Sometimes we measure the wrong things because we reasonably believe them to be the right things. Perhaps we need a "metric metric" that measures if a metric is of any value...
But sometimes we measure the wrong thing because it tells the story we want to tell. A recent example: Last week I visited a major defense think tank in Washington DC. They had recently published a perspective on military budgets and had determined that "SOCOM was a big winner" and wanted to gain our insights on their analysis.
Detailed analysis of military budgets during and following conflict from WWII forward showed a fairly standard degree of rise and fall as compared against Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The standard post-conflict budget throughout that era was 3% of GDP.
The recommendation was that the US was very much in a situation as faced by President Eisenhower and should look at making similar decisions regarding how to invest a budget based on 3% of GDP. All quite reasonable.
My question was: "Why do you only look at military budgets post-WWII? We were in a Cold War during that period that we are not in now. During the Cold War the US adopted the geo-strategic realities of a European continental power, demanding a large standing army in addition to other capacities designed specifically to deter the Soviets. The geo-strategic reality of the US is one of a maritime nation that has no such requirement for such a peacetime ground force. Today we are back to our geo-strategic roots, and arguably the period of time from 1900 -1941 is far more applicable to our current situation than the period of 1947-2012. Did you look at that era as well?
Answer: "Yes"
Question: "Really, and what was the % of GDP applied to defense in the post-conflict periods of that era"?
Answer: "1 percent"
Sometimes measuring the right thing doesn't tell the story you want to hear, so you refine what you measure until you finally get the answer you want. What I found particularly disturbing was that they had done the research, had the answer, and had then deliberately crafted the findings to tell the story they thought the customers would want to hear. All their facts were true and accurate as far as I could tell, they just didn't tell the whole story as it presented inconvenient results.
Now, as to what defense spending should be, it may not be 1% given the advent of expensive new domains such as air, space and cyber; but I doubt it is 3% unless we cling to a force we want, rather than build the force we need. So my takeaway is that we probably can, and should take defense cuts down to 2% of GDP. After all, this is not about SOF or any of the Services "winning," this is about the United States of America "winning." (in quotes, as one must not only define the right level to assess "winning" at, but also get to the right definition of what constitutes a win.)
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