While I think it’s crazy to create new entitlements, stimulus packages, and giving civilian federal workers pay raises while proposing deep defense cuts, I don’t think defense spending should be exempt from austerity measures. Our current system, a genorous welfare state sustained by the productive work of a shrinking sliver of the population, is not working.
Part of my confidence in the ability to cut defense spending is based on my view that much of what our country does in the nature of “defense” is wrong-headed and interventionist foreign policy, rooted in the notion that we must perpetually be involved “ensuring stability” and “spreading democracy.” Cutting this will do much to save money.
From a strictly numbers perspective, the size of our uniformed military does not seem extravagent. But the spending certainly is, based as it is on the idea of massive foreign bases in Europe and Asia, welfare-style spending at home for the military and its numerous contractors, and, above all, the idea that we must be involved everywhere all the time. We shold have a strong military, capable of defending America from all threats, securing sea lanes, protecting our borders, destroying terrorist camps, and projecting conventional and nuclear power overseas in the event of a real threat. But there is no reason the DoD cannot cut a lot, and Republicans who fall overthemselves to exempt this one piece of the government from scrutiny as if the Cold War were still raging are foolish.
Marine Major Peter Munson over at his blog, stated the matter as follows:
In what world is spending more than the next ten nations combined on defense not enough? I believe that is the figure we will be at after the coming cuts. Right now we are spending more than the next 19 countries, only two of which could be called potential adversaries. After yesterday’s strategic guidance announcement, the hand-wringing and incriminations were enough to make me ill. It started with on the ride into work with LtGen Dave Deptula, Ret, who has now been elevated to the man who designed the air war in Desert Storm, evidently single-handedly. I do not remember his exact words on NPR, but I believe the sound bite they pulled out was “disastrous.” There were plenty of other hyperbolic epithets thrown around, my favorite of which said something to the effect of “it’s all good until there’s another Pearl Harbor.” Maybe I am a naif, but I just do not buy any of it. I think the DoD needs deep, deep cuts if it is to escape the decadence of its ways that a decade of unconstrained spending has brought about.
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I followed the link and agree with most of what the blogger says. I don’t pay much attention to the military budget comparisons though. We certainly spend a lot more than others, but when comparing military spending we have to consider several factors:
1. other countries, primarily China, lie about how much they spend
2. we spend a lot of money on things that contribute nothing to our capability to confront a major power, such as policing Afghanistan and building luxury resorts wherever the air force deploys
3. we dump lots of money into certain tech heavy projects like the F35 that have incredibly high unit costs and yet may have only marginal advantages over their competitors, and in fact may have disadvantages, such as their cost and difficulty of production. For a historic example of this dynamic, look at how much better the Sherman tank served the U.S. than the Tiger tank did the Germans. Sure, it took 3 Shermans to kill one Tiger, but there were 10 Shermans to every Tiger (or some ridiculous ratio like that), so it wasn’t a problem, at least from the strategic perspective.
I am also a bit leery about his arguments about ramping up production in war time. It’s not 1941 anymore. As we saw, it took us years to get enough armored humvees to Iraq – how long is it going to take to ramp up production of much more complex fighter jets, and what percentage of the parts are even built in the U.S.? We could perhaps manage it if there was a real fire lit under our ass, but I am not so confident.
So I guess my point is that I am less concerned about how much we are spending, than how we are spending it. I would be happy for us to continue spending gobs of money on the military if we could do it intelligently enough to get a decent return on the investment in terms of security.
I think we all agree the money if well spent is well spent. I think too much money encourages inefficiency though. Also, the must design and build everything ourselves phenomenon seems dumb. The Poles just bought a Finnish APC in record time, have fielded a few hundred and deployed them to Afghanistan, while the US couldn’t field an Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, single high quality MRAP (there’s 20 disparate models), or enough armored Humvees. Our process is sclerotic and stupid. For God’s sake we can’t even switch out the retarded ACU camo that everyone agrees is a ugly looking bullet magnet that was adopted with little thought or critical thinking.
For those interested, here is the DoD Comptroller’s site.
Among the items of interest is the section on the 2012 budget. There are several PDFs which you can peruse to see how (un)wisely your tax dollars are being spent.