An increasingly cash-strapped America is promising significant cuts to its military. Coupled with a rising China, would the U.S. have to give up on its allies?
In 2010, China supplanted Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, a headline-grabbing event that underscored an increasingly apparent reality – the gap in economic power between the United States and China is narrowing rapidly.
When he first took office, President Barack Obama emphasized policies aimed at improving ties with China. But the U.S. announcement in January 2010 that it was providing Taiwan with a massive military aid package prompted an angry response from China. Yet while Washington finds itself increasingly at odds with a rising and more militarily capable China, its deteriorating fiscal situation means Washington has little choice but to reconsider its military posture. The fact is that the United States may have to live with a much narrower military focus than has marked its policies in recent decades.
U.S. defense capabilities are critical to its foreign policy strategy, but they are at the mercy of budgetary realities. With costly domestic programs taking a greater share of the U.S. federal budget as baby boomers retire, the country’s budgetary troubles have emerged as a major issue in this year’s presidential election.
Responding to charges of profligacy, the White House has tried to craft compromises with Republican lawmakers to reduce the size of the deficit. In last year’s Budget Control Act, both parties agreed to tight spending caps that reduce discretionary spending by $1 trillion over 10 years. More cuts could be coming. Yet even before the latest proposals, the Pentagon was faced with some tough choices. Under then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the U.S. Defense Department in January 2011 announced cuts of $78 billion to the U.S. military.
One could argue current and proposed U.S. defense cuts have already impacted U.S. defense strategies and posture while reducing necessary emphasis on equipment research, development, and procurement in preparation for long-term threats such as an emerging China and a resurging Russia. According to the Quadrennial Defense Review Report published in February 2010, the United States has taken a number of important decisions, including “ending production of the F-22 fighter, restructuring the procurement of the DDG-1000 destroyer and the Future Combat Systems programs, deferring production of new maritime prepositioning ships, and stretching out procurement of a new class of aircraft carrier.”
The problem is that many of the items being hit by budget cuts are indispensable to the large-scale deployment of U.S. military forces, meaning the United States risks a decline in its ability to strategically deploy forces in support of its allies.
And, while the United States is being forced to tighten its purse strings, China is increasing its military spending at a pace that outstrips its impressive economic growth rate. Between 2000 and 2009, China’s annual average GDP growth rate was 9.6 percent, while its official defense budget grew 11.8 percent on average, after adjusting for inflation.
This rapid increase in the military budget is underpinned by the powerful political influence wielded by the People’s Liberation Army. The role of the PLA was no clearer than surrounding the test flight of China’s new J-20 stealth bomber, which took place during the visit of Gates in January 2011 and, according to many reports, without the prior knowledge of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
But what should be of particular interest for the U.S. and its allies is what isn’t known about China’s defense budget. The figures announced each year by Beijing are widely believed to significantly underreport spending. Recently, China announced that its military spending was to rise 11.2 percent in 2012 to $106.4 billion. The U.S. Defense Department, though, has suggested that China’s total military spending had actually topped $150 billion in fiscal 2009.
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Dan
The title is do US cuts threaten its allies, the point is the US spending should be based on US needs, not on the needs of allies that are now willing to either spend blood or treasure on behalf of US interests.
If there are intrests in the South China Sea oe East Asia from China then the local nations need to be spending more as % of GDP than the US, if they are not then either the threat is not real or they are saying if it is real they would rather accmadate it. If Japan is worried it needs to breach the 1% of GDP when US is spending 4-5% Taiwan needs to build those submarines if they need them.
The US should be willing to help, it should not be willing to spend more than the local nations themselves.
Cyrus
The Problem with Japan is it is on their Constitution that Defense must not a percentage of their GDP.
Not all Asian Allies are unwilling to shed blood Philippines for one sent Soldiers in both Korean and Vietnam wars.
Joe
Can’t it be amended? They are presworn though, to the USA? It may be time to release that honor bond. It’s not like the world sees Japan as an imperial power any more. Just like the British, they are no longer empire-building. Pretty soon, we’ll be saying the same about the USA and China?
Yoshiaki YANO
Japan should make more efforts in defense.
I fear that you made a misunderstanding on the Constitution of Japan. The Constitution does not prohibit the defense budget more than 1% of the GDP. This policy was decided and kept by the Japanese government year by year. Now it’s time to change such a policy to adapt defense posture of Japan to the current security situation.
Yoshiaki YANO
Basically, I agree with you. The Japanese should be ashamed of its too small amount of the defense budget. As one of the veterans of the Ground Self Defense Force, I am convinced that Japan should share more burden to keep the power balance in the region. First of all, Japan has to admit the collective security.
Jonathan
The fact of the matter is China's defense budget has been increasing steadily from a very low base, while the U.S. military budget has been at a fairly high steady level for decades. The result is that the cumulative effect of our military budget is tens of times greater than that of China's. China will not be able to match our capabilities for decades. Not only that, China will not have and has no interest in projecting her military capabilities to far away lands.
Richard
US has been a benign super power and this can be seen from the receotion it receives all over the world,let’s hop[e that China will also learn to be a benign super power which I think it would learn to be one.
Vec
Do u know the meaning of benign.Iraq,Afghanistan,Chile,Vietnam,etc.???????????
An absolutely lying super power which is now on irrevocable decline.
You rerap what u sow.
America is for a start founded on genocide of the native Indians.
can it ever be benigh??????????
vec
American imperialist world prowler is hopefully at last constrained.
The delusion of Pax america and exceptionalism has at last come home to roost for America.
Japan,Taiwan and S.Korea will adjust to the new realities of the withdrawal of American imperialism accordingly.
Hopefully East Asia will no longer be an American lake to ride roughshod over everyone and America will no longer have the ability to be s trouble maker.
JohnX
The anti access use of missile is old news. I identified that as a major concern for future US naval movements back in 1998 in my research paper. The fact that it seems I was ahead of my time does not negate the fact that its been well known what Chinas long term plans are.
Ezra Shabot
@JohnX Should I call you the Sun Tzu of our times, or perhaps “John von Clausewitz”?
As all great empires, the USA will have to accept reality: No matter how much you try, all these single-power unilateral-acting decisions, and so on, will have to finish sooner or later. From the military point of view, America’s army is the strongest, however now its economy grows weak and closely tied to China (the same can be said of China’s economy, for an economically weak USA means trouble to them). That said the danger of confrontation is too low, and if a confrontation was to ensure, the USA would be unable to defeat China on its own turf.
We are no longer talking about the China that faced Japan in 1894-1895, we are talking about a China who can and will pursue its interest beyond its boarders, regardless of its A2-AD capabilities.
Only thing the USA can do now if it hopes to contain China is come with its head a bit -not too much- bowed to Russia.
JohnX
I was thinking master of the universe was a nice term. Maybe foreseerer, maybe recipient of a pay check?
But the reality is and was that the fact that China would target the US has been known for ages. The US just focused on business when the Chinese stated that they focused on war.
Its ignorance that kills us not knowledge.
Anon
“Of particular concern for the United States is the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), which has a range of 1,500+ kilometers.
The missile – which is relatively inexpensive to produce – is also dubbed the “Carrier Killer” and poses a significant threat to vessels operating in the Western Pacific. The missile is part of what appears to be an anti-access strategy aimed at potentially giving the United States a bloody enough nose to make it think twice about entering conflict areas.”
I’d like to see where the author gets any sort of price on the missile considering how opaque everything about it is, and whether his use of ‘relatively’ is in reference to the price of a carrier or other similar missiles.
Also lets remember that the missile hasn’t even been tested in its intended environment, there isn’t going to be any large scale production until that time, and this is a weapon that needs large scale production to be effective in any theater, assuming no counter-measures are taken against it.
ACT
This post doesn’t really tell us anything other than what we already know, though. No doubt Yoshiaki Yano writes out of concern for his own nation, considering his background.
Stefan Stackhouse
Sooner or later, the US is going to have to face up to reality. The only military establishment that we are going to be able to afford is one that protects a mid-ocean defensive perimeter. That means being able to defend out to Wake, but maybe not much farther. We’ll still be able to maintain a “strong enough” navy and air force, but we won’t be able to afford the huge army that comes with the massive commitments and interventionism we’ve been doing on the Eurasian mainland. I know that almost every single policy wonk and politician in Washington is in total denial about this, but this is the US future – count on it.
We can either get to work actively and intelligently following a path that smoothly takes us to this new reality, or we can continue in a state of denial until it is suddenly forced upon us, at great loss of life, material, money, and face.
Sorry, I know this isn’t what most Americans want to hear. They just want to think we can sit astride the top of the world forever as #1, but we’re broke, and its time to adjust to living within our diminishing means.
ACT
@Stephan
This downturn isn’t just economics: the US military has made some terrible moves in terms of procurement over the last two decades or so, two of which are the F-22 raptor (outperformed in many respects, including stealth, by the YF-23 Black Widow II) and the F-35 lightning II (which is, from what i’ve heard, a flying brick that carries next to no payload). In the long and short of things, the government should have been smart enough to simply drop any defense contracts that didn’t make their dates on time or produced a low quality product; when the lives of our men and women in service are at risk, there should be no such thing as the “lowest bidder”.
the problem is with the defensive perimeter; US power projection seems (at least from what i’ve observed) to be the major problem that’s holding PRC expansion in the SCS at bay, thanks to it’s alliances with nations in the area. if that projection capacity disappears due to much of the navy being decommissioned….
well, i won’t make any predictions because it wouldn’t be right; several times in the past when we thought something nasty would go down nothing ever really happened.
Dalton
And how about the Chinese? Don’t you know that their economy is faltering?! Just think of the Japanese in the 80s, then you could know for sure what China’s future economy would be! Unleash Japan, they will get the job done!!
John Chan
@Dalton,
Japan has first trade deficit, and their population is declining. USA deficit is keep on rising, the Fed is very worrying that USA is going to follow Japan into the lost decades, because American deleveraging.
If China does not have money to finance USA deficit, you also can guess what USA’s future economy would be. China also should force Japan to unleash its export force into USA market instead of letting them make easy money in China. Make Japan ravage USA market like in the 80s, they will get the job done!!
jeffrey wu
The Japanese were forced by the US to appreciate its currency thus screwing up its exports, which funded the strong Japanese growth in the 80s. The Japanese had no choice, how can you defy the order of a country that has military bases on your territory. So they appreciated the Yen and exports died and went to Taiwan and the Japanese economy stagnated and still has not recovered today. What concerns the Americans is that the USA has no such authority in China. They can’t force the Chinese to appreciate the Yuan like they did with the Japanese. They have no military leverage over China. In short, China can afford to give the US the finger while Japan couldn’t. Bad luck Japan, have fun remaining America’s puppet while the Chinese surpass you.
Anon45
What about Guam?
Cyrus
After WWII I don’t think the US would allow China to have sole control of a major trading lane.
Tum.
I think the US Military has, like the rest of the US economy, used the economic crisis to its advantage. The Iraq war marked the end of an era: the days of the leviathan force are over. It is plain to see to the world in general that large stabalisation forces, or ‘oil spot’ style combat is drawing to a close.
These stabalisation and destabalisation occur much more rapidly, and requires highly specalised reactionary forces. If anything, the US is simply cutting the fat off their increadibly large armed forces and leaving behind what they need.
China, on the other hand, has much more of a ‘cold war’ style force: lots and lots of low-tech stuff, which has a pretty slow response time. They then combine this with lots of low cost rockets and missiles to get rid of anything that comes near them. Their strategy seems to be very simmilar to what the soviet union was going for.
To be honest, both strategies work well for what each country is trying to achieve: the US is trying to protect their increadibly vast trade routes, while China is just trying to protect itself from incomming threats.