So often we complain about that big pie (chart) that is the federal budget. If only "we" could get a bigger piece of the pie, so much could be done in the soft power category. Indeed, in President Bush's proposed budget, the DoD gets more than $481.4 billion, while a mere $1.5 billion is set aside for broadcasting, exchanges and general public diplomacy activities. For all you non-mathmeticians out there, "their" slice is about 320 times larger than "ours."
There is hope, however, and I came across it in the transcript from a Naval War College forum from June 2001. MIT's Cindy Williams, perhaps even unintentionally, articulated a possible strategy for getting a bigger part of the pie.
More after the jump...
Along with Michele A. Flournoy and David Mosher, Wiliams is talking about the issue of U.S. military "transformation" and how DoD must change its thinking, strategy and operations in the 21st Century. Williams has some strong arguments on what language is used to describe this military evolution, and then provides us with this gem:
Setting a top line for defense and working within it is fundamental to devising a strategy. The Defense Department needs to know how much money it will have, in order to know how deeply it will have to cut into the areas where, as Michèle Flournoy likes to say, it can accept greater risk. But that does not apply when setting the top line for the individual services. In the 1997 quadrennial review, the defense budget “pie” was divided up among the services using the same formula as was used year after year during the Cold War.That is counter-strategic. The department needs not only a joint process to determine its requirements but a joint view to determine its strategy. We must decide priorities not on the basis of what is best for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, but on the basis of what is best for the nation. If this means that the Navy’s share of the defense budget grows while the Army’s shrinks, so be it (emphasis mine).
Williams - again, perhaps inadvertently - is making an argument for smart power. If more tanks, more planes, more troops and more bullets are what will maximize U.S. power, so be it. But we know that is just fantasy. Hard power is not enough, and can even do more harm than good. If defense policy - and accordingly, defense appropriations - should be dictated by what is best for the nation, then so should overall U.S. foreign policy. Now all we need is a bigger piece of the pie!!!
