Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Oct. 13 Business article "Balancing Defense and the Budget" rightly pointed out that the costs of the financial bailout will exert downward pressure on the military budget. This is all the more reason to make sure that dollars spent on national security are invested as efficiently as possible. That means embracing a broader vision of defense that gives greater weight to nonmilitary tools of security.

Spending on nonmilitary policy tools -- from diplomacy to alternative energy sources -- has the potential to help prevent conflicts in the first place.

This, in turn, can reduce the budgetary burden of defense. A task force sponsored by Foreign Policy in Focus and the Center for Defense Information -- on which I served -- has proposed a first step in this direction, a Unified Security Budget that would shift more than $60 billion from weapons spending to diplomacy, alternative energy, development assistance and other civilian instruments of security.

There is no time like the present to begin moving in this direction.

WILLIAM D. HARTUNG

Director

Arms and Security Initiative

New America Foundation

New York