It seems to me that we have long since passed the point where no foreign country really needs American military protection any more – not even SK or Taiwan, let alone any country in Europe. They can, now, take care of themselves. And certainly no enemy or potential enemy is in a position to invade us – there is still terrorism, but that was always more of a policing than a military problem. And, of course, the Cold War is over. So, why do we really need the mightiest and most expensive military establishment in human history? Why do we need a global network of military bases? Why do we need to spend more on defense than the next ten or eleven biggest-spending countries combined? I really don’t think our FFs (who were suspicious of a large standing army even for purely defensive purposes) would have approved.
Now, I realize that any effort to scale down the American military establishment/MIC would step on a lot of economically-interested toes. But we could deal with that, one way or another, with the cost savings a scale-down would bring. E.g., lots could be done with decomissioned military bases. Here in
Tampa, FL, if MacDill AFB were closed down, that would only open the way to a new urban residential/commercial development on its land.
Why does this Republic need an Empire?
Oh, c’mon, what do organizations like NATO matter any more?! They couldn’t even keep the Russians out of Ukraine! And similar organizations such as SEATO never amounted to anything at all.
And if you say things like, “There is value to steady jobs and considerable innovation,” as if such things depended on big military spending, then you are part of the problem. Like “Falling Down” – I hope nobody who ever saw that movie ever, including the hardest RW neocon, regarded DEFENS as in any way a sympathetic or defensible character!
So you would agree the Ukraine could not defend itself against aggression. I’m not saying the League of Nations or any other body always fulfills its goals or is efficiently run.
Ask the politicians who make decisions whether they think jobs are important. The problems run a lot deeper than the trivial difference made by my personal views.
I think we all know, now, that Ukraine cannot defend itself against aggression – it lacks the military resources – but, that does not mean America should supply them. Ukraine can, at least, defend its traditionally Western-Catholic half against its Russian-Orthodox half, provided it is willing to settle for half, and, considering the France-sized territory in question either way – that is, Ukraine will remain the size of France and more either way – why not? Why should the traditionally Protestant U.S. even try to settle a conflict between the Catholic and the Orthodox?
I actually find myself missing Communism, now – at least it provided a kind of overarching moral narrative that transcended the Protestant/Catholic/Orthodox divisions.
Technically, the USA doesn’t need half of its military power - there’s never a foreign nation who could or would ever invade America, etc.
But there will be all sorts of unpleasant side effects if America did go down the military-cutting route - as in, big time cuts. One of the most important ones is that many U.S. allies will promptly embark on nuclear programs. Japan, Taiwan, and Poland would most likely go nuclear ASAP - possibly South Korea, Vietnam, or maybe even the Baltic states as well (if that’s within their capability.) With America out of the equation, they would trust nothing but nukes for their defense. And that then will lead to its own domino effect. You could see a dozen new nuclear states within a decade.
The irony is that the people who are the most insistent on defense budget cuts are also those who would most vehemently oppose global nuclear proliferation.
…because Ukraine wasn’t part of NATO.
This is like complaining that Geico doesn’t work because its insurance didn’t pay for a non-Geico-covered car.
Oh, SFW if those countries develop their own nuclear arsenals?! Did you really think the U.S. was the only power that could be trusted with such a power sanely?! Even if that were true, there would be no realistic way for the U.S. to prevent nuclear proliferation – I mean, we couldn’t even prevent supposedly friendly ISRAEL from becoming a nuclear power! And I should hope there is not a single non-Israeli in the world who does not regret that failure!
I mean, if you’re okay with nuclear proliferation, sure. No sarcasm either - there are indeed a vocal minority of people who seriously believe more nukes would be better.
But overwhelmingly the majority of the Democratic Party, for instance, is opposed to it, and so is most of the Western bloc of the international community.
What does nuclear proliferation have to do with anything?! It is not, I hope, a factor that will play any important role in geopolitics in the next 50 years!
It is a huge factor - both for peace and for war. Israel has bombed Iran and Syria before because of their nuclear programs. India and Pakistan fought three bloody border wars before going nuclear; they’ve never had a major clash since. China has threatened war if Taiwan develops nukes. Poland or the Baltic states having nukes would be an immense deterrent to Russian aggression in the event of America majorly cutting down on its military. And have you followed how many Iranian scientists or engineers have been assassinated because Israel doesn’t want a nuclear Iran?
I notice nobody has suggested that the U.S. Navy is needed any more to maintain the freedom of the seas. Nor has anyone contradicted my assumption that our allies are now strong enough to defend themselves.
If China were to announce a blockade and total control of the South China Sea, for instance, some ASEAN allies, such as Vietnam or the Philippines, would be very hard pressed to defeat such a Chinese blockade. In fact for the Philippines it truly would be impossible, they have just about no navy. Taiwan has only 2 modern submarines (although it is slowly building a fleet of eight over the next two decades.) Japan has a decent submarine fleet, but it would be situated extremely far from that region to help.
The United States Navy is the only navy in the world today that operates 50+ nuclear-propelled, advanced-quieting submarines, which would be of critical importance in such a scenario.
Look, razordance, you seem to be very vested in this notion that the military ought to be severely cut back and that U.S. allies face much less threat than they do.
Well, I don’t agree with Pat Buchanan on much, but I do agree that this Republic does not need an Empire.
Here’s an illustration: Although we think of George Armstrong Custer as “General Custer,” he was only a colonel when he died. But he had been a brigadier general, during the Civil War. That’s how it worked then: When war came, the army was expanded, the officers promoted to command larger units, civilians recruited as junior officers. Then, when the war ended, the army was downsized, the junior officers returned to civilian life, and the career officers were demoted to their prewar ranks – not for any failure in duty, just because not so many high-ranking officers were needed any more. That’s how it went after every American conflict until WWII – but when that ended, we suddenly had the Cold War to deal with, so we retained the expanded military establishment in peacetime.
With luck, this won’t be off-topic …
Guns vs. butter is huge and fascinating. I often find myself wondering what we could do with that couple of trillion dollars that GWB and the neocons who pulled his strings spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It feels like a chunk of change, y’know ?
My point is … risk compensation.
If you’re basically a hot-headed AH, does carrying a firearm make you more likely to get into confrontations.
If you have The Most Capable Military In The World, then – people being people – are you more likely to flip TR the bird, kick puppies, and break shit because you carry a big stick ?
At what point is the US military the equivalent of Cohen or Cohn to Donald Trump – a putative license to act any way you want. ?
And that’s ignoring for a split second Eisenhower’s prescient admonitions about the MIC.
I’ve literally had people tell me that “these warfighters can’t just train and sit around indefinitely (ie, they need to fight a war).” And missiles and weapons and everything else the DoD buys … can’t just sit on the shelves collecting dust. We have a profound amount of infrastructure that’s largely dependent on continuing production and supply.
“Go launch some missiles and fire off some rounds. Our factories are idle.”
To what degree have we “met the enemy and it is us.” Is there a sweet spot past which the outlines of our military are purely self-perpetuating ?
China is a growing threat to the U.S. and other countries. So yes, the U.S. needs to be a military power.
If my neighbors are walking around carrying guns all the time, I might be inclined to acquire some guns myself. If they appear to be unarmed and behave as such, I will be less inclined to arm myself.
Which is to say, these “growing military threats” are largely in response to First World military threats. It may be that the genie is out of the bottle, or it may be that worldwide military power could be gradually dialed back. But it has to start somewhere.
That couldn’t be because the U.S. was the only western country that was functional after WWII, could it?
Look, I’m very much opposed to our vastly outsized military, and the hubris it gives us to run rampant through other nations. I’m appalled that we propped up an endless array of authoritarian dictators in the name of fighting Communism. It’s disgusting that there is a military contractor in every congressional district so that every single person in Congress boasts about bringing home the bacon that can never be dislodged. (Also see: just try to close down a military base.) Europe laughs at us for allowing their economies to grow domestically because they don’t have to worry about proper military spending. And on and on.
The counter to this is that America is not a backwards, isolated, internally-focused country any more. We live in a globalized society where everybody affects everybody else. People took the lesson of Germany in the 1930s to heart. “Never again” must apply to never allowing another nation to spread a hellish ism with the notion of conquering the world. Nazism started a full century ago and the world has changed since. We think. We hope. Russia may be in its death throes, but who knows how far it will go to avoid total collapse. China certainly wants to be the overlord for all of Asia and will go after other parts of the world if it gains that goal.
Is a giant military the best way to counter these forces? History is equivocal. Our nuclear might unquestionably cowed the Soviets into deciding against testing us with nuclear weapons. At the same time, our paranoia prolonged governments worse than Communism.
The answer, I think, lies somewhere between our current military and no military. We built a military to fight the ultimate war and have slowly destroyed our troops by putting them in situations where that ultimate might wasn’t usable. We’ve sunk trillions into weapons that rust away unused and often don’t work in the first place. We’ve let weapons porn cloud our brains to cyberwarfare and other non-military attacks. We ship billions in cash to dictators and let the Peace Corps shrivel.
That we need to dismantle half the military and use the money in smarter ways is, I think, unarguable. The 2030s will not be the 1930s. They will, however, be full of global menaces that literally nobody else in the world is willing to face. Getting Europe to be a true third force might be our smartest move, assuming that anybody can get Europe to do anything, let alone something sensible.
Global warming alone is a true existential crisis for the world. Nations must accept that they cannot obfuscate, deny, or dally in response. The world will change drastically no matter what. This might be the slap in the face that everybody needs.
I don’t see that at all. Do you seriously think that Poland would dare using nuclear weapons against Russia? They would end up a pile of radioactive rubble. And if they can’t use them, what good are they?
In fact the only use of nuclear weapons–the only rational use, anyway–is as a deterrent to an adversary using them. And I don’t think you need very many to make a nuclear war a disaster for both sides, not to mention the rest of the world.