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A4 THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANuARY 4, 2019 OPINION editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager PRO-CON Should the US increase military spending to keep pace with Russia and China? Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy The USS Gerald R. Ford embarked on the first of its sea trials in 2017 from Newport News, Va. PRO: We need to beef up our military — and then some W ASHINGTON — Beer, pizza And, for sure, defense spending ought and defense. Americans spend to be efficient and efficacious. That’s a more on each of these than any- standard that should apply across all of our one else. So what? These facts say nothing government. Our elected officials and pub- lic servants should be good stewards for about how happy, healthy or safe we are. the American taxpayer — period. They are meaningless without context. Perhaps Americans could do with fewer Adding all that context together, where jumbo slices and more gym memberships. are we on defense spending? The answer But when it comes to defense spending, is: We are short of where we need to be. America needs to spend more, not less. Five years ago, my colleagues at The For starters, comparing our defense Heritage Foundation developed the Index spending to that of other nations doesn’t of US Military Strength. make much sense. Our analysts established an objec- tive, nonpartisan measure of defense suf- Walmart has more than 2 million ficiency that graded how much military employees. The average small business has power America actually has in terms of fewer than 100. Does that mean Walmart’s manpower, readiness and weaponry; what payroll is out of whack? Of course not. The U.S. is a global power, with the armed forces are required to global responsibilities and global do; and what the world was like economic interests to defend. We — the actual threats that must be need a defense budget commensu- addressed. rate with those responsibilities and Our latest analysis concludes interests, not with other nations’ that, after years of over-use and lesser global posture. under-funding, the U.S. mili- JAMES JAY tary is only marginally prepared to Abandoning our responsibilities CARAFANO and interests is not a viable option. fight and win in a two-conflict sce- nario (the standard benchmark for a Europe can’t defend Europe without global power). us — that’s why we have NATO. President Scrimping on training has resulted in Barack Obama tried walking away from low readiness levels. the Middle East — only to see ISIS and Air Force pilots, for example, fly only a Iran start to take over. Does anyone think fraction of the training hours they used to. turning Asia over to China is a good idea? No, the U.S. neither can nor should The force isn’t big enough. be the world’s policeman. Nor is it our The Navy, for instance, was unable — responsibility to ensure all these places are for the first time in a long time — to send the land of milk and honey. an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean to But we do need to worry about big, cover the Middle East. destabilizing problems — things like wars And the force isn’t modernizing fast and nuclear attack, that can spread untold enough. Marines are still driving combat misery around the world, to us and our vehicles built in 1972 — vehicles older friends included. than their drivers’ parents. Nor should a particular foreign policy America’s competitors can count. They dictate the size of the Pentagon’s budget. see that our armed forces are too small and The wisdom of staying in Afghani- ill-prepared to take on two regional powers stan or hunting down terrorists in Africa simultaneously. They know that if America can be debated. Still, in the end, the mis- doesn’t rebuild soon, they can soon match sions don’t tell you how big a military is us in their part of the world. required. That’s a dangerous situation — with That would be like picking the size of consequences far more costly than paying a fire department based on which fires you for an adequate national defense. want to fight. A fire department has to be James Jay Carafano is an Army veteran big enough to protect the community. The and vice president for national security armed forces need to be big enough to and foreign policy at the Heritage Founda- tion think tank. defend the U.S. and its vital interests. CON: US military expenditures already dwarf our top rivals OLUMBUS, Ohio — We do not in initiatives they find important to pre- serving world security. We perplex our need to increase military spend- ing to deal with Russia or China. friends by actions like relocating our embassy to Jerusalem, or repudiating the The 2019 military budget, authorized by climate treaty and the nuclear arrange- Congress, stands at $716 billion. That’s ment with Iran. “billion” with a “b.” We are separating ourselves from the That figure dwarfs expenditures by world community. We are pulling out of China and Russia. China spends $175 treaties that call for resolving disputes billion a year. Russia, whose economy peacefully, in the International Court of is lagging badly, has cut military expen- diture in the past two years, and is now Justice. under $60 billion. When Palestine sued us, as it did Our competition with China is eco- recently, over the relocation of our nomic, not military. The only arena for embassy to Jerusalem, we overreacted. military conflict is the South China Sea, Palestine was able to get the case but we don’t need a beefed up military into the International Court of Justice for that purpose. because both Palestine and the United In any event, we overplay States are party to a multilateral the importance of the South diplomatic relations treaty that lets states sue for violations of the China Sea to U.S. trade or other law on diplomatic relations. interests. Seventy-one states of the world With Russia, our competi- tion is political, not military. We are parties. Instead of just dealing with the lawsuit, the White House have put Russia in fear by mov- JOHN B. ing NATO into its backyard. That announced that we will pull out QUIGLEY has generated reaction from Rus- of the treaty altogether. That is sia. There is much we could do to the same treaty that let us sue Iran when our people were taken hostage at ease tensions. the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979. Rather than spend more for military, We should be protecting peaceful we should examine current expenditures. avenues to resolve disputes, not cutting We waste billions. We are building a new them off. We should not fear application class of aircraft carrier for the Navy with of universally agreed legal principles. little assurance of quality. Military confrontation with either The nuclear-powered USS Gerald R. Russia or China is unlikely. If a serious Ford, the first carrier in this new class, is confrontation were to come to pass, how- costing $13 billion. Now close to being ever, a U.S. president needs to have suf- online, it is experiencing what the Pen- tagon gingerly calls “manufacturing ficient credibility to be able to convince defect” issues. allies to assist, even if some of their peo- ple would die in the effort. It has an untried digital propulsion Now we have little assurance of a system that seems not to work. Carri- ers of this size, moreover, have been response we might get. Our allies deal shown in war games to be vulnerable to with Trump by appealing to his ego. anti-ship weaponry that has grown more They do not regard him as a reliable sophisticated in recent years. So even if partner. They doubt his judgment, and the Navy can get the USS Gerald R. Ford even his truthfulness. to sail, it may not serve its purpose. And Security lies in being able to mobi- lize support from other countries in a cri- the Navy wants three more. sis situation. We have enough weaponry. If our security in the world is in jeop- ardy, it is not for lack of military hard- Spending more on weapons is a short- ware. It is because of our policies. sighted avenue to national security. Our allies don’t know what to expect John B. Quigley is a professor of law at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio from us. They are aghast at President Donald Trump’s refusal to participate State university. C