By Robert Dreyfuss
As the U.S. stares down a "fiscal cliff", some are arguing for an increase in defense spending to support America's pivot to Asia. It could however create more problems than it solves.
Turning around a modern naval warship at sea is a slow and difficult process. Turning around whole fleets of warships, aircraft carriers and other air and naval forces, and reorienting defense spending for weapons systems that are typically planned decades in advance, is a lot harder – especially when it’s being done in the context of a widely expected downturn in U.S. military outlays. But that’s what the administration of President Barack Obama is trying to do with the much-touted “pivot” from the Middle East to Asia.
It’s a fool’s errand: far too costly, and politically counterproductive. As an example, already questions are being raised about the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, developed to be the U.S. military’s fighter jet of the future. But the F-35 was designed for a time when the Pentagon was focused on NATO and the Middle East, and according to the New York Times, the F-35 is now “facing concerns about its relatively short flight range as possible threats grow from Asia.”
Even if, somehow, Obama and his new national security team – with a new secretary of state, a new secretary of defense, and a new CIA director in 2013 – can cobble together the cash for a military buildup in Asia, the result of the effort may be to create the very adversary it’s intended to balance. As noted in a March report (PDF) by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service: “The perception among many that the ‘rebalancing’ is targeted against China could strengthen the hand of Chinese hard-liners. Such an impression could also potentially make it more difficult for the United States to gain China’s cooperation on a range of issues.” And, of course, more expensive.
Read the full 3 page story at The Diplomat