Abstract

Battling the Pentagon

The authors comment on the Pentagon budget and the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush's agenda in the U.S. Congress. In the wake of the November elections, arms control and peace advocates scored an important victory when Congress eliminated funding for research on new nuclear weapons. The leader in this effort was Republican Representative David Hobson. The Pentagon took advantage of the slow news week and leaked its plans to cut $30 billion from more than a dozen weapons programs in the next five years. The cuts amount to only a little over 1 percent of the Pentagon's total budget over the next five years, and some represent little more than a budget shell game; as Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress points out concerning the purchase of Virginia-class attack submarines. And other proposed cuts may be stopped in their tracks by the arms lobby, once interested members of Congress team up with contractors to save home-state systems. But even allowing for these limitations, the fact that the Pentagon felt compelled to offer any cuts at all provides an important opportunity to debate national security priorities. Another area where the Bush Administration may be vulnerable to pressure is in increasing funding to dismantle nuclear weapons and secure or destroy nuclear bomb-making materials in the former Soviet Union. The elephant in the room in any discussion of US military policy is Iraq. The Administration will soon put forward an $80 billion supplemental request for funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with another funding request later this year. This will be on top of the FY 2006 Pentagon budget. All the more reason to speak out now against the notion of covert military action in Iran, and against the idea of empowering the Pentagon to undertake such adventures.