Fool Me Twice

by Aaron Klein

  Of immediate concern is the stated objective of transforming our armed forces to stress conflict resolution and diplomacy. For most Americans, the entire purpose of military spending is to maintain the capability of using force when such action becomes necessary. The resolution of conflict by non-military means—diplomacy, economic aid, technical assistance—is the proper focus of other government (and nongovernment) agencies. In other words, the very premise of the report—minimizing defense capacity and redirection of resources—is deeply flawed and dangerous.

  The report sets the tone of its lofty agenda by demanding immediate reductions in the military’s already heavily slashed budget. But there is one interesting exception requiring massive increases in funding—any spending that funds “alternative energy” or that focuses Defense Department resources on combating “climate change as a security threat.” The report authors recommend investing “the lion’s share” of the few allotted increases in addressing the “threat” of so-called climate change.

  Half of all savings from military cuts, the report recommends, should be used for investing in “job creation,” while the other half is to be allocated to deficit reduction. The report does not spell out exactly how Obama should “invest” this money in “job creation.” Perhaps this is an allusion to a future massive “stimulus” or to various other second-term progressive economic machinations and spread-the-wealth schemes to be exposed in our coming chapters.

  The report takes issue with the use of forces on the ground in various countries to secure or influence the longer-term strategic position of other nations. And how to minimize that influence? For starters, by scaling back all U.S. ground forces by 20 percent; reducing the Navy’s surface fleet by 20 percent (including two carriers and carrier combat air wings) and reducing the Air Force by two combat air wings—while cutting standing peacetime overseas deployments (Europe, East Asia) by up to 50,000 troops at a time.

  The Unified authors are just getting warmed up. Another recommendation, which the report claims will save $21 billion, is to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 292 deployed nuclear weapons and the complete elimination of the Trident II nuclear missile—a process President Obama already initiated in April 2010 when he signed a deal with Russia reducing stocks of weapons-grade plutonium. The accord was signed at a nuclear summit in Washington arranged by Obama, at which leaders of forty-seven nations committed to reducing the world’s nuclear stockpiles even as Iran drives ever closer toward nuclear weaponization, a development likely to spark a multi-country Mideast nuclear arms race.4 One week earlier, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and Obama signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, committing both countries to reducing their deployed nuclear arsenals.

  Obama had broadly proclaimed his disarmament intentions during a 2007 campaign speech: “Here’s what I’ll say as president: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.”5 By 2010, as president, he was arguing: “We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union—a country that doesn’t exist.”6 Unfortunately, Obama’s declaration came just as Russia was signing a major arms deal with Syria and began to revive its Cold War–era naval bases in the Middle East, including in the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia on the Mediterranean. Moscow had also maintained bases in Damascus during the Cold War, but post–Soviet Russia’s military posture in the region weakened for a time. As of this writing, Moscow had resumed giving diplomatic cover, along with its military assistance, to the murderous Assad regime.

  And just as Iran, North Korea, and other aggressor countries (e.g., Venezuela) aim to develop or enhance intercontinental missile capabilities, the IPS report next recommends the U.S. cease all further development of missile defenses. Yes, you read that correctly. The report goes through a list of current missile defense programs, including Ground-based Midcourse Defense, Airborne Laser, Kinetic Energy Interceptors, and a number of others, pushing for all programs to be cut. “It is unwise to fund more advanced systems for missile defense while current ones have yet to be proven effective against their targeted threats,” complains the report. In other words, it is desirable for Obama to invest billions and billions in taxpayer funds on questionable solar and other “green energy” projects, even as many of those projects prove impracticable or go bankrupt, but investment in “unproven” national defense systems is to be slashed with abandon.

  The military’s vital Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation program is to be cut by $10 billion across the board. After all, why should the armed forces research, develop, test, or evaluate weapons or programs when the money can be better reinvested in wind turbines and “peacekeeping” forces? (We’re not being sarcastic here—keep reading.)

  Next on the chopping block: the complete cancelation of the second SSN-744 Virginia Class submarine. While the Unified Security Budget describes the new model as “unnecessary to address any of the threats facing the United States today” and “a weapon looking for an enemy,” the SSN-774 is designed for covert collection of intelligence, transportation of special operations teams, and launching of tactical Tomahawk missiles—flexible capabilities tailored to rapid responses required by the 21st-century’s conflicts with irregular combatants. Similarly targeted for cancelation are the V-22 Osprey helicopter and the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And, as mentioned earlier, the report calls for the massive reduction of active-duty personnel stationed in Europe and Asia as well as the cutting of two active component air wings and two carrier-battle groups along with their associated Air Force air wings.

  And what to do with all these savings? The Unified Security Budget provides a helpful graph that shows how the money can be used to “meet the State Department’s request of $2.14 billion for the Contributions to International Peacekeeping Activities account.” The savings can also be used to “support Egypt’s burgeoning democracy through economic and humanitarian assistance.” Yes, the same Egyptian democracy currently seeing the Muslim Brotherhood, along with Islamist parties to the right of the Brotherhood, taking power. Another progressive recommendation: Use the savings to “increase the government’s investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency to a level that would achieve the Obama administration’s stated climate security goals.”

  REMOVE CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT OF MILITARY SPENDING

  For now, Congressional oversight serves as a check to some of Obama’s ambitious calls for defense budget reductions. Some would even give Congress more power in this realm. The progressive groups, however, have concocted a plan to wrest budgetary control from Congress—where it is vested by the U.S. Constitution—and instead place our military’s purse strings in the hands of an “independent panel.” “Congressional power isn’t the solution,” contends the report, which then offers a range of options that “think outside the box of existing structures.” How “outside the box” is their thinking? The report first endorses a recommendation, from the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, for an “independent panel to review the military’s procurement budget every year.” Membership would exclude both current and retired military officers who “have any financial ties to defense corporations or reserve the right to forge such ties in the future.” Another option for bypassing Congressional oversight would be a “Select Committee on National Security and International Affairs” to examine our overall security needs and the best balance of available tools to achieve them. And it could be empowered with making changes to the committee’s own structure. Congress—especially one under the control of progressive Democrats—could also authorize a “Commission on Budgeting for National Security and International Affairs” made up of “similarly committed members, to examine the current balkanized budget process, and recommend a restructuring that would enable decision-making on security that more effectively considers the overall balance of security tools and puts the national interest over parochial inte
rests.”

  The report recommends that the State Department and the ever-effective Department of Homeland Security have more authority over the Defense Department’s budget.

  MILITARY TO FIGHT POVERTY, SO-CALLED GLOBAL WARMING

  After massively slashing the military and its funding, and wresting control of the funding process from Congress, the 2012 Unified Security Budget seeks no less than to change the very role and mission of our Armed Forces. It complains that, after the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks, the U.S. military’s “mission objectives have grown much more ambitious.” And what do the report authors recommend? Of course! Using the military to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide.

  As poverty is a key contributor to state weakness, it is imperative for the United States to be actively engaged in the fight to end global poverty as a primary focus of our national security strategy. Effective U.S. global development policy can support countries and people to manage their own way forward from poverty and injustice. As this helps improve the livelihoods of millions, it reduces the sources of discontent and disenfranchisement that fuel global security threats.

  In other words, if only the polar ice caps weren’t melting and our country’s wealth was only redistributed to the developing world, Iran would simply stop seeking nuclear weapons, North Korea would quit being an aggressor, those al-Qaida pests would just leave us alone, Russia and China would become partners for peace, and the bloated and corrupt bureaucracy that is today’s UN would become a kind of global Mother Teresa, dispensing charity and goodness to all in need.

  The CAP and Institute for Policy Studies are plotting to take billions of dollars from the U.S. military and instead use them for a “green stimulus.” These groups also envision the military as a tool to fight so-called global warming. In 2011, the IPS released a forty-page CAP-endorsed report titled “The Green Dividend,” a term the IPS defines as “a major shift of resources from the military budget to sustainable energy.”7

  The report complains of an excess of military spending:

  The obvious solution is to reduce military spending and apply those savings to a green technology initiative that reduces our dependency on fossil fuels, shrinks our carbon footprint, and creates jobs. Such a “green stimulus” could pull our economy out of recession.

  IPS acknowledges the Obama administration made funding of “green initiatives” a significant part of his original stimulus package, but the spending of over $1 billion on risky ventures over which the private sector is highly skeptical is simply not enough for the progressive elite. The IPS now wants to shift jobs from the military sector to the “green growth” sector. It seeks to “play matchmaker and marry defense sector workers to green technology jobs.” The IPS research paper identifies the Pentagon as the “largest institutional energy user—and greenhouse gas emitter—on the planet,” arguing that if it undertook a “crash program” to convert to renewable energy sources and clean vehicles, it could make a significant impact on global emissions. It recommends redirecting much of the U.S. military budget from defense towards creating a Pentagon that is energy efficient; a military that stresses “designing and implementing a U.S. transition to a low-emissions future.” Astonishingly, the IPS calls on the Pentagon to contribute to a green world “by simply getting out of the way, by handing over unneeded military installations to be converted into green job incubators.”

  The ever-resourceful IPS goes on to present five full pages of color-coded charts showing exactly which military programs can be converted to incubators for our country’s “green” future.

  The IPS’s most recent “Green Dividend” report makes no bones about the progressive group’s ultimate agenda—the virtual disarmament of much of the U.S. military, while transferring defense resources to fund alterative energy causes. With so many bloated government agencies that could be defunded, it is telling that the IPS only focuses on the Pentagon—the purveyor and protector of American strength, the key bastion of our country’s exceptionalism, the sustainer of our superpower status. It seems the IPS is attempting to use environmental activism as a guise for a far more sinister aim, namely disarming the country.

  The report lauds Obama’s first ever U.S. Global Development Policy, which was issued in September 2010, and declares that the primary purpose of our development aid is to pursue broad-based economic growth as the means to fight global poverty.8

  Unsurprisingly, the report goes on to recommend that massive funds be sent to combat global woes, including an increase of $3.5 billion to “Global Health” investment, and $2.14 billion to support United Nations peacekeeping and ensure that the United States does not fall behind in UN payments. Also outlined is a growing international consensus on “the need for rich countries, including the United States, to provide compensatory funding to developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change that are already underway.” Such U.S. funding should make up for “reductions in food production caused by increases in droughts and flooding, greater climate variability leading to increased disease, decreased access to water and, in some cases, a need to relocate entire communities. These funds must be added to traditional streams of development assistance.”

  U.S. MILITARY FOR “GLOBAL WARMING” AID TO THIRD WORLD

  A major progressive aim is the transfer of American wealth to the developing world. To borrow a battle cry from erstwhile “Green Czar” Van Jones, “Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth!” Now we shall see plans to use the military to do just that if Obama is reelected.

  The White House’s most favored think tank, Podesta’s Center for American Progress (CAP), released a fifty-two-page proposal, from January 2012, in which authors Michael Werz and Laura Conley lay out a plan for the U.S. military to be used as the delivery vehicle of aid to developing countries purportedly ravaged by so-called global warming.9

  Within the general schema of using the “green agenda” to redirect defense funding to dubious environmental causes, the paper “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing Complex Crisis Scenarios in the 21st Century” contains a specific initiative to redistribute America’s wealth and resources to developing countries, and to “revisit traditional divisions of labor between diplomacy, defense, and economic, social, and environmental development policy abroad.” The CAP plan ridiculously blames “climate change” for such varied world events as the so-called Arab Spring and mass migrations, while pushing the transfer of enormous U.S. assets to the developing world. Nevertheless, a close reading of the report shows it concedes in several instances that there is zero proof for its contentions about climate change being responsible for dramatic world events. Yet CAP urges massive transfers of U.S. wealth anyway. In one section, the report admits:

  Climate change is among these newly visible issues sparking conflict. But because the direct link between conflict and climate change is unclear, awareness of the indirect links has yet to lead to substantial and sustained action to address its security implications.

  On migration and climate change, CAP cites United Nations data to warn:

  In the 21st Century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects of climate change.

  In that same section, the report concedes:

  In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal and international migration. But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real.

  Likewise, the “Arab Spring”—really a series of Islamist coups brought to power through short-lived democratic uprisings—is viewed by CAP through the lens of … climate change!

  The Arab Spring can be at least partly credited to climate change. Rising food prices and efforts by authoritarian regimes to crush political prot
ests were linked first to food and then to political repression—two important motivators in the Arab makeover this past year.

  Using the “science” of global warming, which will be dissected in the next chapter, CAP utilizes its unproved claims about world events to call for the United States, its allies, and key regional players to “work together to create a sustainable security situation to deal with climate change, migration, and conflict.” In other words, the U.S. should provide lots and lots of money to fight climate change overseas. For starters, recommendations include an increase in funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative efforts, and more money for the Climate Adaptation Fund established by the parties to the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to counter global warming, adopted by over 190 countries. The U.S. is singled out as one “of the few global powers capable and willing to act in the common interest.” The report complains developing nations and small islands

  will not only need adequate funding (no funds are allocated for migration so far), but also the expertise to carry out adaptation and mitigation efforts. These tasks could range from education or establishing early-warning systems, to implementing insurance for property and business owners, to altering crop mixtures and substantially modifying traditional land-use patterns. Assistance may also be required to help countries aggregate accurate nationwide data to identify mitigation needs and target relief to the most vulnerable communities.

  There is little doubt the Obama White House is ready to embrace CAP’s recommendation of filtering world conflict through the lens of climate change and transformative global engagement, in part, based on this peculiar worldview. Already, the Obama White House Interagency Taskforce on adapting to climate change recommended the government develop a strategy to help poor countries contend with purportedly climate-induced challenges.10