During my remaining weeks in office, I played both sides of the street. Internally, I organized the comprehensive review with a hoped-for completion by the end of summer. We structured the review to address four broad areas of possible reductions: more “efficiencies,” a combination of further reductions in overhead costs but also cutting programs that were not critical to the future; reducing or cutting capabilities for highly specialized but lower-priority purposes where generic capabilities could be made to work, and also cutting specialized missions such as counternarcotics and building security capacity in developing countries; changes in the size and composition of our forces, which would be the most difficult internally—could we accept reductions in forces that would make fighting two simultaneous conflicts tougher? Should we reduce our ground forces?; and last, a bundle of possible changes in military compensation and benefits. While I told the department’s senior leadership that I was not comfortable with a defense budget that would grow at only the rate of inflation for ten years, I went on to ask, “With every other agency of government on the chopping block, can we credibly argue that a $400 billion cut (or 7 percent) from the over $6 trillion presently planned for defense over the next decade is catastrophic and not doable?” I began including Panetta in meetings on these issues in early June, since he would lead the effort as of July 1. Happily, Leon and I saw eye to eye on the comprehensive review.
While fulfilling my responsibilities to the president inside the Pentagon, I used my last public speeches to warn Americans about the consequences of significant reductions in defense capabilities. In a commencement speech at Notre Dame on May 22, I said that we must not diminish our ability or our determination to deal with the threats and challenges on the horizon because ultimately they must be confronted. “If history—and religion—teach us anything,” I warned, “it is that there will always be evil in the world, people bent on aggression, oppression, satisfying their greed for wealth and power and territory, or determined to impose an ideology based on the subjugation of others and the denial of liberty to men and women.” I noted my strong support of “soft” power, of diplomacy and development, but reminded the audience that “the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators, and terrorists in the twenty-first century, as in the twentieth, is hard power—the size, strength, and global reach of the United States military.”
Two days later I spoke at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank in Washington, where various scholars had been critical of the earlier program cuts I had made. Ironically, I was at AEI to warn against further cuts to defense. I told the audience I had spent the last two years trying to prepare our defense institutions for the inevitable decrease of the defense budget. When looking at our modernization programs, I said, “the proverbial ‘low-hanging fruit’—those weapons and other programs considered most questionable—have not only been plucked, they have been stomped on and crushed.” What remained was needed capabilities. Those programs, I warned, should be protected “unless our country’s political leadership envisions a dramatically diminished global security role for the United States.” I urged that across-the-board cuts—“the simplest and most politically expedient approach both inside the Pentagon and outside of it”—be avoided and that future spending decisions be based on hard choices focused on priorities, strategy, and risks. The worst outcome would be to cut the budget deeply while leaving the existing force structure in place, an approach I said would lead to the kind of “hollowed-out” military of the late 1970s: ill trained, ill equipped, and ill prepared. The Pentagon had to be honest with the president, Congress, and the American people that a smaller military would be able to go fewer places and do fewer things. “To shirk this discussion of risks and consequences—and the hard decisions that must follow,” I asserted, “I would regard as managerial cowardice.”
The comprehensive review would be completed under Panetta and Dempsey’s leadership and provide a road map for further cuts. It would prove critically important because the Budget Control Act passed by Congress and signed by the president in August 2011 would reduce defense spending by $485 billion over the ensuing ten years and, through a “sequestration process,” expose the military to an additional potential cut of nearly $600 billion. Math, not strategy, had prevailed after all.
As I suggested earlier, the global security environment is becoming more complex, more turbulent, and in some instances, more dangerous—and the military challenges more diverse. The military capabilities of our longtime allies are shrinking fast, and those of potential adversaries are growing. Yet our security needs and responsibilities remain global. Earlier significant cuts in defense spending following major conflicts, including after the Cold War, were made because the world scene had changed significantly for the better, at least in the short term. But in 2011, neither the state of the world nor the state of our military justified significantly less spending on defense.
The problem with the defense budget, as I saw it, is not its size but how it gets spent. It’s not that we have too many planes, warships, submarines, tanks, and troops; rather, we load up every possible piece of equipment with every possible technology, and then they are so expensive, we can buy only a small number. Defense is not disciplined about eliminating programs that are in trouble, overdue, and over budget. The Pentagon spends far too much money on goods and services that make only a tangential (if any) contribution to military capabilities—overhead, or “tail.” Congress requires the military services to keep excess bases and facilities and to buy equipment that is no longer needed or is obsolete. And the personnel costs of the all-volunteer force are skyrocketing: health care costs alone have risen in a decade from about $12 billion to nearly $60 billion.
My effort between 2009 and 2011 to cut or cap weak, failing, or unnecessary programs and to find “efficiencies” was all about spending the defense budget more wisely, to force more dollars into actual military capabilities. If the budget is slashed and the problems I just described are not addressed, disaster and tragedy lie ahead. And when the next war comes, as it surely will, our men and women in uniform will pay the price for managerial cowardice, political parochialism, and shortsightedness.
MY LAST FIGHTS: ENDING TWO WARS
I had lost the argument on Libya. I had lost on the budget. I had had a tough but—I thought—successful run for four years. The last six months were turning out very differently.
As 2011 began, we were wrestling with continuing internal Iraqi disagreement on formation of a government, an increase in attacks on our embassy and other targets by powerful Iranian-provided improvised rocket-assisted munitions (IRAMs), and planning for the post-2011 U.S. presence in Iraq.
The IRAMs were not going to threaten the security gains that had been made, but they had the potential to cause a lot of American casualties, and they reflected increased targeting by Iranian-supported extremists of our troops and diplomats. The Iraqis were making little effort to stop the attacks. In January, I asked General Austin, our commander in Iraq since the preceding September, in a videoconference if he had the authority to go out and kill those firing the IRAMs. He said he was trying to get the Iraqis to do it but would use our troops if he had to. I responded, “If you get the opportunity to kill them, do it.” I asked for a menu of possible actions we could take against the Iranians and their minions in Iraq. I was cautious about going to war with Iran over its nuclear program, but I wouldn’t stand for Iranians killing our troops in Iraq.