By KORI SCHAKE "In the wake of 9/11, it made sense to let defense spending mushroom to deal with new threats without cutting existing programs. But having worked on defense strategy and resources in the Pentagon and the National Security Council over the last decade, I'm now convinced that was a mistake. Increasing the Department of Defense's budget 35 percent since 2001 prevented it from making hard trade-offs between what it prefers to do (continue existing weapons systems) and what the nation most needs (an agile force that can quickly defend us against terrorists).
The Pentagon's budget is larger than the next 18 defense budgets in the world. Of course, it's not surprising that the United States has the highest defense spending by a substantial margin, but the magnitude relative to potential enemies suggests we are not achieving our objectives in a cost-effective way.
The exchange ratio between what it costs, say, Al Qaeda to mount a terrorist attack and what we are spending to prevent or respond to them is not a hopeful prospect for our country in a long war. The central challenge for hegemonic powers is to avoid being stretched too thin by either taking on too many obligations or supporting them in an unsustainable way. In the 1950's, President Dwight D. Eisenhower justified his arbitrary cap on defense spending by saying that military force could freeze the confrontation while our real strengths of ideology and economy won the cold war."