Taming the Defense Budget

Gordon Adams, who has been in the defense budget area for some time, including at one point running a think thank on Defense Budgeting, has an article out in Politico, co-authored with Matthew Leatherman.

The article can be found here.

I generally agree with the article, but this piece needs some more thinking:

A mission like stabilization, which is more remote from U.S. interests and addresses lesser risks, should have lower budgetary priority. We need to shore up our civilian institutions to address these issues.

While divestiture is a good option, from a "Whole of Government" point of view it needs some thinking.  Today the Department of State is short over 1,000 Foreign Service Officers.  If we are looking for other government agencies (other than Department of Defense) to pick up the slack we are going to have to see them funded and manned to do the work.  That does not seem to be happening at this point.  If I was being tortured to reveal the truth I would quickly give up the US Congress.

Regards  —  Cliff