WASHINGTON - The US spends roughly US$900 billion (S$1.23 trillion) annually on its military, as much as the next 10 countries combined.
But it is caught in an intensifying bind, as demands to spend even more in order to both keep up with China and maintain US power globally collide with domestic priorities, inducing concern and fuelling debate in the national security community.
Underlying the debate is the strategic question of maintenance of US deterrence amid what Washington sees as the profound challenge of the rise and reach of China, and worry that the US is behind the curve. Difficulties in military recruitment, and the protracted war in Ukraine depleting munitions stockpiles, have only heightened the concern.
On Aug 30, in a live-streamed Facebook discussion, US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall – who directs the air force’s annual budget exceeding US$173 billion – said: “If we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China, would we be really ready to do that? And I think the answer is ‘Not as much as we could be’, by a significant margin.”
Secretary Kendall is but the latest military leader to sound a warning about readiness, and also about China’s rapid military build-up.
In February 2023, in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy could field up to 400 ships in the coming years, up from about 340 now.
The US fleet sits at under 300 ships, he said. Just one of China’s naval shipyards is bigger than all the US’ naval shipyards combined, Mr Del Toro said.
The Pentagon wants to have 350 manned ships by 2045 – still short of the projection for China’s fleet.
Before that target is met, however, the US fleet is expected to shrink as older vessels are retired, according to a November report from the US Congressional Budget Office.
“We are not the arsenal of democracy any more,” Mr Elbridge Colby, who was deputy assistant secretary of defence for strategy and force development in the Donald Trump administration, told The Straits Times.
“The arsenal is China,” he said.
“In the case of our attack submarines, which are the crown jewels of the American military, according to the Congressional Research Service, 40 per cent are in maintenance at any given time because of multiple things – we lack spare parts, we lack trained personnel, welders, we lack shipyard capacity.”
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The US budget is divided into two categories: mandatory spending for social programmes and discretionary spending for defence.
According to figures cited by the Brookings Institution in a discussion on Aug 30 on how much may be enough for the military, in 2022, the federal budget breakdown was 66 per cent for mandatory social spending, 12 per cent for discretionary spending for defence, and 14 per cent for non-defence discretionary spending – essentially, social services.
The military budget has to compete mainly with the last category.
The Department of Defence has asked Congress to approve a US$842 billion budget for fiscal 2024, which begins on Oct 1.
That means the US defence budget is flatlining, analysts say, which is not good enough.
But getting more from the social sector may be politically untenable.
“I think a lot of the defence people give their preferred answer, which makes their life easier – which is to spend double what we’re doing,” Mr Colby said.
But there is little support among either Democrats or Republicans for cutting social programmes, he said.
“I don’t see it as plausible that the United States will essentially spend its way out of this,” Mr Colby said. “Especially because we’re dealing with China, which, whatever economic troubles it’s having, is roughly a peer economy.”
He added: “The American people should look at the fundamental, core missions of the armed forces, and whatever that costs, they should be prepared to pay.
“And that is denying China the ability to essentially dominate Asia; having a nuclear deterrent; and a counter-terrorism capability. Those, to me, are non-negotiable.”
The Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, is one of seven major US Navy shipbuilding yards across the country. But just one of China’s naval shipyards is bigger than all the US’ naval shipyards combined, said US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in February. PHOTO: NYTIMES
Mr Colby is also co-founder and principal of The Marathon Initiative – a strategy group aimed at preparing the US for sustained great power competition – and has been advocating a major, broad resuscitation of the US’ defence-industrial base.
Dr Cynthia Watson, professor emeritus and former dean of faculty at the National War College, told ST that the anxiety in Washington is partially justified.
“No military individual ever is going to say I have enough, because… the mission is to prevent something, and you don’t know what the other side has, so you always have to (consider a) worst-case scenario,” she said.
“We have gone down the path of building very expensive platforms that we see as very capable, but it turns out they need an awful lot of maintenance and replacements, and simply producing them is taking much more than it used to.”
She added: “We tend to see the world as a problem to be fixed and once we fix it there will be stability. That’s like being on a treadmill, and it’s very difficult to get off.”
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