THE DÉJÀ VU CATASTROPHE

The men whom President Barack Hussein Obama has chosen to head his national security team send more shivers down the spines of our allies than those of our enemies.

So if Charles Emmerson is right in thinking the world in 2013 "eerily looks like the world of 1913, on the cusp of the Great War," that’s not good.

The United States, like Britain 100 years ago, is in relative economic and military decline, Mr. Emmerson, a researcher for Chatham House, a British think tank, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine Jan. 4.  Hostile powers are rising and "jostling for position in the four corners of the world." 

The president wants Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb, to take over for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and White House Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan to succeed Gen. David Petraeus as CIA Director.

Sen. Kerry and Mr. Brennan may win Senate confirmation without difficulty.  They deserve some.

He exaggerated his heroism to get medals, said naval officers who served with Sen. Kerry in Vietnam.   He promised to authorize release of his military records, but never did.

Mr. Brennan blew a British operation in Yemen with an inadvertent leak.  He may have leaked classified information for partisan political purposes, may be involved in a coverup of what happened in Libya on 9/11/2012.

Sen. Hagel may not be confirmed.  Republicans oppose him because of his soft line on Iran, his hard line on Israel, and his virulent criticism of President George W. Bush. Gays are upset by caustic remarks he’s made about them.  He voted against the Kyoto treaty, Glowarmers note.  Some Jewish Democrats suspect he’s anti-Semitic. 

All three nominees are willfully blind to threats posed by an expansionist China, a nuclear Iran, surging Islamic fundamentalism.  But all are nominally qualified.  Only possibly in the case of Mr. Brennan is there reason for denying the president who he wants in his Cabinet.

They faithfully reflect the views of President Obama.  That’s the big problem.  Policy usually matters more than the people who execute it.  So it may not matter much if they’re confirmed or not.  But confirmation fights are the best way to highlight the folly of administration policy.

We spent $721 billion on defense in FY 2010.  During the fiscal year beginning in October, President Obama plans to reduce that to $566 billion.  Over ten years, he wants to cut defense spending to $487 billion, one-third of what it was in FY 2010.

Some savings can be realized from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But if we cut so much while potential adversaries — China especially — spend more, our technological edge will erode. 

We postponed modernization of the Air Force and Navy during those wars.  The Navy has fewer ships now than in 1916, the Air Force is the smallest it’s ever been.  "Every T-38 trainer, KC-135 tanker, and B-52 long-range strike aircraft is old enough to join AARP," notes the Air Force Association. 

With threats rising, it would be foolish and dangerous to shrink the Air Force and Navy much further, to postpone modernization much longer.

"Foolish and dangerous" will become "catastrophic" if in the next few weeks the president and Congress don’t agree on meaningful restraints on domestic spending.  Sequestration would then go into effect.  Defense would be cut an additional $49 billion a year, on average, over ten years.

To disarm unilaterally in the face of rising threats invites aggression, history teaches.  But the president and his national security team pay little attention to history.  They see our adversaries as they’d like them to be, not as they are.  That’s a mistake, Mr. Emmerson said.

"Thinking historically can remind us of the surprises that can knock states and societies off course and…check our enthusiasm for believing that this time is different," he said.  "The world of 1913, on the threshold of the seminal catastrophe of the 20th Century yet by and large not expecting it, is a case in point."

If confirmation battles don’t alert the president, his nominees, and the American people to the folly of the course we’re on, we may be on the threshold of the seminal catastrophe of the 21st Century.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.