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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Command Post: How Will Budget Cuts Affect National Security? [Watch (HLS stream): Command Post: How Will Budget Cuts Affect National Security?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/KbaWBqJ8.m3u8) (7:43)  _Published 2011-07-21. A discussion between TIME and the Center for a New American Security focuses on budget cuts and their possible impact on national security for the U.S._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:15 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Which Fortune 100 CEO has the biggest security budget?](/video/KBrX2op2/) ### Which Fortune 100 CEO has the biggest security budget? [Could Budget Cuts Cripple the Department of Defense?](/video/9ueoVGlr/) ### Could Budget Cuts Cripple the Department of Defense? [Should the Pentagon be Afraid of Budget Cuts?](/video/pgIo19R2/) ### Should the Pentagon be Afraid of Budget Cuts? --- ## Transcript This is Command Post, a series of discussions about military matters from Time and the Center for New American Security. General Barno, the President has made clear to his national security team that over the coming 12 years, he wants another $ 400 billion. Taken out of the nation's security spending. How much of this can be done without harming the National Security? How tough of a mission is this going to be? Well it certainly isn't going to be easy. That's a sizeable amount of money even in the gigantic Defense Department budget. That, that's real money. What's a bit disturbing about the way that was conveyed, to the Defense Department is that it didn't come with any new strategy attached to it. And so, the Defense Department and the Senate is being asked to make cut- backs, tradeoffs. Changes in capabilities without really knowing what the President and what the United States is going to aim for as far as it's global security policy in, in the same 13 year period. So, it, it's a bit of putting the cart before the horse. I know the Defense Department, this Summer, is working very hard to craft what type of adjustments and stategy might need to be implemented in order to put in place the $ 400 billion crutch, but that's not there yet so... In my judgement the United States is gonna continue to have the overarching role around the world that it's had over the last 10, 15, 20 years and beyond. I think we, we have to find ways to do that, spending less on defense, and I think that's eminently doable. And I also think that there's gotta be some degree of appetite suppression out there with presidents and administrations who want to get involved in every conflict that comes along. What's interesting, or what was interesting to me about the notion was, number one, we usually do this in five or ten year chunks. This was done in 12. We usually talk about the National Security Budget account or Pentagon spending. They didn't do that. They called it security spending. They're, all these elastic bands put on it that made it sort of squishy, and as you point out, there wasn't really a change in the National Security strategy. Do you folks get an idea that what they're going to do is simplky ask they military, hey guys come back with different missions that we can accomodate within this rubber band. Yeah. And that's some of what. And is that the Pentagon's job? That's some of what's happening now. Is that the services have been asked the, the various agencies inside the Pentagon have been asked. Go back and, and. For this much of a cut, tell me what capability you would recommend giving up. And, and so, the, the strategy behind these decisions is coming from the bottom up, from inside the organization. Rather than from a top- down look at American foreign policy. And our interests, the threats to those interests, our values. And, and what missions we want the National Security Agencies to be able to accomplish for us. So, some of those decisions I think, and hope, are gonna be packaged in such a way that the Secretary of Defense, the President, the National Security Council are, are going to look at various capability packages and say. We still need this. We still need this. I'm willing to accept risk here, but the fact is, over the past ten years of dramatically increased defense spending we haven't purchased an awful lot of capability which has been aging. What we have not purchased a, a new bomber in the last decade. We have not filled the gap in our ship building. And, and the number of ships is actually continuing to decline rather then increasing even as we got China becoming a much more serious presence in the Western Pacific. The air force has Major re- investments to make after the defense procurement holiday of the 1990s during the Clinton defense draw- down at the end of the Cold War. And, and, we didn't, during this past decade, make good on, on those shortcomings either. Almost all of the expenditures went into the ground force. So there were some real capability gaps already in, in the current Defence Program and we're being asked to make big cuts in that without saying what capabilities it is we're, we're willing to give up, what risks we're willing to take. But you guys are experts and maybe you can just answer me this pretty simple question. Why are we spending more now? Eliminating our wars on average then we did during the Cold War. I can remember sitting around with Barry Goldwater and John Towers saying my god if that Soviet Union weren't there our defense budget would be half as much. Yet the Soviet Union is now gone and our defense budget is higher then it was during the cold war. Is there a simple answer for that? Is the world just more complicated, personnel costs gone through the roof, what is it? I am not sure that those number are exactly right. In the terms of the Cold War, but clearly the Defense Department budget is very large. but, you can't figure out whether we're spending the right amount of money or not until there is a strategy of knowing what we want to accomplish in the world. You have to have that conversation before you can decide whether you are spending the right amount, too much, or too little. The fact is the U. S. is a global power, it has global interest it wants to protect. And that will require the United States to be engaged in the world, to be able to project power and to be able to protect those interests wherever they occur in the world. However, how many of those you do at one time, how many missions you're prepared for, what types of missions, those are all fundamental questions of strategy. Um; that really haven't been answered quite clearly yet. That's what is going to be, I think, an important part of these discussions in the next couple of years. What types of scenario's does the Defense Department and the Administration, more broadly, wanna prepare for? Do you wanna be prepared for, what had been the case, two simultaneous major regional wars? If you wanna be able to do that the costs are gonna be pretty high, because of all the capabilities that John mentions that, before that you need to be able to have. If you're willing to accept some amount of risk there, say you're only prepare for one or you're only prepared for a smaller number of. Of peacekeeping, and perhaps counter- terrorism missions. Then you maybe accepting a lot of risk if something big blows up. But you'll be able to have much more sustained, lower defense budgets. So the strat- what the real question should be about the strategy, and what's in the nation's interest to pursue. And then you can have an assessment of whether we've got the numbers right or wrong. But in the abstract of a strategic concept, it's really hard to know whether spending is at the right level or the wrong level. And I think, too, you know, the Looking back over the Cold War. We at, at times during the Cold War, we were spending in excess of 10 % of our gross domestic product on the military. Today, that number, if you strip out Afghanistan and Iraq, is three and a half percent. So in relative terms to the size of our economy, the size of our country, the size of our population, the percent that's being devoted to defense is probably a whole lot smaller that most Americans actually think it is. But, but with that we're, we're going to have to look at how we ring every last bit of effectiveness out of those dollars. Those are, those are precious commodities of the world we live in today. The Defense Department has got a terribly bad track record of being able to do reductions and preserve it's capabilities while reducing it's top line. If it was a corporate entity, the way defense is traditionally taken it's cuts is it's kept up all the corporate headquarters and close the factories and sent home the workers and shut down production. If any business goes bankrupt when it does that. The Defense Department has operated that way through several series of cutbacks after Vietnam, after the Cold War. Now the challenge is to maximize, those factories, and those production lines, we do sure corporate headquarters use those business efficiencies in every other part of the United States has put in place in the private sector over the last 15 years. And ring as much defense as you can out of those precious hours. 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