Defense experts differed on the implications of the Pentagon’s shrinking budget for national security and global stability at a hotly contested debate Wednesday.
The event hosted by the debate series Intelligence Squared featured two pairs of experts, one for and against the statement, "Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget is a Gift to Our Enemies." The Defense Department faces $500 billion in spending reductions in the next decade as a result of sequestration, on top of $487 billion in cuts already mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, contended that sequestration has already prompted the Army and the Air Force to reduce their training for troops and threatens to hamper maintenance and delay upgrades of equipment.
"Cuts of the magnitude put forth in sequestration would be a disaster in terms of our military readiness," Krepinevich said.
He added that defense spending under the Obama administration would contract from its Cold War average of about 7 percent of GDP to 3.2 percent by 2016.
However, the United States would still spend $4.8 trillion on defense in the next decade under Obama’s plans — accounting for more than 40 percent of global military spending, said Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute.
"[The defense budget] is like a luxury budget," he said. "It protects our safety in the same way a billionaire’s restaurant budget protects him from starvation."
A leaner defense budget would encourage the United States to stay out of conflicts it should not engage in and deprive the nation’s adversaries of a recruiting tool, Friedman said.
Thomas Donnelly, co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disagreed. The power vacuum in the Syrian civil war and China’s territorial encroachments in the South China Sea demonstrate the consequences of U.S. inaction, he said.
"I don’t want there to be a war over people feeling how far they can go in the absence of a U.S. military presence," he said.
Donnelly also noted that health care costs continue to consume larger portions of the budget than defense. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending will climb to more than 10 percent of GDP by 2016.
"We’re not suffering from imperialist overstretch, but entitlement overstretch," he said. "That’s where the money’s going."
While Friedman said "staying rich and avoiding debt" is the best way to hedge against powers like China, Krepinevich warned against underestimating the value of military strength.
"If you’re weak, others will decide your fate," Krepinevich said. "If you’re strong, you at least have the choice to be smart or stupid."