The Left's Tone Deafness On Global Risk

National Review: How Ideology Has Distorted The Left's Perception Of Global Risk

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Jim Talent.

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In an editorial on Sunday, May 10, the New York Times took the Obama administration to task for not cutting defense spending more deeply. Now, one wonders whether the Times is serious, or whether it is sending some kind of intramural signal intelligible only within the political Left. The administration is already making deep cuts in the defense budget and will undoubtedly cut even more in the future, despite the need for substantial increases in the modernization budget, which the Heritage Foundation, among others, has documented and about which I have written previously for National Review Online.

Yet the Times editorial is worth some consideration, because it is so typical of what passes on the Left for “analysis” of defense spending. The editorial does not actually discuss the programs it wants to cut, much less the general condition of America’s military or the risks America currently faces. Rather, its recommendations spring from a deeply ideological aversion to military power that is increasingly out of date and dangerous in the post-Cold War world.

First, the Times mischaracterizes the programs it criticizes. For example, it calls the F-22 air-superiority fighter “redundant.” Whatever else can be said about the F-22, it is not redundant. It’s the only fighter in the Air Force that can match the modern aircraft America’s competitors are acquiring in increasing quantities. Certainly the Russians and the Chinese will not shut down their Sukhoi and other advanced-fighter lines on the grounds that they are “redundant.” Numbers matter; without adequate numbers of 21st-century fighters, the United States cannot achieve air superiority, and without air superiority, military operations in places like the Straits of Taiwan become impossible.

Similarly, the Times calls the Virginia-class submarine program “wholly unnecessary” and wants to eliminate it. Yet the Virginia class is the only active submarine line the United States currently operates, which means that, were the line to close, the United States would eventually have no submarine fleet. Without submarines, the Navy cannot protect its aircraft carriers or control sea lanes, and we would lose a valuable intelligence-gathering asset.

Have submarines suddenly become “wholly unnecessary”? The Chinese don’t think so. They have constructed a huge new submarine base and are building four or five new advanced submarines every year. Even if the United States continues acquiring the Virginia-class boats at the current rate, the Chinese submarine fleet will surpass ours by the middle of the next decade.

Second, the Times simply ignores the threat environment in which the military must operate and the United States must protect itself. Every category of risk that America faces is undeniably growing. China has been acquiring Russian-built carrier-killer missiles for years and is now developing its own long-range variants. Russia invaded Georgia last August, Iran gets closer to a nuclear military capability every day, North Korea is developing a longer-range missile, the terrorists are fighting for control of nuclear Pakistan, the bipartisan Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction unanimously found last December that the terrorists would have a nuclear or biological weapon within five years, northern Mexico is coming close to anarchy because of drug cartels, and piracy has become a major concern.

The Pentagon doesn’t determine its requirements by pulling weapons systems out of a hat. It develops force-structure and modernization requirements by analyzing the capabilities it must possess to deal with the threats America faces. Even the Obama administration concedes that the threats are real and that it has not conducted a thorough review of the international situation or the national military strategy. How can the Times - without even discussing the demonstrably growing risks, much less the capabilities necessary to meet them - now claim that programs the last three administrations have insisted were vital to American security have suddenly become “redundant” or “unnecessary”?

The Times says that it wants to cut defense more deeply to deal with the growing deficit. But the Times never evidenced concern about frugality when the administration was calling for and Congress was passing the “stimulus” package and other measures that guarantee a doubling of the national debt over the next ten years. If the purpose of that spending was to stimulate the economy, why should the government now cut the defense budget? How can it be right to double the size of the Department of Energy, supposedly in order to create jobs, but wrong to build the ships and planes that America needs to protects its security and that really do support hundreds of thousands of high-paying American jobs? The Times doesn’t answer these questions or even treat them as relevant.

That is because the Times has allowed its ideology to distort its perception of global risk. President Obama and his allies are fond of referring to the need to end Cold War strategies and programs. For his own sake, the president should consider whether it is the opposition or the movement he leads that is trapped in the assumptions of the Cold War. Ever since Vietnam, the Left has distrusted American military power. That attitude was never valid, but in today’s world - a world of rapidly developing and potentially aggressive peer competitors, rogue regimes with nuclear weapons, and well organized, ruthless terrorist groups - it is positively dissociated from reality.

No one is arguing that America should view the world only - or even primarily - through a military lens. I have urged, as have many others, the importance of what Bob Gates calls the tools of “soft” power: public diplomacy, effective communication of American ideals and intentions, assistance in building the institutions of democracy and free markets that are a bulwark against radicalism.

However, experience has shown that those tools can work only in an atmosphere of security, where the world is confident that the United States, as the animating force in a free-world consensus, can swiftly and effectively defeat any violent threat to freedom and democracy. For this reason, the Left’s own goals require a strong American military with robust technological superiority. Otherwise, the president’s faith in conciliation and international agreements is sure to be seen as weakness - a danger that is already evident after his recent meetings with world leaders.

The irony of the Times editorial is that it advocates a position that, if adopted, would seriously undermine the foreign policy of the administration the newspaper wanted so desperately to elect. Mr. Obama campaigned on a platform of changing America. But on defense policy, it is he and his followers who will have to change, if America is to successfully negotiate the challenges of the 21st century - challenges that are now Mr. Obama’s responsibility, and for the management of which he will be held accountable.

Jim Talent is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He has served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1993-2001) and the U.S. Senate (2002-07). He was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and, for four years, chairman of the committee’s Seapower Subcommittee.

[fcs25]

Since the left progressive democrats live in a fantasy world of their own making no argument will convince them of their stupidity.Only letting the terrorist, that threaten the entire free world, kill a few of them will they get the message that the world isn't like their make-believe one.

[deweyhowe]

HEHEHE... MARCH OF FOLLY..... SELF HYPNOSIS..... HEHEHEHE.............

One insightful reviewer:

The overall idea of the book is excellent; that is, decisions of the past must be judged in the light of the times. We cannot judge past civilizations and their decisions by our standards. While the idea of how we should view history is excellent the execution of the concept in this book is horribly flawed. The author allows her bias to overflow into every passage. Nowhere is this retelling of history accomplished from a neutral point of view. This destroys the good premise behind the book. Anyone reading this book and agreeing with it will simply be agreeing with the liberal point of view of the author who adopts modern liberal western thought in reviewing the decisions of the past and condemns those who did not think like modern western liberals. The author fails to follow the basic premise of the book and thus destroys her credibility.

And another:

In her work The March of Folley, Barbara Tuchman pursues several well known examples of misgovernment through folly in order to prove that governments purse "policies contrary to their own self-interests". In the first chapter she defines folly; "To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in it's own time, not merely by hindsight... A feasible alternative course of action must have been available... The policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime". These criteria would have served primarily as self-imposed constraints on Tuchman to ensure the historical validity of her work. Unfortunately, Tuchman has no problems bending her own rules in order to identify herself with her readers and their paychecks.
I gave it 2 stars because of the detail that Tuchman goes to to get her point across and because she is obviously a talented literary writer, but her motivation to hammer every event that she has listed as catastrophic folly into the mind of the reader often leads her to rash conclusions (such as an awkard analogy to the American Civil war on p. 323) and a disregard for anything that might change the readers' opinions from her focus: folly. Therefore the book is closeminded and biased, but in a decievingly 'open-minded' manner.

[ubrew12]

NRO has never read 'The march of folly' (Tuchman) and it shows.

The process of self-hypnosis

[sjc_1]

patriotandproud.

You are so off the mark, no one knows where to begin with your rants. First of all, no one is getting rid of the military. The rest of your babble I will leave to someone else that might actually give a darn about what you spew.

[sweetangel4u-2009]

Jim NOTalent...writing inane opinions on an opinion column. Is anyone surprised? As for his argument, it's full of holes. I'm sure our military might doesn't hinge upon one airplane and one submarine. Terrorists are not afraid of military might. They move in other circles. Didn't we learn from 9/11 that they will use our technology against us? We need to improve our intellligence methods to keep one step ahead, not the big guns. Killing innocent people who are relatives of these borderline Jihadists, only makes them cross the line. No, I'm not a pacifist, just a realist. I respect everything our troops are doing, but we could help them do their job better and stay alive if we gave them more ground and intelligence support, rather than worrying about how many big boys toys we have.

[mnbrant]

isn't anybody gonna say the future is worse than I thought?" I suppose you think the guy who wrote this article has the truth? I am a lib with schitzoprenia and don't take meds and... I have a tendency to make stuff up but I don't think that damages my credibility much. Hell I was good enough for the military, they looked at my psych records before I went in, knew I had some gender issues, confessed to some gayness in a military hospital when they asked me. Did I get kicked out? nope. I wen't on to be a tough soldier who worked in support. A lot of so called sane people get kicked out, I got my honorable.

[mnbrant]

Look I am not saying let the Jihadists win. But if they do, with the resulting insurgency, most but not all of mankind will die. The remnants of Mankind with form a coalition government giving everybody a govt issued debt card and outlawing credit. Every nation will have an equal say in how things will run. Fairies, Giants, and Leprecauns will reappear because nature will again predominate. As as the leader of the Centaurs I fully expect to grow hoofs and guide the heroes of the AGE to their destiny. The voices are telling me I am a Jewish Freemason somehow and they suspect I may be a member of the Illuminati. I am not sure about that.
Finally have you even been to a patriot meeting lately? They are not selling baked beans and videos of Bill Clinton anymore on the back table anymore. Your was probably busted up and you stopped going. I won't tell you their secrets but its no longer about politics, its almost all about making money. Patriots by and large don't have money. Their queer ways sometimes land them in jail, but for the most part Judges put up with them if they don't go too far. See you in the future!

[patriotandproud]

It is inconceivable to me that people think if we bring all our troops home, get rid of our military might and bow to international law, that we will be safer. WHAT WE WILL BE IS SITTING DUCKS! Have any of you hate-filled lefties ever lived in a third world country? Is that really what you want for your children? Or have you aborted all of them already? We were called paranoid by the Clinton administration...that allowed terrorists to kill our guys in Mogudishu and to come into our country and plot the horrific attack of 09-11...now that we are more vigilant, you want to take our ability to defend ourselves away. You have nothing to do all day except rant and rage agains the only part of government that is ligitimate...the part that protects its citizens and allows them to make their own way in the world. Unbelievable.

[imnho]

The virginia class submarine is capable of open ocean transit. It could even fight open ocean and deliver signifcant fire power if it had too.. It is optimized for close to the beach operations with special forces. Thats what it was built for.If you are going to fight and conduct operations open ocean the sea wolf is a much better investment.

Under the Bush adminastration a lot of money wound up in the black hole of miltary actions that were not well thought out conducted by a civilian leadership that was willfully blind. The conquences will be less money for many worthwhile projects, including but not limited too building submarines.

[mnbrant]

Ruby Ridge really helped calm things down didn't it. I just talked to a Patriot yesterday and as far as I could tell they have no problems with the way things are going. I think everybody needs to take a chill pill

[mnbrant]

Lets face it if the Jihadists win we can start an insurgency against them leading to a phyrric victory for them in that they will be car bombed themselves, there will be no petrol dollars funding them and they will be the ones that will be bled dry.

[sjc_1]

"The difference now is that they have money..."

That would be the money from filling all those SUV gas tanks, the same vehicles with the "Support the Troops" bumper stickers.

[parrot111]

It depends what you want. If you want to continue having an empire even if it comes at the expense of the common people than by all means spend as heavily as you want on the military. If you want to improve the everyday lives of your citizens, then you should bring all your troops home. This paranoid feeling that someone is going to invade because you don't have this or that is completely bogus because of the large reserve of nukes.

[noloyalisti]

To the right wing violent racist extremists like those that run the NRO, even moderate policy is "leftist". For example anything done in favor of workers, the poor or even middle class is anti-corporate and anti-American. These writers are some of the most twisted, slanted and clueless morons I have ever come across. The only thing that they actually accomplish is to embarrass themselves by sharing their obsolete and dangerous conservative "values".

[PVperson2]

Neo-cons call for unilateral war, preempted invasions, secret prisons, secret surveillance of the American public, torture of prisoners and they say the "left": has a warped view of the world, what morons.

[delfmast]

WastingtonDC: Aside from the continued decline of America, preached, poised, and prayed for, by the Mess(iah)'s official NYT campaign staff, for eight years. Aside from the stealthy execution of American decline now being driven by the administration's Friends of Blago, with the insulting appointment of a campaign finance genius crony to be ambassador to UK. And, aside from a President announcing he will sign a sensible, and constitutionally sound second amendment ruling even though it has a ruinous credit card interest bill attached to it, or because of all of the above, both left and right extremists chortling about daily developments, or the lack of them, should be careful what they wish for. In America's conservative Republic, the NYT, WP, BG, and 97 percent of the US MSM media are, thankfully, doomed to bankruptcy, but not, unfortunately, because of the perfected, and widely accepted political fact/reason, that they are 97% liberal hacks, working as paid, or unpaid Obama campaign staff, and water carriers for the feckless disloyal congressional majority, all committed to the death of individual liberty, on planet earth, but because their stockholders/ family owners/and board members hire and retain incompetent business managers. The MSM, never mainstream in my lifetime, and no longer rightly the media, will not, or cannot, adapt to the user generated, and more importantly, user commented/modified/approved content that rules our world internet anarchy, one that mirrors the first two centuries of our upstart American Republic. While the clueless NYT hacks will continue their slavish preaching of American decline, they, and America at large, have not before experienced a hardened political ward heeler, able and wiling to do anything, to enlarge the sphere of influence of the social fascist, i.e. mafia control that has ruled Chicago since prohibition, and allowed serious politicians to steal local and national elections with well tended cemeteries full of legally registered voters, for all of my life. Be afraid! This Mess(iah), like FDR before him, may be nearly as bright as even he thinks he is. The Friends of Blago will say anything to keep their paid welfare voter's block voting in line, while stealing any sensible ideas from any source, Islamic, Christian, any party, any creed, and executing them, all the while "going for it", to destroy the existing American Empire's leadership, (nuclear weapon delivery superiority) and the almighty US dollar, by devaluation/inflation through welfare spending that hardens their block of paid voters. Now, to our sorrow, a Democrat with the brains to co-opt the NRA, to simply obey the constitution's second amendment, thus raking in the unwary among the solid majority of gun owners in America, while gutting the rest of our constitution, wiping out our world leadership position, and destroying the dollar, by printing money to payoff their voter's and the unions, and drive us into an old Europe style mafia social fascism, that our upstart American conservative majority will not tolerate. While the Mess(iah) is certainly not as bright as NYT hacks and his cronies think he is, he is far far brighter than the stupid old white men (SOWM) who ran the solid conservative majority into the ditch, and set America up for the socialist death spiral that our liberal's intend to force us in to, and he is ten times as bright as we all thought. God help us!

[Razzl]

Talent was lelected in New Gingiches' freshman class of zealots in 1993 and seems not to have picked up on the shift in public mood against his "culture wars" style of name-calling politics. If he really wants to be taken seriously, then he would not go around accusing everyone who disagrees with him as being motivated only by "ideology" and making his case only in and to right-wing organs and think tanks. "Ever since Vietnam, the Left has distrusted American military power" pretty much sums up the time warp that his thinking, and the right's thinking is stuck in--the "left" that he keeps referring to, the left that exists in his imagination, are hippies and college students holding up copies of Mao's little red book as a way to tweak the militarist defense hawks as they lead us through the idiocy of Vietnam. Has Talent noticed that the "left" as he saw it hasn't existed in any form for about 30 years? The inability to see what is current and relevant in today's conditions is the problem which is killing conservatism, the cultural right, and the Republican party.

As to the substance of his arguments, his Vietnam and Cold-war era hawkish extremism is out of line with the sentiment on both right and left that the end of the Cold War was a suitable place to end our practice of being the world's policeman. The idea that we would always be able to fund the largest and most advanced military in the world is no longer valid in the face of the demographic realities taking place in China and India. Failing to withdraw sufficiently from that role is arguably the cause of the 9/11 attacks. Which lessons do we learn and which are men like Talent incapable of learning?

[creeper00]

imnho, you're misleading. While the Virginia-class submarines are designed to be able to operate in shallow water they are NOT limited to that. You told only half the story.

[ajjaxtheleast]

The tone deafness is a wash,,,,,

WE are as tone deaf as the repubs and the "what war crime?" dems,,
AND the news sites are tone deaf to the present bombings in
BAGHDAD that has killed over 40 and wounded 80 and the Kerkuk
bomings that killed eight American Sunni employees standing around
waiting for and chatting about what they will do with their salary when
in a few minutes they will get it from the payment window,,,

,,,they got but not from he payment window.

A bomb blast takes a bit more deafness to miss hearing than the
shuffling of finance priorities,,,dont you think?

[didserve]

Just for fun!

Stop all media articles written by AIPAC members and see how much coverage the Neocons get!

NRO take your duel passport holding staff and ship them back to the country of origin?