Rumsfeld's fears about the defense budget are unfounded
I'm looking forward to the rest of Ben's interview with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. One bit from the excerpt below did jump out at me - the assertion that trimming America's defense budget is going to result in some kind of calamity that the U.S. will "pay for" down the road:
The value of peace, and peace through strength, and deterrence has to be understood. Weakness is provocative. And to the extent you behave in a way that encourages people to take actions against you, youâ??ve made a terrible mistake as a country. We have to avoid that this time. I think people in our country generally understand that.
In the past decade, the U.S. has only been attacked directly by al-Qaeda. As we all know, al-Qaeda is not capable of being deterred. To the extent that we are crafting a military to deter potential nation state adversaries from attacking us or seriously jeopardizing vital American security interests it beggars belief that such a thing could not be accomplished despite cuts to the defense budget. That said, it would certainly be foolish to make defense cuts of any size while simultaneously insisting that the U.S. military perform all of the same global duties with which it is currently tasked. That is a recipe for disaster and one which we should rightly avoid.
I do agree that the U.S. should not behave in a way that "encourages people to take actions against you," but in that column I would probably place "invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries" ahead of making modest reductions to the largest defense budget in the world.
