New fashion: Budget cuts

.

It's by now obvious that the new fashion is about military budget cuts. Well, it's at least a fashion in Western nations.

This begs a question: What is true?

(a) We planned to spend too much.

(b) We plan to spend too little.

(c) Something happened that reduced the need for military power.

(d) A very unlikely case; ecoonomic difficulties increase the acceptance of defence risks.

(a) and (b) indicate grave political errors that should be enough to justify the end of a politician's career.

I suspect the answer is (a) coupled with the remark that this fashion is a disappointingly late consequence of the economic crisis (+its roots and +what it caused).

The same question can almost always be asked when force strengths change; was the old level wrong, is the new level wrong or did something relevant happen?

In the end, it's quite obvious that our budgets are always wrong - they're either too large or too small. The legislative never gets it right simply because humans are fallible.

Yet, we could exploit the opportunity to learn. The new political truth is that the new budgets will be officially right. This means the old ones were most likely wrong and thus should be discussed as such.

Let's learn from that mistake. Why wasn't the budget changed at an earlier date?

Bureaucratic and political inertia? Special interests? Did too many people get used to the old status quo and assumed it to be right & proven?

Or is the new budget going to be wrong (too small)?

(I have no real problem with budget changes simply because I don't see a "too small" or "too large" problem in Germany. The money is spent for a completely wrong approach in my opinion. We're muddling through with no big & brilliant idea anywhere and our force structure planners of the past need to be fired immediately. Exhibit A: The structure of the army brigades.)

Sven Ortmann

.