The Gates Budget and the Media War
By Moritz Sudhof | April 17, 2009 at 5:09 pmWhen Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the new defense budget last week, proposing changes in over 50 Pentagon programs, members of Congress responded with predictable furor. Representatives don’t want to lose jobs in their districts (and the cuts affect a lot of districts: Lockheed Martin Corp. has made sure that parts for the F-22 are produced in 46 states.) Furthermore, Congress wants to assert its power in ultimately deciding the fates of these programs (Chair of the House Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton responded to Gates by emphasizing that “the buck stops with Congress“).
Gates’ strategy, then, for pushing his budget cuts through is to convince the public that saving these big-name weapons programs is just not worth it. Gates takes this battle seriously: he followed his press conference with roundtables, conference calls, one-on-one interviews, and most recently a series of visits to military colleges. (Anyone else think it was curious that Gates’ media blitz was a essentially a one man show? President Obama is certainly a supporter if not a driving force behind the cuts and could have spread the media message with more force and speed with one word than Gates could in one week — yet the only one advertising arms reductions is the lone Republican in the Cabinet.)
Little did Gates know his biggest win in the media war came through fortuitous timing: a US Navy-pirate standoff dominates headlines for four days just as Gates argues that our military can’t successfully confront modern unconventional threats purely with giant ships and jets. He couldn’t have asked for a better way to underscore his point.
However, with China is moving closer to submarines, a blue ocean navy, and perhaps aircraft carrier plans soon — it will be ever more difficult to find a balance between big weapons program and counter-insurgency-style military.
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[...] the same vein as my earlier post on the fortuitous timing of the Defense Budget news, news about the Bush intelligence report covers forcefully underscore [...]
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