The Trump Administration’s hawkish attitudes towards foreign powers, adversarial and allied, conflict with the desire to make grand budget cuts for the Department of Defense.
Throughout Donald Trump’s second term, the President has talked about cutting the nation’s military budget in half if China and Russia would do the same.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has asked the military services to show how they might cut eight percent annually from current budgets each over the next five years, perhaps to reduce the defense budget, but more likely to create substantial new military capabilities like an Iron Dome for the entire United States.
Practically, in today’s turbulent 2020s, the United States would do well to limit the growth of annual defense spending to a few tens of billions of dollars, even without an Iron Dome.
Military Budget Cuts Of Times Past
Such significant cuts in the military’s budget only occurred after the fall of the USSR, marking the end of the Cold War. Secretaries of Defense Dicke Cheney, Les Aspin, and Willaim Perry, along with careful Congressional stewards of the armed forces, reduced the military from 2.2 million active-duty uniformed personnel to 1.4 million and gave weapons manufacturers a not-so-desired “procurement holiday.”
Alas, more typical was the experience after World War II, when steep cuts after 1945 led to the Task Force Smith debacle in Korea in 1950, wherein underfunded and under-equipped American units experienced bazooka rockets bouncing off of North Korean tanks. Another famous example being the rapid downsizing of our army and navy after World War I, allowing Japan to become a legitimate rival to the U.S. in the Pacific.
The United States maintains just 1.3 million active-duty personnel today, even as the world becomes much more dangerous than in the 1990s.
Yes, the national defense budget is almost $900 billion. However, that is because we are maintaining high readiness, sustaining a high-quality all-volunteer force, and not taking any procurement holiday in the face of challenges from China and Russia.
Relative to the size of the economy, the U.S.’s defense spending for 2025 will be 3.2 percent of GDP, which is modest compared to typical Cold War levels of 5 to 10 percent. Yes, there is wasteful spending at the Department of Defense (DoD), but finding savings in the Pentagon’s budget is difficult because the fat is marbled into the muscle, so to speak.
Also, waste is sometimes in the mind of the beholder. A second or third hypersonic weapons program may be redundant from one perspective but a good insurance policy from another. Further, restructuring organizations or bases often costs money in the short term, even if it can save money in the long term.
Using sources like the Congressional Budget Office, estimated possible savings from the following reforms may total up to $20 billion annually. Indeed, it is a large sum, but nowhere near eight percent of the current budget. Such reforms could include:
1) Conduct another round of base closures – $3 billion a year in eventual savings
2) Eliminate platforms DoD wants to retire – $4 billion
3) Hold Intelligence Community flat in real terms – $3 billion
4) Adopt “Performance-Based Logistics” more widely – $3 billion
5) Use procurement approaches with less red tape for some weapons systems – $1 to $5 billion
6) Impose a ten percent reduction on civilian headquarters staff – $2 billion
Maintain Strength In The Face Of Military Budget Cuts
Trump might be tempted to cut back on the Army, given that its force structure is partly driven by commitments he finds unfair. These include helping South Korea defend itself against North Korea and helping NATO fend off possible Russian aggression.
However, the Army is already the least expensive of the three big services. It has already reduced its active-duty ranks by 10 percent in recent years, primarily due to recruiting challenges. There may be more possible savings here, but they won’t be huge.
Whatever the potential for savings, however, there are also unmet needs which the DoD will likely add to the defense budget, such as:
1) Deterring war in several theaters at once by ensuring the United States can help regional allies in Europe, the western Pacific, and the Middle East fend off opportunistic attacks by their neighbors. This can be done with small but well-chosen “hold and defend” forces that are permanently stationed in forward locations, even in the event of war somewhere else. Adding the limited force structure required for this strategy could cost $10 billion to $25 billion a year.
2) Strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base, stockpiling more munitions and spare parts, and improving surge capacity for additional production in the event of a crisis or conflict, with an added average cost of $10 billion a year.
3) Acquiring new technologies, largely unmanned systems, and developing more hardened basing infrastructure in the Western Pacific, will improve regional deterrence capabilities. More attack submarines and long-range strike aircraft should also be built, with an estimated annual average cost of $10 billion to $15 billion for this shopping list.
4) Even if an impenetrable national shield is unrealistic, a modest expansion of air, missile, and drone defense for the United States, beyond the minimal system now deployed in California and Alaska and oriented against North Korea, makes sense, even with added expenditures in the low billions a year, not the tens or hundreds of billions that an actual national dome would entail.
Trump and Hegseth are right to want to reduce the U.S. defense budget where possible. However, they need to remain realistic about the possibilities—and the need to buttress some U.S. defense capabilities in pursuit, as Mr. Trump likes to say, of “peace through strength.”
About The Author: Michael O’Hanlon
Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow and director of research in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He directs the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy and Technology, and the Defense Industrial Base working group. He is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy. He co-directs the Africa Security Initiative as well. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington universities and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He also serves as a member of the Defense Policy Board at the U.S. Department of Defense. O’Hanlon was a member of the external advisory board at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2011-12. O’Hanlon’s latest book, “Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars Since 1861” (Brookings and Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) was published in January 2023.
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Zhong Xinyashi.
