A Citizen's Guide to Critique The Pentagon

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This article has been updated to adjust the amount of the national debt from what was $16 Trillion in 2012 when we first began our Pentagon critique to what is now in excess of $35 Trillion. 

Ask yourself if there are not other alternatives for the future of our country, to include statesmanship, and international economic cooperation to cease warfare and weaponizing efforts among great nations. 

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We offer not only our opinion on the massive Military Industrial Complex, but also the opinions of three experts who have lived war fighting - on the recent fields of battle, and in weapons systems development.

The quotations are extracts from larger articles. We suggest the reader follow the links after each to become further informed. 

It is our hope that the facts offered here will contribute to the knowledge of US citizenry regarding hard decisions forthcoming on the nature of war fighting and its role in the future of our country.

OUR VIEW

This site was founded in 2006, based on 36 years experience in war zones and major corporations in the US Military Industrial Complex. Our view is expressed in the below article, an extract of which reads:

“Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and "Rice Bowls" which are never mixed.

Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon's many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 20 years. What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing, with neat stacks of exclusive, dedicated subcontractors under each. The stacked pricing load of these arrangements is enormously expensive.

Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Men like Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.”

What The American Public Must Know About The Pentagon

A FELLOW VETERAN’S VIEW

Paul Riedner

Paul Riedner is a graduate of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. and personally, sacrificed four years in support of war effort -- one deployed as an army engineer diver.

“There remain countless inner struggles that lurk in dark corners of my psyche. They are difficult to measure or even explain.

What does it mean to have been a part of this war?

To have been a part of: 4,500 American deaths; 33,000 Americans wounded; estimates as high as 600,000 Iraqi deaths; more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent; $9 billion lost or unaccounted for; huge corporate profiteering; a prisoner-abuse scandal; a torture record worthy of the Hague; a hand in the financial crisis, and runaway unemployment when we get home.

I've learned that we are easily duped and that we quickly forget. Saddam has WMDs. No, we are exporting democracy. No, we are protecting human rights, and by the way, their oil will pay for it all.

I've learned that 9/11 was used against us. We gladly handed over our civil liberties in the name of security. And recently our Congress quietly reapproved the unconstitutional Patriot Act.”

Among Iraq war's many losses: Trust

AN OFFICER’S VIEW

Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel L. Davis

Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel L. Davis was on active duty in the United States Army, serving as a Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch when he wrote this article. He had just completed his fourth combat deployment. (Desert Storm, Afghanistan in 2005-06, Iraq in 2008-09, and Afghanistan again in 2010-11). In the middle of his career he served eight years in the US Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs, one of which was an aide for US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (Legislative Correspondent for Defense and Foreign Affairs).

From “Dereliction of Duty II

Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort 27 January 2012”

“We have lavished praise a few of our senior military leaders for being “warrior-scholars” whose intellectualism exceeds those of most wearing the uniform. But what organization in the world today – whether an international terrorist organization or virtually every major company on the globe – needs physical territory on which to plan “future 9/11 attacks”? Most are well acquainted with the on-line and interconnected nature of numerous global movements. We here in the United States know video conferencing, skyping, emailing, texting, twittering, Facebooking, and virtually an almost limitless number of similar technologies.

And a few men have convinced virtually the entire Western world that we must stay on the ground in one relatively postage-stamp sized country – even beyond a decade and a half – to prevent “another 9/11” from being planned, as though the rest of the world’s geography somehow doesn’t matter, and more critically, that while the rest of the world does its planning on computers and other electronic means, al-Qaeda must be capable only of making such plans on the ground, and only on the ground in Afghanistan.

When one considers what these few leaders have asked us to believe in light of the facts pointed out above, the paucity of logic in their argument becomes evident. What has been present in most of those arguments, however, has been emotionally evocative words designed to play strongly on American patriotism: “…this is where 9/11 was born!” “these young men did not die in vain” “this is a tough fight” etc. It is time – beyond time – for the evidence and facts to be considered in their comprehensive whole in a candid and honest public forum before we spend another man or woman’s life or limbs in Afghanistan."

Dereliction of Duty Report

A PENTAGON DEFENSE ANALYST’S VIEW

Franklin C. "Chuck  " Spinney

Franklin C. "Chuck  " Spinney Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (better-known by its former name, Systems Analysis, set up to make independent evaluations of Pentagon Policy)

Author - "Defense Facts of Life: The Plans-Reality Mismatch", which sharply criticized defense budgeting, arguing that the defense bureaucracy uses unrealistic assumptions to buy in to unsustainable programs, and explaining how the pursuit of complex technology produced expensive, scarce and inefficient weapons. Spinney spent his career refining and expanding this analysis. The report was largely ignored despite a growing reform movement, whose goal was to reduce military budget increases from 7% to 5% after inflation. Two years later, he expounded on his first report, including an analysis on the miscalculation of the burden costs of a majority of the weapon systems and re-titled it "Defense facts of life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch", which later became simply known as the "Spinney Report":

“And that's why we ought to treat the defense industry as a public sector; and if we did that then you wouldn't see these gross disparities in salaries creeping in. But essentially if you try to understand what's going on in the Pentagon and this is the most important aspect, and it gets at the heart of our democracy. Is that we have an accounting system that is unauditable. Even by the generous auditing requirements of the federal government.

Now what you have to understand is the kind of audits I'm talking about these are not what a private corporation would do with a rigorous accounting system. Essentially the audits we are required to do are mandated under the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, and a few amendments thereafter. But it's the CFO Act of 1990 that's the driver.

And it basically was passed by Congress that required the inspector generals of each government department, not just the Pentagon, but NASA, health, education, welfare, all the other departments, interior department where the inspector general has to produce an audit each year. Saying, basically verifying that the money was spent on what Congress appropriated it for. Now that's not a management accounting audit. It's basically a checks and balances audit.

Well, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. They have 13 or 15, I forget the exact number, of major accounting categories. That each one has it's own audit. The only one of those categories that's ever been passed is the retirement account.

Now under the CFO Act of 1990 they have to do this audit annually. Well, every year they do an audit and the inspector general would issue a report saying we have to waive the audit requirements, because we can't balance the books. We can't tell you how the money got spent.

Now what they do is try to track transactions. And in one of the last audits that was done the transactions were like… there were like $7 trillion in transactions. And they couldn't account for about four trillion of those transactions. Two trillion were unaccountable and two trillion they didn't do, and they accounted for two trillion.”

Bill Moyer's Journal

CONCLUSION:

The material here is submitted on its own merits. Consider it carefully as the Pentagon consumes enormous amounts of US disposable tax revenue and our national debt exceeds $35 Trillion.  National Debt Clock

Ask yourself if there are other alternatives for the future of our country, to include statesmanship, international economic cooperation and de-weaponizing efforts among great nations. 

A Vietnam Combat Vet And Retired Defense Contracts Manager Examines The Largest Military Industrial Complex In History

 

"Odyssey of Armaments ” By Ken Larson

“I hope this FREE account of my 36-years in warfare and weapons programs is useful to those concerned about the posture of the United States in the world today. I have learned that the only thing wars decide is how many have died, who is left and who must pay the bills. Academia EDU - Odyssey Of Armaments

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"I am a two tour Vietnam combat veteran and a retired aerospace and defense contracts manager. Vietnam was not a declared war. It was an "Intervention", developed by the U.S. Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the "Best and the Brightest" in the Pentagon. It became the defacto model for military actions, not only by the U.S. but also other major world powers. Intervention has a long history.

A similar intervention occurred in Iraq, driven by the same MIC forces.

Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The Vietnam "Intervention" legacy continued after 911 in Afganistan, with mammoth costs in money, treasure and lives; then on to the Middle East and to Ukraine and now to the Gaza support program, while making billions for defense industries and delivering death and destruction to civilians. What must be learned and what price are we willing to pay to learn it?

Our near term future as a country involves weighty decisions regarding our fiscal and national security.  There will be trade offs during the next federal government incremental funding authorization this Fall. 

We are approaching a National Debt of $36 Trillion with a downgraded fiscal credit rating while carrying the financial burden of ongoing support for NATO and the Ukraine war, the Middle East Gaza conflict, as well as domestic program needs.  

A look over our shoulder at two driving factors of our recent warfare is useful as we consider history when viewing our future while making prudent decisions on the principal contributors to our national debt and security. 

I was in Vietnam for two tours as a combatant; working in US Army Base Development. I observed  Philco Ford CAGV, Pacific Architects and Engineers, Leo Daley and other huge corporations working throughout the country supplying American occupation and making billions.

"David Halberstam's book offers a great deal of detail on how the decisions were made in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led to the war, focusing on a period from 1960 to 1965 but also covering earlier and later years up to the publication year of the book. Many influential factors are examined in the book:

The Best And The Brightest

THE PAST

A quote many years ago from Major-General Smedley D. Butler: Common Sense (November 1935)

" I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force---the Marine Corps. I have served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to major-general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers, In short I was a racketeer for capitalism

Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place to live for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in…. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking   house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican   Republic for American Sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents. War Is A Racket"

THE VIETNAM WAR - THE COSTLIEST TO DATE

View and Search The Vietnam Conflict "Wall of Faces" The Wall of Faces

It's been 5 decades since the U.S. ended its involvement in the Vietnam War, and yet payments for the conflict are still rising.

Now above $22 billion annually, Vietnam compensation costs are roughly twice the size of the FBI's annual budget. And while many disabled  Vietnam vets have been compensated for post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds, other ailments are positioning the war to have large costs even after veterans die.

Based on an  uncertain  link to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used in Vietnam,  federal officials approved diabetes a decade ago as an ailment that  qualifies  for cash compensation — and it is now the most compensated  ailment for Vietnam vets.

The VA also recently included heart disease among the Vietnam medical problems that qualify, and the agency  is seeing  thousands of new claims for that condition.

THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED MAJOR CONFLICTS

If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and  their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.

An Associated  Press analysis of federal payment records found that the  government is  still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War  veterans — 148  years after the conflict ended.

At the anniversary of  the start of the Iraq War, more than $40 billion a  year was going to  compensate veterans and survivors from the  Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And  those costs are rising rapidly.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war's long-lasting financial toll.

"When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost," said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII veteran father's disability benefits helped feed their family.

With greater numbers of troops surviving combat injuries because of   improvements in battlefield medicine and technology, the costs of disability payments are set to rise much higher.

So far, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf conflict in the early 1990's have cost about $12 billion a year to compensate those who have left military service or family members of those who  have died.

Those post-service compensation costs have totaled  more than $50 billion since 2003, not including expenses of medical  care and  other benefits provided to veterans, and are poised to grow  for many years to come.

The new veterans are filing for  disabilities at  historic rates, with about 45 percent of those from  Iraq and Afghanistan  seeking compensation for injuries. Many are seeking compensation for a  variety of ailments at once.

Experts see a variety of factors  driving that surge, including a bad economy that's led more jobless  veterans to seek the financial benefits they've  earned, troops who  survive wounds of war, and more awareness about  head trauma and mental  health.

THE FUTURE

Recent events involving US war "Interventions" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Gaza Conflict demonstrate the incredibly out of control nature of the Military Industrial Complexes in the major advanced countries. We are receiving daily demonstrations of their danger, their folly and their contribution to the largest national debt ever to grace the face of the earth.

A Soldier's View On Interventions For Profit

Alternatives to war in terms of negotiation, scientific advancement and cooperation among world governments not only are required but are the only feasible solution to the present state of our global affairs. The war makers are going broke, subjecting the planet to tremendous risk and operating on world credit subject to world approval."

What Can We Learn From People Who Are Different From Us To Avoid Future 'Walls Of Faces'?

A Modest Proposal - The Pentagon Should Follow Boeing's Lead

 

"THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT By Mark Thompson

"Embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders."

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"Boeing, the Pentagon’s #4 contractor, was once an icon of American ingenuity and industrial prowess. But it has never recovered from the tailspin following its 1997 merger with bottom-line-obsessed McDonnell Douglas. Its new Air Force Ones and aerial tankers have hit heavy turbulence. Two of its 737 MAX airliners crashed. A fuselage panel blew off one of its jets. Safety concerns about its Starliner space capsule have left two astronauts stranded in space. Its biggest union remains on strike.

Last week, Boeing decided to pull its head out of its afterburner. The decision came as the company confirmed it had lost $2 billion on defense work over the prior three months. “I think that we're better off doing less, and doing it better, than doing more and not doing it well,” brand-new Boeing boss Kelly Ortberg said October 23. To right its flailing business, Boeing plans to shed pieces of the company, likely including some of its space programs.

The U.S. and its Department of Defense should take a lesson from Ortberg. After all, embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders.

The U.S. was the global colossus following World War II. While it accounted for 40% of the world’s economic output in 1960, that share has fallen to 26% today. Yet Washington still sees itself as the world cop, spending close to $1 trillion annually on its military, more than the next 10 countries combined. It has more than 170,000 troops based in 178 countries around the world and sold a record $238 billion in weapons to many of them last year.

The U.S. national-security state and U.S. national-security think tanks churn out reports every year warning that the Pentagon is underfunded and that defeat is just around the corner. They all flow from official documents from the White House (PDF) and Pentagon that insist the U.S. must be ready to defend pretty much anything everywhere at any time.

The United States is the only country in the world that designs its military to be able to depart one hemisphere, cross broad expanses of ocean and air space, and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival in another hemisphere,” the Congressional Research Service said in an Oct. 2 assessment (PDF) exploring the size and cost of the U.S. military. “That U.S. policymakers for the past several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia does not necessarily mean this goal was a correct one for the United States to pursue, or that it would be a correct one for the United States to pursue in the future.”

Boeing’s decision to trim its flaps is rooted in humility that can mature into wisdom. The U.S. should follow suit."

POGO A MODEST PROPOSAL The Pentagon should follow Boeing’s lead

Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough for the Pentagon?

 

"FORBES" By William Hartung

"As each generation of weapons purchased by the Pentagon becomes more expensive and more complex, the U.S. armed forces shrink accordingly.  We need to force Washington to catch up with reality, and soon, or we will all pay a horrific price in blood and treasure."

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"Writing at Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of my organization, the Quincy Institute, my colleague Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center summarizes the dangers of the “Defense Death Spiral,” a phenomenon first warned of by a courageous group of defense reformers during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.

The thesis is fairly simple – as each generation of weapons purchased by the Pentagon becomes more expensive and more complex, the U.S. armed forces shrink accordingly. As Grazier points out, the U.S. armed forces have half as many combat aircraft as they did in the mid-1970s, and fewer than half as many combat ships – all on a budget that is 60% higher than it was back then, adjusted for inflation. And contrary to the official story, it’s not clear that the quality of the new generation of weaponry has made up for the reduction in quantity, as evidenced by the subpar performances of major systems like the Littoral Combat Ship and the F-35.

The Pentagon’s attempt to supply weapons to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza while acquiring equipment relevant to a possible conflict with China has laid bare the flaws of the Pentagon’s current system of developing and purchasing new weapons.

For years basic items like artillery shells have been purchased in reduced quantities in favor of spending on more expensive – and more lucrative – big ticket items. But ramping up production, or replacing munitions expended during the wars in Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, is extremely difficult to do in short order because U.S. weapons are more costly and more complex than those produced by U.S. adversaries like Russia. Even the missile wars against the Houthi rebels in Yemen put the U.S. military-industrial complex at a disadvantage, as the U.S. shoots down cheap Houthi missiles with expensive U.S. interceptors.

There are two potential solutions to the death spiral. First, build simpler weapons that are good enough for the tasks at hand, but are also cheaper, more reliable, and easier to maintain and produce. This would run contrary to decades of Pentagon practice, where more technological “sophistication” is always viewed as a positive. It should be noted that the Pentagon’s “Replicator Initiative,” which is aimed at producing large numbers of cheap, capable systems in short order, is an attempt to address the death spiral issue, but the jury is out on whether this approach will succeed. And so far these new weapons – like swarms of mini-drones – are to be produced in addition to costly current generation systems, which is good news for arms makers but terrible news for taxpayers at a time when interest on the debt is now higher than the entire, enormous, Pentagon budget. We need to spend our money more wisely across the board, and the Pentagon is a good place to start.

The second way to address the death spiral is to rein in America’s runaway military strategy, which seeks the ability to fight and win wars virtually anywhere on earth while maintaining a huge global military footprint, as well as to arm multiple allies in shooting wars. We need a more hardheaded, restrained approach to when it is in the U.S. interest to use force, or to send weapons into battle zones. For example, arming Ukraine to defend itself against a Russian invasion makes sense, but since neither side is going to win total victory on the battlefield it is also urgently important to explore diplomatic options to end the conflict. In the Middle East, on the other hand, enabling Israel’s crimes in Gaza and its escalation to Lebanon and Iran is in no one’s interest, yet U.S. weapons keep flowing uninterrupted. That has to change.

There is a reckoning on the horizon regarding the goals and costs of the U.S. military apparatus. Unfortunately, the leaders of both parties remained mired in the past, like the proverbial generals fighting the last war. But this is no longer a theoretical debate. The lives and safety of millions of people here and around the world are at stake. We need to force Washington to catch up with reality, and soon, or we will all pay a horrific price in blood and treasure."

"FORBES"- Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough for the Pentagon?

ABOUT WILLIAM HARTUNG

I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.  I am the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the N

"THE DEBT BOMB" More Spending on Interest Than On National Defense

 

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" THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT - THE BUNKER" By Mark Thompson

"Spending like a drunken sailor threatens national security. For the first time in U.S. history: the nation spent more money buying nothing ($950 billion in interest) than it did on its military ($826 billion)."

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"There it was October 8, buried discreetly on page 5 (PDF) of yet another eye-glazer from the Congressional Budget Office. In 2023, the nation spent $776 billion on its military — which buys something — and $710 billion in net interest on the public debt — which buys nothing. But in fiscal 2024, which ended September 30, those numbers flipped.

The Bunker has been decrying waste, fraud, and abuse in the U.S. military for nearly a half-century. But everyone’s three favorite whipping boys when it comes to Pentagon spending pale alongside the nearly trillion dollars we spent on interest last year. That’s money we paid to borrowers, so we didn’t have to make the tough decisions required to live within our means.

We have simply opted to kick this annual binge-spending, now approaching $36 trillion, down a generation or two so our kids and grandkids can foot the bill. When The Bunker arrived in D.C. to cover the Pentagon in 1979, the national debt was $805 billion. That’s just over 2% of what it is today. OK, Boomers. Good job! According to CBO, interest paid on the national debt grew by a stunning 34% ($240 billion) from 2023 to 2024 (PDF). Those are numbers that would make an F-35 blush.

Congress approves all government spending, but more than half of the annual budget goes to mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare locked (for now) into law. The rest — so-called discretionary spending, appropriated annually — is basically split between the Pentagon and everything else the federal government does (education, transportation, justice, the environment, etc.). But as that mandatory spending — and interest on the national debt — grows, there’s less left over for the Pentagon and all that other stuff. Both categories need deep cuts to avert financial disaster.

Neither presidential candidate is riding to the rescue. Vice President Harris’s economic proposals could add as much as $8 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to an October 7 assessment by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Former President Trump’s fiscal blueprints, the group projected, could add $15 trillion.

Such profligacy eventually will do more harm to U.S. national security than any foreign foe ever could." 

POGO - The Bunker: Debt Bomb

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.

The Real Versus Perceived Power Of The U.S. Presidency

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: 

Many of us in the military combat veteran community, who have also worked for years with the federal government, are concerned about the public view of the Office of the President. Please note George Friedman bringing reality to our expectations: 

Ken Larson

"STRATFOR GEOPOLITICAL WEEKLY" By George Friedman

"The American presidency is designed to disappoint. 

What the winner actually can deliver depends upon what other institutions, nations and reality will allow him or her.

Each candidate must promise things that are beyond their power to deliver. No candidate could expect to be elected by emphasizing how little power the office actually has and how voters should therefore expect little from him. 

So candidates promise great, transformative programs.  Though the gap between promises and realities destroys immodest candidates, from the founding fathers' point of view, it protects the republic. They distrusted government in general and the office of the president in particular.

Congress, the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve Board all circumscribe the president's power over domestic life. This and the authority of the states greatly limit the president's power, just as the country's founders intended. To achieve anything substantial, the president must create a coalition of political interests to shape decision-making in other branches of the government. Yet at the same time — and this is the main paradox of American political culture — the presidency is seen as a decisive institution and the person holding that office is seen as being of overriding importance.

The president has somewhat more authority in foreign policy, but only marginally so. He is trapped by public opinion, congressional intrusion, and above all, by the realities of geopolitics. Thus, while during his 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush argued vehemently against nation-building, once in office, he did just that (with precisely the consequences he had warned of on the campaign trail). And regardless of how he modeled his foreign policy during his first campaign, the 9/11 attacks defined his presidency. 

Similarly, Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to redefine America's relationship with both Europe and the Islamic world. Neither happened. It has been widely and properly noted how little Obama's foreign policy in action differed from George W. Bush's. It was not that Obama didn't intend to have a different foreign policy, but simply that what the president wants and what actually happens are very different things.

The power often ascribed to the U.S. presidency is overblown. But even so, people — including leaders — all over the world still take that power very seriously. They want to believe that someone is in control of what is happening. The thought that no one can control something as vast and complex as a country or the world is a frightening thought. Conspiracy theories offer this comfort, too, since they assume that while evil may govern the world, at least the world is governed. There is, of course, an alternative viewpoint, namely that while no one actually is in charge, the world is still predictable as long as you understand the impersonal forces guiding it. This is an uncomfortable and unacceptable notion to those who would make a difference in the world. For such people, the presidential race — like political disputes the world over — is of great significance.

Ultimately, the president does not have the power to transform U.S. foreign policy. Instead, American interests, the structure of the world and the limits of power determine foreign policy.

In the broadest sense, current U.S. foreign policy has been in place for about a century. During that period, the United States has sought to balance and rebalance the international system to contain potential threats in the Eastern Hemisphere, which has been torn by wars. The Western Hemisphere in general, and North America in particular, has not. No president could afford to risk allowing conflict to come to North America.

At one level, presidents do count: The strategy they pursue keeping the Western Hemisphere conflict-free matters. During World War I, the United States intervened after the Germans began to threaten Atlantic sea-lanes and just weeks after the fall of the czar. At this point in the war, the European system seemed about to become unbalanced, with the Germans coming to dominate it. In World War II, the United States followed a similar strategy, allowing the system in both Europe and Asia to become unbalanced before intervening. This was called isolationism, but that is a simplistic description of the strategy of relying on the balance of power to correct itself and only intervening as a last resort.

During the Cold War, the United States adopted the reverse strategy of actively maintaining the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere via a process of continual intervention. It should be remembered that American deaths in the Cold War were just under 100,000 (including Vietnam, Korea and lesser conflicts) versus about 116,000 U.S. deaths in World War I, showing that far from being cold, the Cold War was a violent struggle. 

The decision to maintain active balancing was a response to a perceived policy failure in World War II. The argument was that prior intervention would have prevented the collapse of the European balance, perhaps blocked Japanese adventurism, and ultimately resulted in fewer deaths than the 400,000 the United States suffered in that conflict. A consensus emerged from World War II that an "internationalist" stance of active balancing was superior to allowing nature to take its course in the hope that the system would balance itself. The Cold War was fought on this strategy.

Between 1948 and the Vietnam War, the consensus held. During the Vietnam era, however, a viewpoint emerged in the Democratic Party that the strategy of active balancing actually destabilized the Eastern Hemisphere, causing unnecessary conflict and thereby alienating other countries. This viewpoint maintained that active balancing increased the likelihood of conflict, caused anti-American coalitions to form, and most important, overstated the risk of an unbalanced system and the consequences of imbalance. Vietnam was held up as an example of excessive balancing.

The counterargument was that while active balancing might generate some conflicts, World War I and World War II showed the consequences of allowing the balance of power to take its course. This viewpoint maintained that failing to engage in active and even violent balancing with the Soviet Union would increase the possibility of conflict on the worst terms possible for the United States. Thus, even in the case of Vietnam, active balancing prevented worse outcomes. The argument between those who want the international system to balance itself and the argument of those who want the United States to actively manage the balance has raged ever since George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon in 1972.

If we carefully examine Obama's statements during the 2008 campaign and his efforts once in office, we see that he tried to move U.S. foreign policy away from active balancing in favor of allowing regional balances of power to maintain themselves. He did not move suddenly into this policy, as many of his supporters expected he would. Instead, he eased into it, simultaneously increasing U.S. efforts in Afghanistan while disengaging in other areas to the extent that the U.S. political system and global processes would allow.

Obama's efforts to transition away from active balancing of the system were seen in Europe, where he has made little attempt to stabilize the economic situation, and in the Far East, where apart from limited military repositioning there have been few changes. Syria also highlights his movement toward the strategy of relying on regional balances. The survival of Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime would unbalance the region, creating a significant Iranian sphere of influence. Obama's strategy was not to intervene beyond providing limited covert support to the opposition, but rather to allow the regional balance to deal with the problem. Obama expected the Saudis and Turks to block the Iranians by undermining al Assad, not because the United States asks them to do so but because it is in their interest to do so.

Obama's perspective drew on that of the critics of the Cold War strategy of active balancing, who maintained that without a major Eurasian power threatening hemispheric hegemony, U.S. intervention is more likely to generate anti-American coalitions and precisely the kind of threat the United States feared when it decided to actively balance. In other words, Obama does not believe that the lessons learned from World War I and World War II apply to the current global system, and that as in Syria, the global power should leave managing the regional balance to local powers.

As I have argued from the outset, the American presidency is institutionally weak despite its enormous prestige. It is limited constitutionally, politically and ultimately by the actions of others. Had Japan not attacked the United States, it is unclear that Franklin Roosevelt would have had the freedom to do what he did. Had al Qaeda not attacked on 9/11, I suspect that George W. Bush's presidency would have been dramatically different.

The world shapes U.S. foreign policy. The more active the world, the fewer choices presidents have and the smaller those choices are. Obama sought to create a space where the United States could disengage from active balancing. Doing so fell within his constitutional powers, and was politically possible, too. But whether the international system allowed him to continue along this path should he be re-elected was open to question. Jimmy Carter had a similar vision, but the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan wrecked it. George W. Bush saw his opposition to nation-building wrecked by 9/11 and had his presidency crushed under the weight of the main thing he wanted to avoid.

Presidents make history, but not on their own terms. They are constrained and harried on all sides by reality. In selecting a president, it is important to remember that candidates will say what they need to say to be elected, but even when they say what they mean, they will not necessarily be able to pursue their goals. The choice to do so simply isn't up to them.

There are two fairly clear foreign policy outlooks in this election. The degree to which the winner matters, however, is unclear, though knowing the inclinations of presidential candidates regardless of their ability to pursue them has some value.

In the end, though, the U.S. presidency was designed to limit the president's ability to rule. He or She can at most guide, and frequently cannot even do that. Putting the presidency in perspective allows us to keep our debates in perspective as well."

George Friedman on The Presidency

George Friedman is a geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs. He is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, an online publication that analyzes and forecasts the course of global events. Prior to founding Geopolitical Futures, Friedman was chairman of Stratfor, the private intelligence publishing and consulting firm he founded in 1996.

Time for Congress to Challenge Years of Failed Pentagon Audits

 

"THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT"

By Greg Williams

"DOD Financial Management has remained on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk list for 28 years. This cannot continue. At POGO, we’ve long argued that to pit fiscal responsibility against national security is to offer a false choice."

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"Testimony of Greg Williams, Director of the Center for Defense Information
Project On Government Oversight
for the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability
Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce
On “Tracking Progress: 
Examining the Department of Defense’s Financial Management Practices”

Thank you Chairman Sessions, Ranking Member Mfume, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, for inviting POGO to offer this written testimony on the importance of achieving clean financial audits of all Department of Defense components.

My name is Greg Williams, and I am the Director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). We are an independent, nonpartisan watchdog group focused on promoting a more accountable, transparent, and effective federal government that also respects and safeguards constitutional principles. 

Our organization has a long history of advocating for more transparent and accountable spending from the Pentagon. When we were founded in 1981, we were the Project on Military Procurement. We worked with Defense Department whistleblowers to expose some of the shocking wastefulness of past Pentagon budgets.¹

In the more than 40 years since, POGO has continued our work bringing accountability, transparency, and reason to Pentagon spending. We’ve partnered with members of Congress and administrations from both parties on reforms to improve how the Defense Department budget is determined, apportioned, and executed. And we’ve long recognized how Congress — as appropriator of the Pentagon budget and provider of critical oversight — plays a crucial role in enacting rational defense policy. 

One important point of consensus between Democrats and Republicans and between Congress and the Pentagon is that the Department of Defense must be able to track its expenditures and assets in such a way that its effectiveness and efficiency can be measured by both the executive and legislative branches. This kind of quantitative, objective information is the necessary foundation for any serious debate on policy. Announcing the first Pentagon-wide audit in 2017, then-Comptroller of the Defense Department David L. Norquist got it right when he said, “It is important that the Congress and the American people have confidence in DoD’s management of every taxpayer dollar.”²  

At the time of that announcement, Norquist also committed to annual Pentagon audits starting in 2018, to be issued on November 15 of each year, which would allow the public to see where their Defense Department funding actually goes. Unfortunately, the Pentagon has never been able to make good on this commitment. 

In FY 2023, it failed its sixth audit in a row.³ When asked to account for their share of nearly $4 trillion in assets, 18 of 29 Pentagon components could not do so.⁴ Indeed, the problem has gotten marginally worse instead of better, with 62.1% of Pentagon components receiving a disclaimer of opinion on their FY 2023 audits (issued “when auditors were unable to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide an opinion on the financial statements”) versus 61.5% in FY 2022.⁵ The problem is longstanding: DOD Financial Management has remained on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk list for 28 years.⁶

This cannot continue. At POGO, we’ve long argued that to pit fiscal responsibility against national security is to offer a false choice. We can have a more effective military at a lower cost, but to do so will require an intentional effort from both the Pentagon and Congress. A closer look at a few concerning Pentagon programs offers a clear example of where we’re going wrong and highlights the pressing need for acquisition reform.

• The Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program: This $141 billion program, designed to replace our current ICBMs, has seen costs soar over 81% through its program cycle. Yet even absent reliable financial data, Congress’s support for this program seems unwavering.⁷
• The Constellation frigate program: This $22 billion program is running three years behind schedule, a delay the Government Accountability Office (GAO) attributes at least in part to “the Navy’s decision to begin construction before the design was complete.”⁸ As my colleague Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette recently testified, “Agreeing to a contract for a critical program like Constellation without first having a design for that program seems like, at best, acquisition and procurement malpractice.”⁹
• The F-35 Lightning II fighter program: At an investment of nearly $2 trillion, the F-35 program has been so plagued by cost overruns, delays, and performance problems that there is not space to list them all here.¹⁰ At the same time, the Department of Defense inspector general identified the Joint Strike Fighter Program (the F-35) as one of 10 “weaknesses” in the FY 2022 audit:

The [Joint Strike Fighter, or] JSF Program Office was unable to verify the completeness and value of the JSF Program assets, and the assets were not in an accountable property system of record. Not only were the auditors unable to perform the necessary procedures to conclude on the JSF property balances, but they also could not quantify the extent of the misstatement.¹¹

If the Pentagon can’t or won’t track new, high-profile programs like the F-35, what hope is there for older, less scrutinized programs? 

In this written testimony, I propose reforms that will increase accountability and transparency in Pentagon acquisition and procurement. POGO has advocated for these reforms before, most recently before the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, and we see them as a first step toward more effective defense spending.¹²  We believe that each of these reforms has merit, and taken together they would constitute significant progress toward our goal of a strong, effective military at a significantly lower cost. 

We encourage Congress and the Biden administration to take the following steps:

 Recommendations:

• Enact legislation that requires a successful Defense Department audit and imposes penalties for failure to do so. An audit is not the end-all-be-all in terms of fiscal responsibility and budgetary best practice, but it is a necessary element of a broader reform effort. The fact that the Pentagon has failed audits for successive years is emblematic of deeper, systemic financial pain points. All DOD components finally passing audits could be the catalyst that gets the Department back on solid and sustainable financial footing while spotlighting key acquisition and procurement problems.
• Congress should more frequently and more assertively conduct oversight of Pentagon spending and programming, paying particular attention to which Pentagon components have clean audits. While acquisition and procurement problems plague the Pentagon itself, Congress has a vital role to play in monitoring how defense spending and policy are being implemented on the ground. In our view, Congress has not fulfilled this role sufficiently over the years. It is time to begin more regularly asking hard questions and making hard choices through congressional oversight activities, especially for those DOD components without clean audits.
• Congress should use the “power of the purse” to operationalize necessary changes. In addition to conducting rigorous, real-time oversight, Congress has a potent tool at its disposal: funding. This tool should be used more effectively and more often to compel cooperation and change behavior when it comes to the Pentagon’s acquisition and procurement decision-making and execution, especially when major acquisitions and platforms fail to meet deadlines, exceed cost parameters, and generally over-promise and under-deliver.

It’s clear that the Defense Department is not yet equipped to pass an audit on its own — it’s time for Congress to step in and force the issue. The good news is that today, both the House and the Senate are considering bipartisan bills that would require a clean audit from the Pentagon.¹³

I want to thank you for inviting my testimony for this hearing, and for committing yourselves to bringing more accountability and transparency to Pentagon spending. The reforms suggested above are sensible, achievable steps that Congress can take to hold the Defense Department accountable and ensure that the tax dollars we dedicate to national security are actually working to keep us safe."

 PGOG - Time To Challenge Years of Failed Pentagon Audits