Given the economic downturn and the fact that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally headed to some kind of conclusions (at least in the sense of having large combat deployments in either one if not the end of garrison bases), pressure is mounting for the military to pull back on spending. As detailed in this NYT article:

Lawmakers, administration officials and analysts said the combination of big budget deficits, the winding down of the war in Iraq and President Obama’s pledge to begin pulling troops from Afghanistan next year were leading Congress to contemplate reductions in Pentagon financing requests.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sought to contain the budget-cutting demands by showing Congress and the White House that he can squeeze more efficiency from the Pentagon’s bureaucracy and weapons programs and use the savings to maintain fighting forces.

But the increased pressure is already showing up in efforts by Democrats in Congress to move more quickly than senior Pentagon officials had expected in trimming the administration’s budget request for next year.

One should keep in mind, of course, that there is always this push-and-pull over military expenditures. Congress would certainly almost always be willing to shrink the military’s budget (other than in times of war) except for the fact that most of them have some contractor that employs many of their constituents. So the battle isn’t really whether or not they cut the budget, it’s where they cut the budget. This Wikipedia article about the B-1B bomber is most illustrative of the point:

[T]he Air Force very astutely spread production subcontracts across many congressional districts, making the aircraft more popular on Capitol Hill.^[25]

Now to be sure, that’s  typically the case with weapon systems (a catchall phrase), not things like numbers of troops or the amount of gear produced for them. After all, the grunt needs boots and clothes, and he needs however many he needs. Plus which, the US pretty much provides troops from all over so one could say its a kind of national employment program. In short, nobody’s really opposed to just troops. That’s why they go looking for the big-ticket items which some member of Congress may have pushed as a pet project for his district in the first place.

All that being said, in reality, if 2/3 of the military budget goes to personnel, it only makes sense that some of the cuts (not even 2/3, but some) should go towards personnel. Every other level of government has had to do things like hiring freezes, buyouts to get people to retire early, letting positions disappear, and in some desperate cases, let people go. As we draw down in the wars, it only makes sense that we downsize our military in the absolute sense of making it smaller, not just spending less money on it. We have an incredible military that can do just about anything we need it to (aside from make peace in countries that are riven with internal conflicts). We also have an incredible debt and a military that rivals the entire rest of the world combined in size and possibly also fields more combat power than all of them together. That’s not even to mention our nuclear arsenal. It’s just not sustainable. Combined with an intelligence community that’s so large nobody knows exactly how many people it is or how much it costs, we’re spending too damn much money on ineffectual strategies. Some day there will be a power that rivals the US. There’s nothing we can do about that. If China’s GDP grew to be the same proportion of per-capita GDP the US’s is, well, our military spending would never be enough. There’s just nothing we can do about that. We obviously can run deficits in the short term, but as long as we keep our overgrown military, there’s no way we’ll ever be free and clear. It’s time to man up and cut back.

And hey, we’ve always got The Expendables!