MORE ON THE WAGGING.

MORE ON THE WAGGING. This is a debate that I've allowed to lay fallow, but there's still something useful to be said. Originally, Brad Plumer argued that the U.S. defense establishment should be constrained in order to constrain the foreign policy options of our leadership; without a sufficient military establishment, we would consider military action less of an option. I responded that the size of the U.S. military should depend on a consideration of values and interest, and shouldn't be designed to constrain the options of civilian policymakers. Brad responds:

Much of the military's force structure wasn't put in place because someone in the Pentagon laid out specific foreign policy goals and then Congress judiciously decided what capabilities the military would need in order to pursue those goals. Much of the military was put together to address needs or goals or vague threats that might arise in the future. And many weapons systems were built because Lockheed Martin wanted more money and so decided to lobby the head of the appropriations committee to finance various new projects. Here's one example.So lots of things -- militarism, defense contractors, members of Congress who want to preserve bases or arms manufacturing plants in their districts -- put upward pressure on the size of the United States armed forces. You don't get enough nukes to destroy the world a dozen times over and a military the size of the next 14 countries combined through a "careful analysis of national values and interest" alone. Now, as that outsized military grows and grows, I wouldn't be surprised if Pentagon planners take a look at all the new tools at their disposal and decide that maybe now some additional foreign policy pursuits might also be feasible.

Which is fair enough as far as it goes, but I think Brad has wandered into a different discussion entirely. I happily allow that bureaucratic, political, and economic interest work to increase the size of the military budget (although the system hasn't always functioned this way in the United States; ask the U.S. Navy how hard it was to get a new battleship in 1905), while pointing out that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the logic of how we should go about planning for the size of the military. At best, I suppose it would suggest that planners should aim low, since the bureaucratic process will likely work to expand procurement, but that still doesn't tell us anything about the fundamental logic that should undergird defense decisions. Moreover, it's still unclear that a larger military produces more hawkish behavior. As Brad points out, the USN and USAAF have been using China as a bogeyman for some time in order to get the weapons they want. I'm unconvinced, though, that we're any more likely to go to war with China now than we were ten years ago; show me the beef, please. Brad does make a nice point about U.S. foreign bases becoming national security liabilities, and thus potentially producing more aggressive behavior through their very existence. I'm willing to be convinced on that point, as taking on new values always produces new threats. I still think, though, that this is a bit different than the tail-wagging that Brad is suggesting.

--Robert Farley