ECONOMISTS FOR PEACE & SECURITY
BERNARD SCHWARTZ SYMPOSIUM
INEQUALITY, AUSTERITY, JOBS, AND GROWTH
November 18, 2015
Washington, D. C.
SESSION THREE:
GLOBAL SECURITY AND ECONOMICS: DANGERS AND HOPES
RICHARD KAUFMAN, CHAIR:
Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Richard Kaufman, vice-chair of Economists for Peace & Security.
I’ll make a few comments to provide a little bit of an overview of defense and security, and then our panelists will follow.
Questions of war and peace and war or peace will always be with us apparently. There seems to be an irregular cycle for these questions, and we are now, in Washington at least, in a period of rising war fever, if you look at the newspapers and follow the media and comments by various experts and government representatives, all, of course, in the immediate aftermath of the Isis attacks in Paris and elsewhere. In the presidential campaign fears of a possible Isis attack in the US and the passage of time since the last major war under Bush ’43 are continuing factors to the idea that what we need is a reversal of President Obama’s reluctance to commit more resources to the conflicts in the Middle East. It would be well, therefore, to remind ourselves how expensive the war was and will continue to be in Afghanistan and Iraq and how much we are spending for defense.
The graphic on the screen illustrates the trend in defense spending since the post-World War II period, and the steep rise since the end of the Cold War, overlaid by war spending on top of that trend. The budget grew by about 60 percent from 1998 to 2010. Since 2010, the defense budget and war spending have fallen significantly, by about 20 percent. The total costs of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq are estimated, reliably in my view, at about $4 trillion, taking into account medical and disability costs, which continue long after war’s end.
Finally, numerous economists have pointed out that defense spending is harmful to the economy, contrary to some conventional wisdom that it props up the economy. Defense spending diverts resources that could be employed to more productive ways. It raises incomes for the many rather than for the few, namely, defense contractors [sic], and rather than providing needed non-defense goods and services such as infrastructure, roads and bridges, which create civilian jobs and incomes. And by the way, studies show that more jobs are created by non-defense spending than by defense spending.
With that I want to move to our panelists, the first one of whom will be William Hartung. And you might introduce yourself to save time.
BILL HARTUNG:
Thank you, Richard. I’ll be brief in introducing myself because I can’t really remember what I’ve done. I work at the Center for International Policy. I run a project called the Arms and Security Project, and I’ve been working on issues of politics and military spending since the late Carter administration. We seem to go in cycles on these issues, and the attacks in Paris and Beirut, and the downing of the Russian airliner, following on all the attacks we’ve seen all over the world have raised the question of, has everything changed? Are we in a new phase? Are we going to have to change our entire strategy? How shall we respond?
I think a lot of the simplest calls have been, let’s step up military action, let’s crack down on immigration, let’s up surveillance—all of which were tried after September 11th in a misguided way primarily in Iraq, and, as Richard mentioned, it cost us a trillion dollars, thousands of lives, put a sectarian regime in power, and helped create some of the conditions that led to the growth of Isis—certainly not all of them, but it was a contributing factor.
So I think we shouldn’t be completely governed by short-term emotions here. One thing I want to talk about is the need to rebalance our foreign policy tool kit. We should be using not just the military, but economic means, diplomatic means—the full array of ways in which we can relate to other countries and deal with non-state actors. And my fear is that we’re going to tilt heavily in the direction of military tools, at least in the short term, which I think will be a mistake.
I think we need a healthy understanding of the limits of military power. We saw it in Iraq, as I mentioned, in Afghanistan, after the longest war in US history. We’ve got a large problem of corruption. The Taliban is still quite capable. The notion of a military victory there is not anywhere in sight. In Yemen, which is rarely discussed, our government is arming a Saudi-led coalition which has created one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes in the world probably short of Syria. There are thousands who have been killed in the bombing, cluster bombs have been used, there’s a near-famine in the country because of the blockade that’s been implemented. Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have suggested that both sides may have engaged in war crimes. And just recently a bill to give the Saudis more bombs and ammunition from the United States was [?] to Congress. I think activities like this in support of a putative ally like Saudi Arabia just make the situation worse in the region in terms of the US reputation, in terms of the lives of the people there, in terms of sorting out the other conflicts that we’re going to have to deal with.
And then of course there’s the issue of targeted killings. And I think it’s fair to say that, although they’ve been effective in taking out particular leaders, they haven’t weakened substantially the terrorist organizations that we have to deal with.
So how do we rebalance? Some of it’s going to be a longer-term proposition; but I think we have to start now. The Pentagon receives 12 times as much in terms of budgetary resources as the Department of State. And as Robert Gates pointed out in his speech a couple of years ago, there are more personnel in one aircraft carrier task force than we have trained diplomats in the entire Department of State, and we have 10 aircraft carrier task forces.
On the flip side, we have the most powerful military in the world The question really is when it’s appropriate to use it. We spend more than the next seven countries in the world combined; we spend about three times what China spends. We have 1.4 million troops in uniform, not counting reserves. We have 700 military bases, give or take; 10 aircraft carrier task forces, as I mentioned; 60,000 special forces troops, which is far more than any other country, larger than the militaries entire of other countries, and they were active in 133 countries in 2014. We also give military and police aid to 163 nations. So we have genuine global reach with our military, and the notion that we are not able to engage in conflict anywhere in the world is not really the point.
The question is whether the military is the right tool for the job. And for some of the longer-term threats, it’s obviously not. Climate change, epidemics and disease, the spread of nuclear weapons—military force is not going to help resolve those. But also I would argue in the case of terrorism, it’s not a solution. Perhaps it can be part of a mix of policies; but the notion of leaning too heavily on that tool I think will just make matters worse than they already are.
So I wanted to look at the example of Iran and the diplomacy there. Obviously every situation is different, but I think there were a couple of important factors in the Iran deal that could guide us in dealing with other conflicts and other issues. First of all, it was multilateral, the permanent five members of the Security Council plus Germany; so you had countries like Russia, which [is] at odds with the United States, sitting down at the table with us, putting pressure on Iran; countries like China, which had commercial relations with Iran in the past, onboard for negotiations that would curb their nuclear program. The other thing about the negotiations is they didn’t involve maximalist positions; so the notion that Iran would just automatically cast aside the notion of ever enriching uranium again was taken off the table. And the idea was limited enrichment for commercial purposes under strict supervision by the international community and the dismantling of large portions of their existing military nuclear capabilities. But if the position had been, we’re going to sanction you until you cry uncle, we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. I think that’s something to keep in mind.
Also, we have to be patient and persistent. Deals like this have been floated going back as far 2003. And when President Obama reengaged in the process, the press coverage was pretty much— You know, they’d have a three-day meeting, and they’d say, Well, see? They didn’t solve anything. And I think you need a much longer perspective to see these things come to fruition. So patience and persistence.
And of course it takes strong presidential leadership. You just have to look at the political controversy in this country about getting the deal through to see that without strong support from President Obama this deal would never have happened.
And then finally, it’s a process. The deal is the beginning of the process. It’s got to be implemented. It’s got to stay on course for 10 to 15 years. All the countries involved in making the deal have to hold Iran to its promises, and also deliver on the promises that they have made as part of the deal.
So can we apply this anywhere else, I mean only in the most general terms? But if you look at the situation in Syria, I’m encouraged that the administration is part of a process that includes all the players that view themselves having interests in the region, including Iran and Russia, where most likely they have leverage over Assad to get him to step down in some sort of transitional arrangement. But I think anybody who has the idea that we can defeat Assad militarily, that he can step down without some sort of assurances of his future, I think are barking up the wrong tree. So there’s going to have to be some version of compromise, not least of which because of the contending interests. The Saudis have their own group of jihadists that they support; Turkey’s often more concerned about the Kurds than it is about Isis; Iran and Saudi Arabia are at loggerheads and yet sitting at the same table. There’s a question of whether Russia should have an ongoing presence in Syria. And of course if you held elections you’d have to figure out how to get all the refugees to have a say in those elections, which would be quite a logistical undertaking.
So I’m not saying diplomacy would be easy in Syria; but I think it’s far preferable to the alternative, and it’s got to be vigorously pursued. And I think the administration will do so.
Then the other thing that I wanted to talk about is we need to beware sort of the bait-and-switch tactic that the Pentagon and the arms lobby are going to bring to bear as part of this crisis. After September 11th, we doubled our Pentagon budget, much of it having nothing to do with fighting wars, just squirreling away pet projects that the Pentagon had wanted for years. And in fact a vice president at Boeing was crowing over the impacts of the intervention, and he said, Anybody who opposes us on this is going to lose their job next year in Congress. So Congress is already talking about putting more money in the war budget, even though only about 10 percent of it so far goes to fighting Isis. Most of it is for unrelated matters, and if they need to up spending on the war, there’s plenty of money there to do it without busting the current budget agreement.
So the other thing I would say: We need to do some positive things. We have to be more engaged in refugee aid. We have to have a long-term strategy for how to build sustainable, democratic, economically rewarding societies, not only in the region, but in Europe and the United States as well. So that runs quite counter, I think, to a lot of the discussion and hype and shouting that we’re going to hear on the campaign trail; but I think it’s the only hope we have of really turning around this very difficult situation. Thank you.
CHAIR:
Cyrus Bina will be next.
CYRUS BINA:
[accent is heavy]
Thank you very much.
My remarks will perfectly dovetail with what Bill Hartung already [said], and probably he was reading my mind. But for the sake of brevity I would like to just read very quickly the things that I’ve written. The first part of it would be the context, the context in which Iran deal should be compared. In other words, Iran deal is not an absolute element. It’s relative. Relative to what? To what has existed already. So in that case allow me to read that, and then demonstrate why Iran deal is one of the achievements of this administration.
In July 2015, nuclear accord signed in July in Vienna known as a joint comprehensive plan of action between Iran on the one hand and the six world powers--China, France, Germany, and Russian Federation, plus United Kingdom and United States--must be considered as a watershed, particularly in the US foreign policy in recent decades being multilateral, as Bill said, by design JCPOA is practical, pivotal, and purposeful from the standpoint of peace and security in the region and beyond. It is also one of the great achievements, as I said, of the Obama administration in foreign policy.
By all accounts, we are now living in the post-Cold War, post-9/11, post-Bush-Cheney period, with the so-called War on Terror that is a permanent war. Foreign policy is either explicitly or implicitly, purposely or unknowingly entwined with the mind of the foreign policy folks and legislators across the aisle here in this country. In such a milieu it is often easy to mistake the strategic goals from the tactical ones, being sidetracked and thus consumed by too many contingencies that come [in] one’s way, particularly random contingencies that the historians in the future may consider as naught, zilch, zero. This state of affairs is in part due to the numerous global change[s] on the one hand, and the US lack of ingesting and digesting of [them] on the other, despite the rhetorical responses in the foreign policy circles and in part due to what comes back to the same thing, that the traditional US foreign policy machinery exhibits little acknowledgment of diminished and diminishing US political power around the world.
In the last two decades or so examples are plenty: invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; wholesale destruction of Libya, which is, by the way, United States deliberately hoodwinked Russia on the removal of Colonel Qaddafi; and by proxy the whole self-destruction of Yemen, a gesture of involuntary high-five to Moslem brotherhood; and then, with some public displeasure, giving green light to the el-Sisis in Egypt.
Now, there’s another point dealing with Ukraine, providing free hand for the neo-conservatives such as Victoria Nuland in the state department. This was done on Mrs. Clinton’s watch to foment a coup in Ukraine and thus losing face by misleading—or miscalculating, rather—the balance of force there that would lead to secession of Crimea, and it’s grabbed by the Russian Federation and its irredeemable return to Ukraine. And leaving the door open for the right-wing hardcore anti-Semite elements to lurk freely and [?] underneath any potential leader that could do the US bidding in the future power struggle in Ukraine.
And also by saying no to Assad of Syria as matter-of-factly and by happenstance. And I must say to grudge against Iran and Russian instead of rational policymaking, that’s advertently or inadvertently unplugged the wormhole of history--I’m just using one of the terms which is used by the astrophysicists—and then creating chaotic ground for reactionary forces, including Isis.
Since I have not much time, I would like to make five points very quickly about Iran deal:
First, this deal was a result of some 22 months of intensive negotiation between Iran and the so-called five-plus-one powers. And of course it just opened the door for the so-called normalization—potential normalization—in the future. And of course one has to understand that the background of the whole thing about Iran is 1979, the removal of the Shah by the Iranian people, and then the question of going back even further, 1952 coup, CIA coup.
Second, the deal was multilateral, as Bill said. And I’m [now/not?] going to go through it very quickly, and it is extremely important these days to be able to follow the multilateral policies in foreign policy.
Third, this deal was made in the spirit of NPT, it was foreign NPT, and it is extremely important to recognize NPT by reduction of nuclear arms, which then leads to the question of fourth point, which leads to question which the three countries, India, Israel, and Pakistan, which are not a member of that. It would be very important to persuade them to become a member.