“I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position,” outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Newsweek on June 19.  “[F]rankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government . . . that’s being forced to dramatically [sic] scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”

In fact, U.S. defense expenditures over the past decade have grown by two thirds in real terms, to over $700 billion per year, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan included.  If we add various off-the-books supplemental bills, the bottom line approaches a trillion—more than what the rest of the world spends on defense, and 50 percent more (in real terms) than this country’s average annual military expenditures during the Cold War.  America’s worldwide network of military-political alliances currently includes 60 countries and accounts for 80 percent of global military spending.  Some savings made by Gates affected the development of a few absurdly expensive weapons systems, such as the F-22 Raptor Stealthfighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle—none essential to making America safer.  By postponing or canceling these projects he merely reduced spending increases, but overall military spending will continue to grow.

Gates’ statement reflects the arrogance of Washington’s political class.  Having to bring costs in line with the nation’s ability to pay is unbearable, he says, as if a trillion per year for the Pentagon were a divinely ordained entitlement unconnected to the country’s economic reality.  No debate on the ends and means of American power is desirable in the world Gates inhabits.  The money to sustain global preeminence has to be procured with no questions asked.

A radical reduction in defense spending is economically necessary and strategically desirable.  Disengagement should start with the closure of at least half of the U.S. military bases around the world.  The official count is somewhere between 737 (in 2005) and 865 (in 2010), but it does not include 200 facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan and a number of secret locations elsewhere, such as the U.S. installations in Britain disguised as RAF bases.  In 2005 the Pentagon estimated the value of its overseas real estate at $127 billion, but this is widely considered an underestimate.  Over 200,000 uniformed personnel are deployed in those overseas bases, as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials.  They also employ 80,000 locals, including those tasked with watering and trimming 234 golf courses managed by the Department of Defense around the world.

There is no good justification for maintaining 150,000 American soldiers in 268 U.S. bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and almost 100 in South Korea.  Each of those countries is perfectly capable of defending itself.  Auctioning valuable Pentagon-owned real estate in those three countries alone could yield tens of billions.  (The huge Ramstein USAF base in Germany is conservatively valued at $3.3 billion.)

American bases overseas cover 700,000 acres and include 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings that we own, and half again that many which we lease.  Closing half of them over the next three to five years would not undermine U.S. national security in any way but would trim the defense budget and bring much-needed cash from the sale of decommissioned assets.

Scaling back our engagement with the rest of the world—Gates-speak for foreign military interventions—is equally overdue.

On June 22 the President announced he would withdraw all 33,000 “surge” soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.  Yet the number of U.S. troops still fighting that unwinnable war in 2013 will be 70,000—roughly the same as before the surge in 2009.  Obama did reiterate that combat operations would be transferred to Afghan forces in 2014, but their ability to assume that burden is in doubt.  His pledge “to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and train Afghan Security Forces to defend their own country” is not all that different from George W. Bush’s Afghanistan strategy: The nation-building rhetoric has been scaled down, but America remains deeply engaged.

The real test will come when the fragile gains from the surge are challenged by a resurgent Taliban—as they will be next year, once the troops start leaving in large numbers and Karzai’s none-too-loyal subjects consider hedging their bets.  Obama will face the choice of letting the situation deteriorate—just as he enters the election campaign—or ordering another surge, which could be even more damaging.  A recent poll by the Pew Research Center indicates that almost two thirds of Americans believe that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed “a great deal” to the nation’s mounting debt.

Obama will avoid the dilemma only if the Taliban refrains from escalation in anticipation of an eventual victory that is likely to follow the U.S. withdrawal.  In the meantime he should contemplate a bold new strategy centered on a residual U.S. force, the size of seven or eight brigades, which could launch lightning strikes against the Taliban rather than hold territory, while continuing to train Afghans.  There should be no time limits to this smaller force deployment.  This approach could save up to $100 billion per year.

America’s participation in the intervention in Libya is showing no signs of ending any time soon.  It further belies Gates’ claim that we are facing “dramatic disengagement” abroad.  This is an optional “engagement” par excellence.

A hundred days into the war, the justification for the intervention remains unclear.  U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized military action “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”  Less than two weeks later, on March 28, Obama declared that the intervention was necessary so that “democratic impulses” are not “eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship.”  Within days, however, American cruise missiles were launched against Qaddafi’s compounds with the obvious intention of deciding the issue in favor of the rebels.  The objective of removing him from power soon became nonnegotiable.  An additional motive was disclosed by Gates himself: Intervention in Libya “was considered a vital interest by some of our closest allies . . . that have come to our support and assistance in Afghanistan.”

The most harmful consequence of our “engagement” with Libya, from the standpoint of the American interest, is the sophistry Obama and his legal team have deployed in evading the strictures of the War Powers Act of 1973.  In reply to House Speaker John Boehner’s letter demanding an explanation, the White House made a number of striking assertions:

The President is of the view that the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require further congressional authorization, because U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of “hostilities” contemplated by the Resolution’s 60 day termination provision.  U.S. forces are playing a constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition, whose operations are both legitimated by and limited to the terms of a United Nations Security Council Resolution that authorizes the use of force . . . U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.

Denying that the United States is engaged in “hostilities” in Libya is patently absurd; Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) rightly declared that “it doesn’t pass a straight-face test.”  The claim that there is no “significant chance of escalation” is refuted by the evidence of missile strikes against residential neighborhoods, as the list of viable military targets is exhausted.  And, as CNN legal analyst Mary Ellen O’Connell pointed out, “the U.S. had better be involved in hostilities or else our forces are engaged in unlawful killing.”

The White House also claims that U.N. authorization per se makes congressional approval unnecessary.  This is some light years from candidate Obama declaring, in 2008, that “the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally [sic] authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”  The claim that a war involving the United States can be “legitimated” by a multinational agency—the United Nations, or NATO, or the Arab League—is not only legally absurd but immoral and potentially treasonous.

The adult life of Robert Gates began with the United States as a superpower, one of the two during the Cold War.  The bipolar balance of terror under which he matured and started his remarkable career was an unprecedented model of a global zero-sum game.  The relationship between the two superpowers was uneasy along the periphery (Korea, Vietnam) but mostly stable where it mattered most, like the city of Berlin or the Fulda Gap.  Its supreme endurance test—the Cuban Missile Crisis—was defused on the basis of eminently realist, rather than ideological, considerations.

Our victory in the Cold War was an intoxicating and ultimately corrupting experience for Gates and his generation.  Our “engagement with the world” in the post-Cold War era turned into an aberrant exercise in global imperialism.  That it will come to grief thanks to financial realities is a good thing.  No empire has prospered on debased currency, as demonstrated by Byzantium after Manzikert, Spain after the inflationary influx of gold and silver in the late 1500’s, or Britain after 1918.

As the printing presses go on producing dollars unaccounted for by newly created goods or services, America is taking larger security risks with her fiscal policies than with her military.  That Robert Gates does not grasp the implications of this key flaw in a global superpower is a measure of his limitations.

Devoid of meaningful insights or interesting ideas, Robert Gates is as passé as the notion of America’s benevolent global hegemony.  May he have many a happy round of golf in the years to come.