SUSTAINABLE DEFENSE TASK FORCE
CIP convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force to craft a 10-year defense budget and strategy document that could demonstrate a way to rein in runaway Pentagon and nuclear spending and encourage informed debate in Congress, the media, and among citizens’ organizations to advance a common-sense approach for protecting the United States and its allies more effectively at a lower budgetary cost.
Recent Publications
Sustainable Defense: A Pentagon Spending Plan for 2021 and Beyond
by Sustainable Defense Task Force Co-Directors: William D. Hartung, and Ben Freeman
December 8, 2020
The events of 2020 have dramatically underscored the need to rethink the concept of national security. The COVID-19 pandemic, the devastation caused by climate change, and racial and economic injustice all pose risks to public safety and security as great, or greater than, traditional military challenges. It’s long past time for the United States to adopt a new approach to national security that prioritizes our most urgent challenges, reduces U.S. global military deployments and spending, defunds unnecessary weapons systems, and eliminates waste.
Report: Sustainable Defense: More Security, Less Spending
Sustainable Defense Task Force, co-directed by William Hartung and Ben Freeman
Jun-19-2019
An alternative defense strategy that avoids unnecessary and counterproductive wars, reduces the U.S. global military footprint, takes a more realistic view of the major security challenges facing the United States, and reduces waste and inefficiency could save at least $1.2 trillion in projected spending over the next decade while providing a greater measure of security...
Latest News
A response to McClintock
Sustainable Defense Task Force cited
Sustainable Defense Task Force
Thinning out bloated government agencies and reallocating this funding to programs like education, business security, and housing could improve many of the issues that McClintock is concerned about, without having an impact on taxation of individuals. The Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force even came up with a plan that could shave off $1.2 trillion while keeping all necessary defense intact.
De-Hyper: The US Military Is Not the Best Innovator in Manufacturing
William Hartung quoted
Sustainable Defense Task Force, Arms & Security
"Hartung suggests that, the defense industry deploys new enemies, rhetorically, as it influences congress financially. The weapons manufacturers, according to Hartung, inflate the nature of the risks associated with the “threat of the moment”, such as Russia or China, as a sales pitch for obtaining more funding from the federal government."
WATCH: Testimony on the Need to End the Overseas Contingency Operations Account
Sustainable Defense Task Force quoted
Sustainable Defense Task Force
"Moving OCO to base was also included in the recommendations of both the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force and the National Defense Strategy Commission. While the former saw this as part of a strategy for necessary defense budget cuts, and the latter argued the budget should increase, both agreed on the need to draw down from OCO. For the commission’s part, its report criticized the use of OCO as “not the way to provide adequate and stable resources” for the department."
Meet The Experts
Gordon Adams, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center and professor in the U.S. Foreign Policy program at the School of International Service, American University
Amy Belasco, former Specialist for the Defense Budget of the Congressional Research Service
Neta Crawford, Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at Boston University
Matt Fay, former Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Niskanen Center
Ben Friedman, Senior Fellow and Defense Scholar at Defense Priorities
Laicie Heeley, CEO of Inkstick, Host of Things That Go Boom
John King, Founder, King and Brown Company LLC
Larry Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and adjunct professor at Georgetown University
Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director, National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
Miriam Pemberton, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
Mandy Smithberger, Director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight
Col. Larry Wilkerson (Ret.), Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy, William & Mary
Col. Isaiah "Ike" Wilson (Ret.), director, Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College
CIP Senior Associate Carl Conetta was a consultant to the project.
ABOUT THE SUSTAINABLE DEFENSE TASK FORCE
CIP convened the Sustainable Defense Task Force in November 2018 to craft a 10-year defense budget and strategy document that could demonstrate a way to rein in runaway Pentagon and nuclear spending and encourage informed debate in Congress, the media, and among citizens’ organizations to advance a common-sense approach for protecting the United States and its allies more effectively at a lower budgetary cost.
Given historically high levels of Pentagon spending and the unprecedented level of U.S. debt, this effort is of particular value in the context of debates in the new Congress that took office in January 2019, and as a touchstone for debates over Pentagon spending and military strategy during the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
In recent years debates over Pentagon spending have focused primarily on wasteful spending, specific weapons systems, or the need for more fiscal discipline. These discussions are important but can be far more illuminating when they were backed up by solid, evidence-based analysis of how to keep America and its allies safe without overspending on defense. This was the mission of the SDTF.
The original Sustainable Defense Task Force was requested by Rep. Barney Frank in 2010 for use as a tool in debates over how to cut the deficit and was instrumental in ensuring that the Pentagon budget was subjected to caps as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act. Those efforts were a key factor in achieving a cumulative reduction of between $200 and $300 billion in spending relative to Pentagon projections over a five-year period.
The new SDTF is a bipartisan group of experts from academia, think tanks, government, and retired members of the military. The co-Directors are William Hartung, Director, Arms & Security Project of CIP and Ben Freeman, Director, Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at CIP, working in conjunction with CIP Senior Associate Carl Conetta, who served as a consultant to the project.