March 01, 2013

Phyllis Bennis: "Cutting the Military Budget, 2013 Anniversaries, Palestinian Prisoners"

Thanks to Phyllis Bennis for this wide-ranging analysis of the ' sequestration' budget cuts, why austerity is the wrong policy, hopes for a 'new foreign policy', rising tensions in the Middle East and more.

Excerpt:

... "I’m no expert on the sequester process — but just one more point. The sequester is crazy. It should be about cutting the military budget and preventing, not causing austerity. That means protecting, not cutting, jobs and schools and health care. But — if the sequestration bill were overturned tomorrow, and Congress had to start all over with their intention of raising more than a trillion dollars without tax cuts, as the Republican majority insists, the result would absolutely be worse. The massive military cuts in the sequester would be politically impossible, and social spending would be cut anyway.

The sequester is terrible in terms of the cuts that will affect a lot of vulnerable people across our country (including long-term unemployment insurance) and desperately needs to be changed. But it protects the most important entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. Of the cuts to come, 58% will be from the military budget, reflecting the percentage of federal discretionary spending that goes to the military — that’s really a good thing. Any new version would almost certainly cut the entitlements and exempt the military from any budget cuts.

And last, the military cuts will actually make us safer. The Pentagon decided not to send a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget considerations. That’s great, given the level of tension already there, with the looming threat of even an accidental confrontation between U.S. and Iranian ships in the crowded, narrow Strait of Hormuz, for instance. Keeping a second giant aircraft carrier with its dozens of huge escort ships home is a much safer option. Now we just have to figure out how to bring that first carrier group home too!

The good news is that more and more organizations are taking up the demand for massive cuts in Pentagon spending, from the Children’s Defense Fund and Friends of the Earth to US Action and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. More and more organizations are joining the Jobs Not War campaign. The sequester isn’t our choice — but in response, our job is to fight to cancel its social spending cuts, while demanding that the Pentagon be forced to impose every last budget cut sequestration calls for.

A NEW TERM, A NEW FOREIGN POLICY?

With the second inauguration, many hoped we would see an Obama Foreign Policy 2.0 — with an immediate end to the war in Afghanistan, a halt in the drone war, major cuts to the military budget, and a new foreign policy based on diplomacy rather than war. But that was a failed hope. Around the time of the State of the Union address I spoke on Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story” about the failures of the Obama administration’s foreign policy during the last four years and the significant ways it must change in this next term."...
Read full report here

Published February 28, 2013. The New Internationalism project is part of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

This first appeared in the New Internationalism Newsletter. You can subscribe for the latest updates.

About Phyllis Bennis