An interesting article by the Economist on military spending. One has to wonder, for how much longer can the prices of advanced weapons continue to rise and still be a feasible investment. ~String
As I've said many times, the amount the US spends on defense in relation to its GDP is at -- or near -- historic lows. In other words, a jet may cost more, in gross dollars, these days -- but it's impact on the economy and the federal budget is not as much as it was in the 1950s, when nearly 10 percent of GDP was tied up in defense spending. Still, Gates' decision to can some spending, reign in big budget items and change the way procurement occurs are all positive steps. But he can't do it all. The fiasco surrounding the f-35 engine shows that defense spending is political (they are building two engines for a single engine plane, go figure). As for drones, they definitely are the wave of the future, but those who would write-off the fighter seem a bit premature. Drones have limitations, and I can't imagine the next 50 years passing without a real nation-to-nation conflict, in which air power plays a larger role than it has in the ME. Gag.
U.S. defense spending has been steadily returning to Cold War levels since 9-11, although the military threats to the USA have been declining. The "Peace Dividend" is being returned to the coffers of the corporate-mercenary world through intense manipulation of USi threat perception. We do not have to outspend the rest of the world in military programs in order to be secure in the USA. Defense Industry Daily: America’s Fiscal Defense Crisis Sen Tom Coburn Military Spending- For What? - Doug Bandow
In case you had not noticed, the U.S. currently is fighting two wars, in addition to its standing committments as the global hegemon. It is also engaged in a worldwide campaign against terrorism. Also, the numbers you are touting are deceptive for reasons I have already discussed. Weapons cost more now. So simply throwing out lumps sums is not much of a measure of anything. Everything the govt. spends money on these days is more, including farm subsidies, education, and entitlement programs -- the last of which are truly running out of control.
I well understand your emphasis on killing people instead of helping them financially. Let's move on to another aspect of the opening post: That wars are becoming more expensive. Certainly in the way that US imperialism is evolving, our wars lead to occupations that are not showing an appreciable return for the lives and taxes that have been taken. If we would compare US investments in warfare over the past decade with alternative development projects- like US education and infrastructure, I don't think it's hard to understand that we (the people, that is) could get considerably more for our money. http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
“To secure peace is to prepare for war.” Karl von ClausewitzThe world is a dangerous place and weakness invites attack. Is there room to cut defense spending? Sure. In fact, I agree that we need to. But it's pretty hard to do that in the context of fighting two wars. Furthermore, as Count has pointed out, our spending on defense as a percent of GDP is still lower than it was during the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and much, much lower than during WW2.
It is rather odd that many nations have very little military but live peacefully with other nations that are near them.
It's a defining choice, when the USA decides in what pursuits we wish to lead the world. For a long time now, the most prominent potential we have sought and achieved is in our capacity for killing people. To say that I understand your emphasis was not meant to single you out- I realize that many USis are in agreement with you that we must (for reasons never clearly explained) remain "the global hegemon" as you say, lest something terrible (also never clearly explained) will overtake us. I happen to believe that this is untrue, and that present US military campaigns and expenditures are a waste of lives and money; that we could meet the real threats and challenges to our way of life and our progress much more cost-effectively by overcoming the impulse to use massive military force to persuade the world of our good intentions, and to deter those who would harm us. I'm not opposed to national defense, but I believe that helping people is the most efficient and honorable way to help ourselves as individuals, organizations, and nations. If the USA were a nation as mobilized by understanding as we are in warfare, there is not much that we could not accomplish for the betterment of ourselves and the world. Unfortunately, we are locked in a mindset that is fast isolating and bankrupting us. It's very unlikely that we will ever again come out at the top of the heap in warfare, as we did in the last century. Still, proponents of an obscenely overgrown military-industrial sector bristle at the mention of the obvious: Armed and Dangerous is not a foreign policy to be proud of, nor is it a profitable one in the post-colonial world.
The military industrial complex and central bankers work hand in hand to dictate policy around the world. One of those policies is that the US will fight wars which causes them to have to borrow lots of money from central banks. The US is allowed to do this without having the money on hand because the US can get away with printing as much as it wants. The US can print all the money it wants because the rest of the world uses the dollar as its reserve currency. So, the world is fronting the US the money to buy war machines by tolerating the depreciation on their reserve currency holdings. Either that just caused you to go all glassy eyed or you sadly nodded your head in resignation.
Whatever the scheme, it would not function without overblown fears in the USA of a world that is out to get us, waiting to vanquish us militarily if we falter in our unparalleled obsession with industrialized violence. PuppetGov: Simple Card Tricks of War
I don't think there are fears in the US. I believe its more a problem of apathy. Most citizens care about food, shelter, football, Snooki, and getting off one way or another. There's not much they can do about what the government is doing so why get worked up about it. People who work are working hard and or they are barely getting by financially. People who are broke have more pressing concerns than foreign wars. Concerns like where they will live and what they will eat.
You can't just consider the spending as a percentage of GDP. You also have to look at the absolute magnitude of the spending to determine whether or not it's reasonable. To make an analogy, most people would consider it perfectly reasonable for a person who made $100k/year to own two cars. If a person who made $1 million/year owned 20 cars, people would think it was a bit weird, but hey, he can afford them. If someone who made $10 million/year owned 200 cars, people would think it was crazy and wonder why the hell he needed so many cars. Sure, the guy making $10 million/year can afford them, but that's not the point - the point is that he owns far more cars than he could possibly need. So yeah, as a percentage of GDP it's reasonable for us to spend as much as we do on the military - in the same way that it's reasonable for a guy makes $10 million/year to go out and buy 200 cars that he doesn't actually have a use for.
But how many $150 million fighter jets or $9 billion aircraft carriers (and that's before the cost of equipping them with combat aircraft!) do we need to fight those wars? Also, the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, while high, are only something like 20%-25% of our current defense spending. We could easily cut many hundreds of billions from our defense budget while not reducing our war spending one penny AND still spending far more on defense than all of our plausible adversaries combined.
The US was never meant to be a "global hegemon", George Washington himself famously warned "beware foreign entanglements". Despite that warning from our most revered President, we stumbled into this role after WW2 when the Soviet Union challenged the West and the US was the only nation with the ability to go toe to toe with them. Then, with the cold war ended and just as we were beginning to roll back our military spending, we were attacked by al Qada. Once we put an end to the resulting conflicts, we can again consider downsizing our military. A good place to start would be the US troops garrisoned all over the world since WW2. I think the US should continue to have the best planes, nukes, subs, etc to defend our homeland but I don't see a need for US bases all over the planet.
Right. Because it totally makes sense that it would cost about as much money to defend ourselves against the USSR as it would cost to defend ourselves against a bunch of terrorists who live in caves. So yeah, by all means protect me from al Qaeda. How many $9 billion aircraft carriers will that take again? Feel free to buy as many as you need - I understand al Qaeda has a hell of a naval aviation program.
What role the US is "meant" to play is determined far more by its geopolitical standing than the intentions of wooden-teethed generals who died before the Louisiana Purchase. A politically stable federation that dominates North America is bound to be a major force in world relations, regardless of our preferences. That doesn't necessitate hegemony, but isolation is right out. And let's not forget that Washington made that comment in a context where the US was a minor agrarian country in a world dominated by vastly more powerful global empires, complete with professional standing armies, powerful navies, etc. Possibly he'd be more sanguine about the question if he lived today. No, that's not hegemony. Hegemony is when there is one dominant power - it's what the USSR was challenging the West in pursuit of. American hegemony did not begin until the demise of the Soviet Union, at the end of the 1980's. It was not "stumbled into," but the result of an explicit, decades-long struggle in its explicit pursuit, known as "The Cold War." You may recall the demise of the USSR being an explicit national goal throughout that time, and the American leadership running with a lot of triumphant "New World Order" speeches as soon as the USSR cracked. America was hegemon of the Western hemisphere starting in about 1900, and became hegemon of the West after WWII. So that's over a century of us consciously pursuing an ever-expanding sphere of hegemonic influence. At no time between the end of the Cold War and today did we ever reconsider or move away from that pursuit - cutting military budgets after the defeat of your primary enemy is exactly what a victorious hegemon would do, and not evidence of some abjural of hegemonic ambition. If we'd cut said budgets and given up on defeating the USSR back when they were still viable, then that would represent a change of course away from hegemony. That doing such - i.e., ceding global hegemony to the USSR - was uniformly unacceptable to us means exactly that hegemony was our primary concern throughout.
