While Ebola seems to be the scariest thing for some people, two articles in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal scared me more. First, this from “Russia Buzzes Europe’s Airspace”* on the front page:
“Russian military aircraft conducted aerial maneuvers around Europe this week on a scale seldom seen since the end of the Cold War, prompting NATO jets to scramble in another sign of how raw East-West relations have grown. …
Military jets from eight nations were scrambled to meet the Russian aircraft, which a NATO spokesman said remained in international airspace and didn’t violate NATO territory.
However, NATO officials said such flights heighten the risks of military miscalculations. …
Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, called the flights ‘Russian aggression’ in an interview on CNN. ‘I think they are trying to reassert themselves,’ he said. ‘I think we have to watch it very carefully. We have to reassure our allies.’”
Why is Russia doing this? Are they trying to intimidate the West ahead of some new move in Ukraine? Is Vladimir Putin trying to show Russia is still important, even with oil prices down? Or is President Putin trying to get us to back off so Russia can go after some other country? The scary part is not only what Russia might be intending to do (something we are not good are predicting). It’s also the chance of an accident or mistake. Mistakes happen. Would the two sides be able to control things if a mistake happens? Probably. But “probably” is still scary.
Then on page two, there was this article: “Air Force Says Bombing Worsens Staff Shortage.” It article explains:
“The Air Force says the U.S. bombing campaign against Islamic extremists is exacerbating its shortage of plane-maintenance experts ….
To keep U.S. planes flying over Syria and Iraq, Air Force officials said they have had to deploy hundreds of midlevel maintenance personnel to the overseas missions. …
‘We believed we were going to have a bit of a pause coming out of Afghanistan,’ said Deborah Lee James, secretary of the Air Force.”
In other words, at the very time the Air Force was planning on “a bit of a pause,” we not only have a bombing campaign in the Middle East, but Russia’s gamesmanship is resulting in more flights in Europe, too.
The conclusion seems clear: We need to increase defense spending. We need equipment – and we need people to maintain it. We cannot base our defense plans on hoping for “a bit of a pause”. Our defenses have to be ready now – and in the future.
I am reasonably hopeful that a majority of Republicans elected to Congress on Tuesday would support an increase in defense spending even without a decrease in other spending. I am sure some of them would like to tie any increase in defense spending to a cut somewhere else, but that is a non-starter. We need to spend more on defense. No conditions. I think that most Republicans would agree.
The bigger problem may be whether the President, and Democrats, are willing to do that. Or will they say that they are only willing to increase defense spending if Republicans agree to increase domestic spending, too. My fear is that, even if the Republicans agree to leave non-defense spending as it is, President Obama (and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi) won’t agree to increase defense spending without increasing domestic spending, too.
Such a deadlock would be scary – and dangerous. If you wonder why, ask Vladimir Putin.
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* These are the headlines from the print edition of the WSJ.
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