By David Ignatius
Wednesday, January 26, 2011;
Last week we celebrated the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, with its ringing call to "pay any price, bear any burden" for the nation's security. But a better guide to the choices we face today is President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address,( you can listen and follow speech below) delivered three days earlier, and his call to restrain the "military-industrial complex."
Trimming the defense budget is one of the hardest tasks in Washington. Congress never met a weapons system it didn't like. But with the nation's debt problems, making sensible cuts has become essential. That's clear to Defense Secretary Bob Gates and the military leadership, as President Obama noted in his State of the Union address, even if Congress is still treating the Pentagon budget as a pork barrel.
Senior Pentagon officials recognize that new technologies make it possible to reshape the budget without putting the country at greater risk. But this transition will require an honest evaluation of the "legacy systems" - the squadrons of manned bombers and fighters; the fleets of aircraft carriers, cruisers and submarines - that are wrapped in red, white and blue.
The military loves these traditional instruments of American power, despite their immense cost. But as technologies change, they will gradually become as outmoded as a cannonball or a cavalry charge.
Defense analysts argue that the military needs to focus less on fancy platforms - its nuclear ships or supersonic jets. These systems will soon be vulnerable to attack from lasers and other directed-energy weapons. But more important, the platforms will matter less than what they carry. This is the age of "unmanned aerial vehicles" - and soon unmanned ships, subs and tanks, too. These simple, autonomous platforms will be cheaper and more robust but no less deadly to an adversary.
If the Obama administration seizes this opportunity and drives it through the inevitable congressional opposition, it can begin a real transformation of the defense budget. Technology should allow the United States to cut costs for traditional legacy systems as it prepares for the new threats that are ahead.
The new technologies that will drive these changes are detailed in a study called "Technology Horizons" that was prepared last year by Werner Dahm, who was then chief scientist of the Air Force. He urged research on "cyber resilience" and "electromagnetic spectrum warfare," including lasers and other beam weapons. And he stressed that unmanned systems, coordinated by advanced software, can give "operational advantages over adversaries who are limited to human planning and decision speeds."
Lasers are only a few years away from being practical weapons, Pentagon officials say. Ground-based lasers could revolutionize air defense, and a new generation of solid-state lasers may be small enough for airborne platforms. "Directed-energy systems will be among the key 'game-changing' technology-enabled capabilities," wrote Dahm.
Space will become, metaphorically, a vulnerable "low ground" in this new environment. Powerful ground-based lasers will be able to blind or disable satellites, so redundant forms of communication will be needed. So will alternatives to platforms that depend on space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.
Though our "Buck Rogers" fantasies make us think of lasers primarily as offensive weapons, experts say they will be just as useful for surveillance - illuminating targets with pinpoint digital precision (when clouds aren't in the way). Researchers are developing laser-driven air-defense systems that can instantly detect and then strike incoming missiles. This is a technology revolution that, among other things, could actually make Israel safe from missile and rocket attack.
The hard part of this defense transformation will be giving up the grand old systems that for generations have symbolized U.S. military power. But that process of shedding the past is absolutely essential. If we try to keep all the old systems and add the new ones, our already overstretched budget will rip apart like a gunnysack. The Pentagon knows it can't have it all; hopefully, members of Congress (who love to bloviate about cutting the budget but hate cutting actual programs) will get the message, too.
President Obama has the right team in place to begin this strategic downsizing of the defense budget. Gates has been an outspoken advocate of cutting programs we can't afford, and he has strong backing from Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. James Cartwright, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military brass knows the country won't be secure if it's broke.
In this season of budget politics, there can't be any sacred cows. Obama and his Pentagon advisers need to show the country that by changing how we spend money, it will be possible to cut our defense budget and stay safe.
Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People,
January 17th, 1961 [Delivered from the President’s Office at 8:30 p.m.]
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the
responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency
is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final
thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I
pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long
ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate
during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent
during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues,
cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured
that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress
ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the
peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity
among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious
people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad. Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,
there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the
miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense;
development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in
basic and applied research--these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain
balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy,
balance between cost and hoped for advantage--balance between the clearly necessary and the
comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties
imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the
national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually
finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the
main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty,
ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own
destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in
peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American
makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men
and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military
security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the
American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual--is felt in every city,
every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the
proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful
methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has
been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and
costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal
government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of
scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically
the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the
conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes
virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds
of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations,
and the power of money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert
to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new
and old, within the principles of our democratic system--ever aiming toward the supreme goals
of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s
future, we--you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today,
plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot
mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political
and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become
the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever
growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength.
That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony
of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must
learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this
civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years--I wish I could
say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So--in this my last good night to you as your President--I thank you for the many opportunities
you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some
things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the
future.
You and I--my fellow citizens--need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will
reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle,
confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and
continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs
satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn
for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand,
also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn
charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the
earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace
guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
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