I am deeply concerned that further cuts in the defense budget—never mind the cuts that have already occurred—will leave us a crippled superpower. But I also recognize that the military isn’t the only instrument of power projection that we have or need. The State Department, USAID, and other civilian agencies also do valuable work—not always, but often enough that we should hesitate to cut their funding if we want to remain an active, engaged force for good in the world.
Yet, that is just what the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee is proposing. It wants to cut the State Department and foreign operations budget by more than $5 billion next year, from the $54.7 billion the administration has requested down to $48.4 billion. Obviously, cutting State Department funding is easier for Republicans than cutting the Department of Defense, but it is no wiser as a long-term prescription for America’s future. These types of cuts will do little to address our deep-seated fiscal woes, which require entitlement reform, but they will do much to handicap our ability to influence the world.
This misguided initiative put me in mind of an eloquent passage from Sen. Marco Rubio’s Brookings Institution speech yesterday:
Until very recently, the general perception was that American conservatism believed in a robust and muscular foreign policy. That was certainly the hallmark of the foreign policy of President Reagan, and both President Bush’s. But when I arrived in the Senate last year I found that some of the traditional sides in the foreign policy debate had shifted.
On the one hand, I found liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans working together to advocate our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and staying out of Libya. On the other hand I found myself partnering with Democrats like Bob Menendez and Bob Casey on a more forceful foreign policy. In fact, resolutions that I co-authored with Senator Casey condemning Assad and with Senator Menendez condemning fraudulent elections in Nicaragua were held up by Republicans. I recently joked that today, in the U.S. Senate, on foreign policy, if you go far enough to the right, you wind up on the left.
This is indeed a worrisome trend, and one that Sen. Rubio is right to oppose. Let us hope he will have more company on the right, otherwise short-sighted penny-pinching could convert the 21st century from being the American century into the Chinese century.
Until there is a thorough house-cleaning of the State Department by someone like John Bolton, cutting funds to that foggy bottom comprising Arabists, appeasers and United Nations sycophants should be more than welcomed. How pleasing it would be if Hijab Hillary had no budget to send out the umpteenth peace process muscle man team to squeeze Israel or to fly another bunch of government philanthropists to Korea to lavish gifts on Kim Jong-Un.
O.M.G. n nWow, from what rock did this Max Boot slither? He doesn't want to cut funding for the State Department? Unbelievable. These are the anti-Republican, "America-sux", Lib-tard, UN loving idiots and Max Boot does not want to cut their funding. n nSomeone explain to me why Commentary has not run off Max Boot by now? n
It's funny how private corporations in virtually every area of business can, when faced with difficulties after years of growth, cut staff and budgets ten and fifteen percent and still deliver the same revenues the following year. Yet government is never deemed capable of doing that. I guess it's because only the best and brightest serve in government and every single employee is working to the absolute limit every single day.
Were Max Boot just another talking head there would be no reason to waste time responding to his lachrymose pleadings for the historically anti-Semitic State Department. (See latest revelations by historian Rafael Medoff that the State Department in 1948 threatened to unleash an "anti-Semitic incident" if Zionists continued their pursuit of Israeli statehood.) But Max Boot is a foreign policy adviser to Romney, and if as I hope Romney boots out Hussain Obama then Boot's opinions may actually have some real importance. John Bolton fortunately is also a foreign policy adviser to Romney, and his views certainly don't coincide with those of State Department sympathizer Boot. Let hope that Bolton gives him the boot.