September 27, 2000

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Defense

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, will argue that there needs to be a substantial increase in defense spending -- an increase totalling tens of billions of dollars annually.

It’s about time. It has been clear for several years now that there was a serious shortfall between what the country was spending on defense and what was required to keep the military trained, equipped and capable of fulfilling its commitments around the world. Indeed, as early as 1996, Project co-founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan argued in an article in Foreign Affairs (“Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” July/August 1996) that it was impossible for the U.S. carry out its global leadership responsibilities with a defense budget that hovered around 3% of GDP.*

But sustaining such an increase politically is only possible if America’s leaders come to understand and publicly articulate a strategic vision that appreciates both the dangers and opportunities that now confront the U.S. internationally. In an effort to set out precisely what we believe those challenges to be, the Project, in conjunction with Encounter Books, has just published Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol. In addition to an introductory essay by Kristol and Kagan, the book includes fourteen other essays covering virtually every segment of American national security policy. Contributors include some of the nation’s leading conservative strategists and thinkers, including: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Kagan and William Bennett. (The volume is available at retail and on-line bookstores and through Encounter Books of San Francisco at www.encounterbooks.com.)*

There are, moreover, no quick fixes to this problem. It cannot be solved by eliminating deployments to places like the Balkans, an operation whose annual costs are a drop in the bucket when compared with the funds needed for modernization, missile defenses, improvements in military housing, and readiness and training. For a comprehensive review of the state of the U.S. military and what should be done to enable it to carry out its global responsibilities, see the Project's Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The report is available by calling the number below or on the web at

Rebuilding America's Defenses (PDF format).