By John Ubaldi
Contributor, In Homeland Security
Since the Paris terrorist attacks, foreign policy has leaped into the national conscious and now each of the candidates for president must discuss global strategy. However, what they need to understand is that to have a strong foreign policy it first has to begin at home.
Since the end of the Second World War, whenever America was strong abroad, it was backed by a strong and vibrant economy at home.
Since the great recession of 2008-09, the economy has averaged a Gross Domestic Product of only around 2 percent, hardly robust enough to jump start the lackluster U.S. economy.
With a GDP that lacks strength, the nation’s debt has staggered to record heights without any substantial efforts by Washington to reduce its trajectory.
In an interview with Fortune Magazine in 2012, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, was asked to clarify previous comments as to why he believed the national debt was a threat to national security.
“Actually the way I said it was — and I still believe this — that it’s the single biggest threat to our national security. Obviously its complex, but the way I looked at it is, if we didn’t get control of our debt, there would be continued loss of confidence in America.”
“I was in the military for over 40 years, and one of the principles I kept with me was that there’s an expectation globally that the U.S. will lead. Questions about that expectation have certainly risen in recent years. The fact that there’s even a question about that is worrisome to me, and I think it needs to be for a lot of people.”
Currently across the globe there is a perception that the United States is a declining superpower, some of this is attributed to the Obama administrations “lead from behind” foreign policy, but the other factor is the enormous debt of the United States.
When Admiral Mullen made his comments in 2012, the national debt was $16.3 trillion, today it stands close to $19 trillion, and will be $20 trillion when President Obama leaves office.
Even former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in both the Bush & Obama administration, addressed the national debt while speaking as a panelist before the Center for Strategic and International Studies symposium in 2012 on “National Security Implications of America’s Debt.”
Gates mentioned that every time the someone talks of reducing the national debt they first look to the defense department, and since this symposium the armed forces are now at the smallest levels since before World War II, all the while the world around has exploded in chaos.
Fiscal constraints at home have forced radical reductions in the U.S. military and this aspect is not lost on our adversaries, who view this as further proof of a declining superpower.
Secretary Gates, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute remarked, “I have long believed—and I still do—that the defense budget, however large it may be, is not the cause of this country’s fiscal woes…. [T]he continued strength and global reach of the American military will remain the greatest deterrent against aggression, and the most effective means of preserving peace in the 21st century, as it was in the 20th.”
Secretary Gates remarked at the symposium at CSIS, “The defense budget may have to be on the table as a matter of political reality, but as a matter of simple math it is not fundamentally the cause of the long-term debt problem. Roughly two-thirds of all federal spending is going to entitlements, whose share of the budget is escalating rapidly, given the changing demographics of the U.S. population. Reducing defense spending by, say, even 15 to 20 percent in the near term would reduce the current annual budget deficit by just one-tenth – ten percent. But cuts on that scale would require dramatic reductions in the size, reduction and overall – size, readiness and overall capabilities of the U.S. military.”
Unfortunately, due to partisan politics Washington has been unable to address entitlement reform and to place the U.S. on a sound fiscal trajectory. This fiscal failure has also permeated down to the states, cities and municipalities across the country.
The nation’s most populous state, California, faces close to $200 billion in unfunded pension liabilities which they are unable or unwilling to address.
Other states across the nation are facing the same fiscal catastrophe; Illinois faces close to $200 billion shortfall; New York $250 billion; Maryland close to $100 billion; New Jersey almost $90 billion, and the staggering total the U.S. faces is over $3 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.
No one has stated how this will be paid?
The fiscal catastrophe is not only confined to just the federal government and the states, but the largest cities across the country are facing fiscal Armageddon! With all the attention on the police shooting in Chicago, missing in the coverage was the fiscal mess which the city faces and how it will pay its $63 billion debt.
The nation’s largest city, New York, faces well over $110 billion in debt and growing. This lack of fiscal accountability has spread like cancer to cities and municipalities across the country, but little attention has been paid to this looming crisis!
Unless the nation faces its fiscal responsibilities and gets its fiscal house in order, the U.S. will have a weakened international standing abroad. Our adversaries sense this. The question…does America?
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