I’m getting a federal budget for defense of $663.8 billion for fiscal 2010…where are you getting the $900 billion figure from?
I agree with you, btw, that what you would do is you’d simply allow soldiers to leave and not bring in new ones, so that over time, you’d slowly reduce the force. Of course, it would take a while to really substantially reduce costs, especially for veteran benefits, but eventually you’d have some savings in the 10’s or maybe even 100’s of billions of dollars range. Realistically, though, if you tried to do this, the savings wouldn’t really start to kick in during any one administration…and there is probably not much chance that the next administration would continue down the same path.
It’s not a fair comparison to look at money the US spends. A lot of the money we spend on the military isn’t so we can kick ass, it’s so we can kick ass with as few deaths as possible, mostly American. “Smart” bombs can help reduce civilian casualties but cost a lot more than just carpet bombing. Stealth fighters and bombers cost a lot more but they help insure our pilots come home. It’s gotten to the point where ~4k American deaths in a protracted war (Iraq) is something to complain about.
We learned in the 1930’s that we can’t just pull out of the world and be left alone. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.
And to me, that’s the bottom line. Just about every war the US fought in from the Revolution to Vietnam, we went in almost totally unprepared, with shitty equipment, poor training and poor leadership. We learned what the fuck to do and what worked and didn’t work at the cost of American lives…every…time. I don’t want to see the US EVER in that position again. I certainly don’t want to see that to save a few billion (which is all I think we WOULD be saving here, realistically).
Defence can contribute, but it contributes in the same way the police force contributes. Instead of pushing us forwards, it stops other things holding us back. I fully support getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but not with the sort of cuts the OP is suggesting.
I hate to say it, but that happens EVERY time. Iraq and Afghanistan were total clusterfucks. Why? Because the military we thought we needed (lean, smart, networked, hi-tech, fast-striking) was totally unsuited to the job our leaders ordered it to do (be an occupying ground force of policemen/Roman legionnaires).
No amount of prep and spending is proof against idiots at the reins.
Sure, but our soldiers are also better trained, better equipped, better supported, etc., than Pakistani soldiers. I would hope that, on the whole, we end up getting more bang for our buck than Pakistan does. If we’re not, then we should be considering outsourcing our military needs to Pakistan.
We can’t guarantee that we’re left alone by the rest of the world, but we can leave the rest of the world alone. If we’re ever attacked again, then we can ramp up in response to that, the same way we did (very successfully) in WWII.
America didn’t “pull out of the world”. We gave loans and aid to the Brits and embargoed oil deliveries to the Japanese.
We’ve got bases all over the Middle East and we give a ton of military and diplomatic aid to Israel, prop up a bunch of dictators over there. And that got us our first attack for quite a while. It’s the fact that we’ve got such a heavy presence abroad and the things we do that causes such anti-American feeling. Out of the world’s 190 countries we’ve got military bases in more than 130 of them. And nobody is going to attack us in any meaningful way. We’re never going to be invaded, the only kind of attack we’re ever going to face is a terrorist attack. And the best way to avoid that is to stop interfering in Muslim countries.
I’d like to know what percentage of the defense budget is actual wages. How about we continue to pay the wages of the armed services but just scrap all the payments to the US war industry? We could pay them to do something constructive with their lives instead of what they’re currently doing. We could declare a moratorium on developing military tech worldwide, countries like China would happily sign up to it. All we really need to maintain from a defense point of view is the nuclear weapons, everything else is offensive stuff.
I’m not fundamentally opposed to a large cutback in the defense budget (90%, though? I’d have to study up a bit more), but can we at least keep the Airborne Laser system? I mean, we’re finally just at the point where we have a workable 1920s-style death ray, and y’all want to give that up? Sheesh.
The only way to cut military spending is to drown it out with other, more popular spending, such as health care, social security, etc. Of course, that will not reduce the federal budget, but I don’t believe that is ever going to happen.
That’s about the only stupid reason that didn’t get us into Iraq. Rummy didn’t dump the excess forces in there, he didn’t send enough troops. You might remember how stressed the army and marines were from Iraq, with way too many tours of duty and soldiers not allowed to leave. If Rummy and Cheney had faced reality as to how many resources were needed to do the job right, they just might have had second thoughts. Probably not, but there would have been a chance.
There is another slight problem - military contractors. Given the lead times, even a gradual decrease in forces would require a lot of contracts and development project to be canceled immediately. The last time there was a big cut entire cities east of LA became ghost towns. I’m not sure what would pick up the slack.
Now figuring out how to do these projects with fewer cost overruns would be a real savings.
Saddam’s goal in taking over Kuwait was to sell their oil, not hoard it.
As I said above, if the oil is already coming from a repressive dictatorship, why do I care which repressive dictatorship it’s coming from? It’s not like OPEC isn’t already controlling the market to maximize their profits.
I think your premise is unbelievably simplistic and niave. (disclaimer: I work for a large gov contractor, and have worked for large defense contractors in the past)
If we do as you say, we cede Taiwan to the Chinese. We cede the future Kuwaits of the world to the nearest, largest despot. We probably cede Israel to someone. Is defending those who cannot defend themselves something worthwhile, as the richest country on Earth?
FY10 DOD budget was 533 billion, not the fantasy land $900b Rick suggests.
We haven’t even talked about Al Qaida. You want the ability to launch Tommys or JDAMS at their tents? Well, you need carriers for force projection, destroyers and cruisers for protection of selfsame carriers, etc. Not sure what the MILPERS percentage is vs acquisition budget, but I’d guess (just a guess now) it’s about half.
I also disagree that there isn’t ‘knock-on’ value added from military budgets. You use the internet? You use GPS?
What about the military deployed to help Haitians post-earthquake, or Katrina victims? What about the drones now deployed on the southern, Mexican border?
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of wasteful programs. We didn’t need Crusader or Commanche, that’s why Rummy whacked them. When Gates tried to whack the extra F22s (truly a weapon without a mission, beyond the 187 we’d ordered), Congress put them back in precisely because of the hits to jobs in their home states.
MILPERS (salaries and fringe) is $136b in FY10. Procurement $107b. O&M (keeping our toys going, as well as base ops) is $179b. RDT&E $79b. Everything else is $26b
If you add up the stated military budget, the money we spend on nuclear wepons (all via the Department of Energy), the costs of the VA, the cost of disability payments, the interest on the national debt from previous wars, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not in the defense budget (Bush funded both through special appropriations bills so they wouldn’t explode the defense budget) and the amount of money we spend on defense via the intelligence budget (total intelligence budget estimated at $50 billion) what does that add up to? A lot more than the stated defense budget, that’s for sure.