De defensa

Le déficit des fous

6 février 2010 — Peut-on à la fois cumuler une dette colossale représentée dans sa partie dynamique par un budget fédéral avec un déficit à mesure ($1.600 milliards cette années, $1.300 milliards l’année prochaine, $8.500 milliards pour les 10 années cumulées à venir, selon les projections qui peuvent et tendront sans doute à s’aggraver) –et des dépenses de défense à mesure, également colossale ($708 milliards pour l’année FY2011 – en réalité, plus de $1.000 milliards avec les divers postes annexes et dissimulés)? C’est le dilemme qui commence à devenir un des problèmes centraux de l’administration Obama, des experts de défense, de la politique de sécurité nationale des USA.

• Le 22 janvier 2010, Dan Goure, sur le blog de Lexington Institute, Early Warning, estimait que le résultat de l’élection partielle du Massachusetts ouvrait la perspective d’une réduction des dépenses de défense.

«Tuesday was not a referendum on national security, but it could have serious consequences for defense spending. If, as many observers believe, one message from Massachusetts is for government to control its appetite, then the response we must expect is an effort to alter the trajectory of future federal budgets. The problem is where cuts will be made. There is a strong historical correlation between Democratic Party control over the Congress and reduced defense spending. A crash program of deficit cutting could produce a federal budget that included deep reductions in the defense budget.»

• Dans sa chronique du 28 janvier 2010, commentant les documents qui commencent à circuler concernant la Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2010 qui va bientôt être rendue publique (“plan quadriennal” du Pentagone 2010-2014, pour la stratégie, la gestion, l’équipement, etc.), Loren B. Thompson, également du Lexington Institute, identifie “trois défis” essentiels pour le Pentagone, que, selon lui, la QDR ignore complètement. Voici l’un de ces trois défis, qui concerne les rapports du budget de la défense avec l’évolution de l’économie US, et, par conséquent, pour ce qui est du gouvernement, de la dette et du déficit.

«The second big problem is America's declining economy. Everybody knows the economy is going through a rough patch, but when you lose one percentage point of global GDP each year for ten straight years, that's more than just a downturn – it's a secular decline. The fact that U.S. defense spending has doubled during the same period that its economy has shrunk from 32% to 23% of global output tells you a day of reckoning lies ahead for U.S. defense spending. Five percent of the world's population can't keep sustaining nearly half of global military outlays while generating only a quarter of global output. My colleagues at Lexington get irritated when I say it this way, but we have reached a point in our history where our resources are so constrained that the only way we can maintain our current military posture is to borrow money from the future military adversary we should fear the most – China. Obviously, this is not a tenable arrangement over the long run, but fixing it is far beyond the scope of the QDR.»

• Deux jours plus tard, le 1er février 2009, Thompson poursuit sur un autre registre, en fait une variation sur le même thème: “La dette qui s’accroît affaiblit l’Amérique”. Il critique le comportement des dirigeants politiques et identifie une position de plus en plus critique pour les USA.

«If you've been following congressional hearings about the near collapse of America's financial system, then perhaps you have already figured out why both political parties were so blind to the danger. They were blind because they did not want to see. Anyone who cared to look could see something was not right with the way risks were being measured, but it was more rewarding to act like everything was fine. Having now indulged in two years of partisan recrimination over the resulting financial crisis, the political system is ready to embrace its next big delusion. The Obama Administration is providing the foundation for that delusion today, in the form of its fiscal 2011 budget request.

»The new delusion is that America will be made healthier and safer by continuing to borrow over a trillion dollars annually, mostly from foreign nations, even though we know the federal government would be insolvent within months if those nations decided to stop accepting the Treasury's I.O.U.s. This delusion has taken hold because facing the reality that we are in grave danger due to our dependence on cheap credit from other nations would require big tax increases and cuts in federal spending. Politicians know such steps might result in them losing the next election, so instead they prefer to believe ridiculous things about the countries that buy our debt – especially the biggest lender, China…. […]

»This is not the behavior of a political system with a bright future. Somehow, America has backed into an era when two seemingly different political parties are locked in a collusive relationship that requires each one to drive the nation deeper and deeper into debt. They both know what they are doing, but they have each generated self-serving rationalizations for why they aren't really destroying America. The National Intelligence Council captured the result in its first big briefing to President Obama: “In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the global shift in relative wealth and economic power now under way – roughly from West to East – is without precedent in modern history”…»

• Le 2 février 2010, sur le blog (Capital Journal) de Gerald F. Seib, du Wall Street Journal, on trouve une longue analyse sur le fait que le déficit du gouvernement US, cette fois considéré en tant que tel et non dans ses conséquences directes ou indirectes sur le budget de la défense, constitue une menace pour la sécurité nationale.

«The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat. […]

»The U.S. government this year will borrow one of every three dollars it spends, with many of those funds coming from foreign countries. That weakens America's standing and its freedom to act; strengthens China and other world powers including cash-rich oil producers; puts long-term defense spending at risk; undermines the power of the American system as a model for developing countries; and reduces the aura of power that has been a great intangible asset for presidents for more than a century.

»“We've reached a point now where there's an intimate link between our solvency and our national security,” says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior national-security adviser in both the first and second Bush presidencies. “What's so discouraging is that our domestic politics don't seem to be up to the challenge. And the whole world is watching.”»

Seib détaille notamment quatre points où, lui semble-t-il, la sécurité nationale des USA est mise en péril par le déficit: «Consider just four of the ways that budget deficits also threaten American's national security: • They make America vulnerable to foreign pressures. […] • Chinese power is growing as a result. […] • Long-term national-security budgets are put at risk. […] These national-security budgets have been largely sacrosanct in the era of terrorism. But unless the deficit arc changes, at some point they will come under pressure for cuts. […] • The American model is being undermined before the rest of the world…»

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