Stanford University Press Announces New Book: America’s Defense Meltdown

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has asked Congress to endorse his new defense budget with cuts to major weapons spending on April 6. “Gates says his budget will "profoundly reform" the way the Pentagon buys weapons and does business,” according to a report in the Washington Post. Will these changes fix a Pentagon that everyone in Washington agrees is “broken?” Will Congress adopt the changes Gates seeks, or will it be business as usual?

In a hard-hitting new book, 13 non-partisan Pentagon insiders, retired military officers and defense specialists explain the continuing collapse in America’s defenses and what to do about it. America’s Defense Meltdown, edited by Winslow Wheeler and just released by Stanford University Press, reveals how decades-long problems have corroded American military power. While the politicians tout our military as “the best in the world,” they appear oblivious to the wide-ranging problems plaguing United States armed forces. Despite the highest levels of spending since World War II, America's armed forces are now smaller, older and less ready to fight, even as we send our soldiers and marines to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Committed to sparking a debate on what it really takes to defend America and its vital interests around the world – and untainted by a desire for personal gain or partisan politics – the book’s authors tackle how to shape far more effective forces at far less cost in nine vital areas: strategy, people and training, land forces, sea forces, air forces, the reserves, weapons buying, and managing both the bureaucracy and the money.

Among their key recommendations:

• The president and Congress should “explicitly restrict the use of our military forces to those problems that only military forces can solve and that the nation can rally to, and to eschew the use of our forces to serve hubris, propaganda, or dogma.”
• Redesign the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to cope far more effectively with 21^st century warfare in all its diverse forms, rather than refighting either the Cold War or Vietnam.
• Abandon unrealistic wish-list hardware planning that produces outrageously expensive, ineffective weapons. Instead, base our weapons on the real lessons of combat, not technological fantasies, and ruthlessly exercise discipline in the acquisition process.
• Restore accountability and competence to the budget and acquisition process to build far more effective, ready to fight forces at drastically reduced cost.
• Revitalize our officer corps by replacing obsolete industrial age manpower concepts with new ideas that foster a thinking, adaptive military leadership.

The authors are fully aware of the huge challenges that President Obama and Secretary Gates both face. As Winslow Wheeler remarks, “The changes require a president with an iron will who will require real, not cosmetic, reforms of a system determined to and skilled at countering them. It will also require a president who will stick with the process for years, continuously making decisions that will ultimately reverse the present disastrous course U.S. national security is now on.”

About the Editor:

Winslow T. Wheeler worked on national security issues for 31 years for members of the U.S. Senate and for the U.S. General Accounting Office. He is Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. He has been interviewed on CNN, PBS, C-SPAN, and many other networks, and his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Politico, Defense News, among many places. He has authored two books: The Wastrels of Defense (2004) and Military Reform (2007).

Stanford Security Studies

An imprint of Stanford University Press and co-published with the Center for Defense Information

Stanford Security Studies
An imprint of Stanford University Press and co-published with the Center for Defense Information
April 2009				272 pages
Paper Edition		$19.95		9780804769310
Kindle Edition		$9.95

For media inquiries, please contact Puja Sangar at 650.724.4211 or puja.sangar@stanford.edu.