Paul Brill: ‘Financial Distress Will Force US To Reduce Armed Forces’

Washington will severely need to prioritize in the next couple of years. American support for Europe is no longer automatic, according to Paul Brill.

On my way to Brussels for several briefings at the NATO headquarters, I read a noticeable article in the magazine Foreign Affairs about the crucial decisions the Pentagon is facing. In the next 10 years it will need to cut at least $500 billion in spending. That is a five with 11 zeros.

Excessive Royal Salaries

Cindy Williams, head of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,* calculated that the damage this threatens to bring to the general defensibility of the American forces can only stay within bounds if the current excessive royal salaries and especially the medical coverage for the military are decreased.

Whether this will be successful is definitely questionable. Associations of soldiers and veterans shape an influential lobby in Washington. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want to carry the odium for not supporting their men and women in uniform. But even if that resistance can be broken, ground forces and the Marine Corps will have to decrease their personal scale by approximately 15 percent, according to Williams.

They will also have to be careful when producing new weapon systems. The White House and the Pentagon have claimed that East Asia is the strategic pivot, and that necessarily means that the Marine Corps should be strengthened. This is because the unfolding of power in that part of the world mostly has a maritime angle.

Second-Class Military Power

Naturally, all this does not mean that the United States will fall to the status of a second-class military power. The budget of the Pentagon remains larger than those of China and Russia put together — yet there is suspicion that the Chinese invest more in their military than it seems from the official numbers.

There is no doubt that better priorities need to be made in Washington in the next decade, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the White House.

Williams’ analysis shapes a useful sounding board for a perambulation in the NATO headquarters. For example, when an American functionary lets slip: “I would be quite worried as a European about the fact that your own safety still mostly falls in the hands of the United States.”

Diplomatic Discretion

That is not what you hear from official spokespersons. Diplomatic discretion prevails: Yes, the reduction of defense expenses in almost all states is a serious problem, and the discrepancy between the American contribution and that of the Europeans is too big, but the Treaty Organization is alive and kicking. It offers an expertise and a command structure that cannot be equaled, and, even more so, if NATO did not exist, it would need to be invented rapidly.

In Europe, everyone seems to assume that the last consideration will always prevail for the Americans. There have been complaints from the American side for a long time concerning the European ease with regard to security issues.

Washington has a striking phrase for it: Europe should take on the role of security provider rather than security consumer. In theory perhaps many Europeans agree, but in practice there are always other issues that come first. They are partially convinced that the American dissatisfaction will pass and partially hope that Europe will have enough defensibility with the soft power it ascribes to itself.

Deceits

I think we will be deceived on both points. Surely Washington will not turn its back on Europe too quickly, but choices will have to be made under financial pressure, which have severe consequences for allies. It became apparent in Libya that the United States does not aspire to have a leading role in conflicts that affect Europe first and foremost.

Simultaneously, the interventions in Libya and Mali have pointed out that the Europeans lack essential military resources to execute such a thing individually. And, considered closely, they were, or in some cases are, not heavy operations.

Unfortunately, we cannot assume that such military challenges in Europe’s surroundings will not occur going forward. It also seems unwise to categorize the Russian intimidations — recent military exercises in Zapad near the Baltic states, where recapturing of the land was central — as child’s play.

* Editor’s note: Cindy Williams is not the head of the Security Studies Program at MIT but rather a research affiliate.