Russia invades, China bullies, Iran spins centrifuges, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) — a terrorist threat “beyond anything that we’ve seen,” according to US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel) — threatens; and Washington slashes the military. Reason stares.

Several arguments are advanced to justify the decimation of US defence. All of them are wrong.

President Barack Obama asserts that America must move to “a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity”. The old order, he is saying, where America’s disproportionate strength holds tyrants in check and preserves the sovereignty of nations, is to be replaced. It is said that the first rule of wing-walking is to not let go with one hand until the other hand has a firm grip. So, too, before one jettisons one’s reliance on US strength, there must be something effective in its place — if such a thing is even possible. Further, the appeal to “common humanity” as the foundation of this new world order ignores the reality that humanity is far from common in values and views. Humanity may commonly agree that there is evil, but what one person calls evil another calls good.

There are those who claim that a multipolar world is preferable to one led by a strong US. Were these other poles nations such as Australia, Canada, France and Britain, I might concur. But with emerging poles being China, Russia and Iran, the world would not see peace; it would see bullying, invasion and regional wars. And ultimately, one would seek to conquer the others, unleashing world war.

Some argue that the US should simply withdraw its military strength from the world — get out of the Middle East, accept nuclear weapons in Iran and elsewhere, let China and Russia have their way with their neighbours and watch from the sidelines as jihadists storm on two or three continents. Do this, they contend, and the US would be left alone.

No, it will not. The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers — to use former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s phrase, we would be paying the cannibals to eat us last. And in the meantime, American economy would be devastated by the disruption of trade routes, the turmoil in global markets and the tumult of conflict across the world. Global peace and stability are very much in America’s immediate national interest.

Some insist that the US military is already so much stronger than that of any other nation that Washington can safely cut it back, again and again. Their evidence: The relative size of America’s defence budget. But these comparisons are nearly meaningless: Russia and China do not report their actual defence spending, they pay their servicemen a tiny fraction of what America pays its servicemen and their cost to build military armament is also a fraction of America’s. More relevant is the fact that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is significantly greater than America’s own and that, within six years, China will have more ships in its navy than the US. China already has more service members. Further, American military is tasked with many more missions than those of other nations: Preserving the freedom of the seas, the air and space; combating radical jihadists; and preserving order and stability around the world as well as defending the US.

The most ludicrous excuse for shrinking America’s military derives from the president’s thinking: “Things are much less dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago or 30 years ago.” The “safer world” trial balloon has been punctured by recent events in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Iraq. “Failures of imagination” led to tragedy 13 years ago. Today, no imagination is required to picture what will descend on the US if it lets down its guard.

The arguments for shrinking America’s military fall aside to reveal the real reason for the cuts: Politicians, and many of the people who elect them, want to keep up spending at home. Entitlements and programmes are putting pressure on the federal budget. As Bret Stephens noted in Commentary magazine this month, the army is on track to be the size it was in 1940, the Navy to be the size it was in 1917, the Air Force to be smaller than in 1947 and America’s nuclear arsenal to be no larger than it was under president Harry S. Truman.

Washington politicians are poised to make a historic decision, for Americans, for their descendants and for the world. Freedom and peace are in the balance. They will choose whether to succumb to the easy path of continued military hollowing or to honour their constitutional pledge to protect the US.

— Washington Post

Mitt Romney is the former governor of Massachusetts. In 2012, the Republican Party nominated him for president of the United States.