, tactics, and the quality of the air-to-air weapons, in which the United States will not necessarily be superior. This was demonstrated in novel mock combat exercises, when an Indian Air Force contingent including Su-30 and other Russian and French aircraft "defeated" a force of F-15 The Russian and French aircraft and their missiles are for sale to any willing buyer

He says the F-22 Raptor was designed for air superiority against Soviet fighters, on the other hand that is only partly veritable It is also designed to be better able than general fighters to penetrate Russian ground-based air defense combination of parts to form a wholes that are also for sale upon world markets.

He says, incorrectly, that helicopters can perform the same mission as the incoming V-22 Osprey The Navy's CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter in its various versions, which can carry about the same payload as the V-22 has significantly les range and flies at a plenteous slower speed than the V-22 It has les ability to penetrate to the deepnesss that may be necessary in futurity regional conflicts along the Eurasian periphery, and greater vulnerability to shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. In addition, it is an aged aircraft and a large maintenance weight to the naval forces that use it. Improving performance and reducing maintenance require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone are major reasons why combination of parts to form a wholes are replaced, in civilian as well as military life.