Follow the money

The real difference between the candidates on foreign policy issues is not what they say they would do but what they want to  fund, which ultimately affects what whoever is elected can do.  The Ryan budget proposal, which Romney has said he backs, cuts international affairs spending by almost 10% in 2013 and close to a quarter by 2016 while funding a giant military buildup (on top of the buildup that has occurred since 9/11).  Obama does not propose cuts to military spending, but he is trying to keep it below previously projected levels.  His “international affairs” budget proposal for 2013 would keep that category more or less at current levels, taking inflation into account.

The consequences of this difference between the candidates for American foreign policy are dramatic.  We are already overusing our highly competent, effective and expensive military forces.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, they often substituted for far cheaper, but unavailable, civilians:  the military provided not only humanitarian aid, which it is required to do in “non-permissive” environments, but also development and state-building assistance.  I won’t be surprised if the U.S. military (along with the paramilitary parts of CIA) now has more foreign assistance money available than USAID.  The Ryan budget proposal, if adopted, would dramatically increase reliance on the U.S. military for non-military aid, statebuilding, international law enforcement and other fundamentally civilian tasks.

This is not smart.  At well over $1 million per deployed soldier (counting support and infrastructure costs), the U.S. military is a fabulously expensive way of getting things done.  Relying on it for civilian tasks is the international equivalent of relying on emergency rooms for routine medical care.  You may get it done, but only at a far higher price than providing the same care in doctors’ offices or community clinics.

The supposedly business-savvy Governor Romney is suggesting both health care in emergency rooms and use of our armed forces when civilians might suffice.  Moreover, experience indicates that the existence of a strong military instrument without equally strong civilian instruments will get us into wars that we might otherwise avoid:  need I mention Iraq? If anyone doubts whether our military has been thinking ahead to Iran, this map should be instructive:

I do not mean to suggest, as many of those publishing this map do, that we would be better off without these military installations.  Clearly they lend credibility to the threat of force that will be essential if ever there is a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.  And if diplomacy fails, the military option needs to be on the table.

But it is hard for me to imagine that we spend more 1 one-thousandth of the cost of these bases on the diplomatic effort with Iran.  We may in fact spend significantly less.  That means that a 1 one-thousandth chance of a diplomatic solution is worth pursuing.  I would put the real odds of diplomatic success at more like 50/50 or maybe 25/75.  Someone on the right might say the odds are 1/10.  But what Ryan and Romney are proposing is that we cut the diplomatic effort and increase the military push.  Does that make financial sense?

I hasten to note that Romney has also made some sensible proposals to use American foreign assistance money more effectively by focusing on rule of law and establishing conditions for successful private initiative.  The trouble is there won’t be any money in the government kitty to do those things if he is elected and the Ryan budget adopted.

Iran is the odd problem these days.  It may require a military solution, but that is unusual.  China as a currency manipulator does not.  Even Russia as a geopolitical threat, if you think it one, requires diplomacy more than military mobilization.  George W. Bush, no retiring violet, did not try to respond militarily to Russia when it went to war with Georgia, a country he wanted to get into NATO.  The list of problems not amenable to military solution is long:  Pakistan’s drift toward extremism, Afghanistan’s corrupt government, the stalled Middle East peace process.  It is striking that the international community is busy mobilizing an exclusively military response to Islamist extremism in Mali, where a more balanced approach that emphasizes local community economic development would be far more likely to succeed.

I know it won’t happen, but this is what the two candidates should be asked at the debate:  given the strains on the U.S. military, what would you do to strengthen America’s civilian instruments of foreign policy and how are those priorities reflected in your budget proposals?