After more than two years, President Obama’s national security policy looks all too familiar: like President Bush’s policy.
You remember the Bush doctrine? Its most prominent tenet was the policy of preventive war—using the U.S. military to eliminate potentially dangerous enemies, rather than using military force only when the United States is clearly threatened.
Generally speaking, the Bush administration argued that deposing unfriendly regimes and promoting democracy both militarily and diplomatically were in America’s long-term best interests. President Obama not only has embraced this approach, stressing it again in his May 19 speech on the Middle East, he’s gone further: increasing military spending, expanding the war in Afghanistan, handing off more of the mission to contractors and mercenaries, and bombing Libya without anything resembling a threat to the United States or even a nod from Congress—in violation of the War Powers Act.
Consider the budget. President Obama’s first defense budget, for fiscal year 2010, was $685.1 billion, if we include the “supplemental” funds for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (a budget gimmick he had promised not to use). This was 3 percent higher than in the previous year.
The Obama administration upped the ante again for FY 2011, requesting a base budget of $548.9 billion, plus $159.3 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq, for a total of $708.3 billion. That was before the bombing of Libya, which already has cost some $750 million, Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed on May 12 at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
