Despite conventional wisdom, every single one of the government ministries would benefit from cuts to their inflated budgets. Why? Because an inflated budget encourages waste. Waste creates inefficiency and corruption, which do not help achieve goals and certainly do not help win the publics admiration. (Politicians, take note!) True, defense is, as the economists say, a public good. In other words, those who need it cannot attain it on a private basis (a tank, for example, is well beyond the budget of even wealthier families), and therefore must be purchased with taxpayer money. What's more, expenses on defense do not create products which can be sold in a competitive market, and thus it is impossible to measure the efficiency with which they are produced. For this reason it is difficult to expect the defense establishment, unlike other systems, to achieve the sort of efficiency that we see in the business sector. There is no single agreed-upon answer to these questions, as the element of uncertainty looms large in these areas. When you are located in the dangerous Middle East, advocates of a large defense budget will claim that it is better to overspend than to be caught without sufficient ammunition. It's a matter of life and death. The truth in this claim masks equally important questions: Even if we agree that it's impossible to run the defense establishment with maximum efficiency, is there no room to make a top-level effort to optimize the numerous sub-bodies that can be streamlined? I am not about to get into a professional argument regarding one weapons system or another, but take the food services in the army, for example. Every reservist has experienced the gratuitous waste involved with this essential branch. An army marches on its stomach, one-time expert Napoleon said. Does anyone doubt that there are more fields in which the army is, albeit with the use of many resources, capable of expediting? From privatizing certain services to streamlining the wasteful pension programs to trimming down the number of generals who only add to the bureaucracy. (Have I already mentioned egregious pensions and quarreling-)
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We should expect that a certain amount of waste, or as security experts call it, safety margins, will bloat the defense budget. The same is true regarding funds used for preparing for dangers which cannot be estimated ahead of time, and the amount of acquisitions derived from them. Israel's security situation is complex, and it is up to defense and intelligence experts to decide how many fronts we are facing and how many tanks or planes need to be purchased.
A significant budget cut is the only thing that could get a conservative body like the army to optimize itself in a way that will not only save money, but improve its performance. Such a cut would go lengths towards minimizing the excessive bureaucracy from which the military suffers (a consequence of our generals being pupils of the U.S. military).
Ehud Barak promised us a smart and small army. This is his opportunity to lead. These vital cuts will improve the economy, but, most importantly, also the army itself.
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