Sorry to ask, but can someone tell me what an empire is? I mean, I thought I knew, but hearing the word applied to America makes me think I’m wrong.
Thinking back to the British Empire, they ruled other countries. They ruled India, countries in Africa, and of course the American colonies, Australia, and so on.
What countries do we rule? I thought America only ruled over America.
No, of course he’s not right. Even discounting the blind squirrels and nuts factor, it’s, well, Pat Buchanan…
I don’t believe that maintaining military forces around the world is the reason the US is in trouble…quite the opposite. They have acted as deterrents and protection for our overseas interests.
As for making us few friends, that’s probably true, but what of it? We didn’t have all that many friends when we weren’t a superpower after all. If we weren’t a superpower today (and didn’t have military force deployed overseas) then we’d need to have someone else willing to protect our interests, to act as a deterrent to aggression, and to do all the stuff we do. Who would that be? And if the answer is ‘no one’, then that’s probably not a good thing, especially for us.
The relevance is often obscure (or wrong headed), but it’s generally there. If you look at just about every major foreign conflict the US has ever been in (and many or even most of the minor or covert conflicts), at the core is US foreign interest. Whether or not the citizens understand the relevance is another matter, but, frankly most of the citizens of this country are completely clueless and wouldn’t understand relevance if it bit them on the ass.
Sadly, it’s where the oil is at. If the US wasn’t there then SOMEONE would be, because oil is a global strategic resource. It’s a leading question, but who would you trust more? The Euro’s? Maybe today, but in a world where there was no US superpower? I don’t trust them as far as I can throw a battleship. Russia/USSR (if they were still kicking about because there was no US superpower)? China? Let them just work it out in their region on their own and hope the oil keeps flowing?
He’s either an isolationist idiot or he really hasn’t thought it through then. I’m inclined to the former. And I’m an isolationist at heart. But (contrary to popular opinion) I’m not an idiot, and I HAVE thought it through. If the US tried to pull into the same shell we were in before the 20th century then we’d have to rely on someone to be out there projecting power and protecting our interests for us. And that someone would be Europe, and they wouldn’t be protecting us for free or out of the goodness of their little Euro hearts. They would be in the drivers seat in being able to demand concessions (trade, diplomatic or military) from us, and we’d have to follow their lead. That would seriously suck…and this isn’t even getting into what an alternative reality we’d be operating under, depending on when the US decided to opt out of the superpower game.
We got entangled in Europe’s troubles when we WERE isolationists, no? We’d get entangled if we were isolationists today, or if we were isolationists 20 or 40 years ago. When someone else is protecting you and your interests then you give up a large measure of control, and instead others and outside events control YOU. Pick a time in the last 60 years and take the US out of the superpower equation. What happens? How do events play out? And, most importantly (from our perspective) how would this help the US to be stronger?
The money we’ve spent on our military is a drop in the bucket to what the costs might have been if, say, the Soviets had been the only superpower on earth willing or able to project military capability throughout the world. Even in the post-Soviet phase, think about what it might have meant for the US to have folded our hand as well and opted out of being a superpower. I’ll give you my short take on how that would have worked out: badly. And not just for us (though obviously that’s what would have been of the most immediate concern to myself, being an American and all), but I think for much of the world as well. Including the Middle East.
Horsehit. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to our GDP. Our military strength has, IMHO, prevented any major wars for over 60 years now. Bad as Vietnam, Korea and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars have been, combined they weren’t on the same scale as the first two world wars…and a third actual world war would have made the first two look like skirmishes, even if we discount nuclear weapons. Imagine fighting set piece battles using post WWII military hardware and weapons systems.
Total horsehit. Our economy isn’t exhausted, we haven’t reached our borrowing limits, our industry isn’t dying and over all defense is only a couple of percentage points of our GDP. Plus, we don’t HAVE a world empire, at least not by definition (either in spirit or to the letter of the definition IMHO, though I realize many people disagree).
Because he’s spouting populist horseshit that attempts to simplify complex concepts and boil them down to where they sound good to his target audience. It’s the same kind of isolationist rhetoric that used to dominate US foreign policy and that STILL managed to get us into two world wars with weak military’s who were poorly trained, poorly equipped, poorly lead and poorly maintained…which ended up costing us in every case in terms of money spent and our boys killed because they had shit for equipment and were unprepared for combat, as well as being late actually getting into the fighting.
-XT
“But America’s competitors have traditionally spent 2-4% of GDP on the military as well, so if you’re trying to look at competitiveness, you have to look at the difference.”
This assumes the US needed to spend the same proportion as other countries though, Its economy and relative geographic isolation is so large that it could have still been the dominant world power with far less, giving it an even larger competitive economic advantage vs other countries, or the option to improve other areas like education.
The stimulus argument would be one example of claiming an overall benefit, or an offset of that cost making it more worthwhile. I wouldnt take it as a given myself, but its an interesting argument.
Otara
Well, that’s disputed, as I just now found out. It certainly seemed plausible to me, which is why I did some cursory googling.
A UT-Dallas prof gives us Economic Multipliers and the Economic Impact of DOE Spending in New Mexico (pdf):
Now, I can’t vouch for Professor Dumas; I haven’t read the entire thing; there are obvious conditions and questions about the breadth of his conclusions; this may very well be an isolated outlier in what looks to be a pretty large corpus of studies (that I’m not about to dive into). But the efficacy of military-focused spending relative to private sector stimulus is clearly in dispute, and part of the dispute is the (in)accuracy of the DOE’s reported numbers.
So there’s that.
In case it wasn’t clear, I want to be explicit: I’m very much ill-informed about the military multiplier effect. Sam Stone, if you have any foundation for believing the majority of evidence goes against Prof. Dumas, I’ll certainly give that more credence than my ignorance.
And, to some extent, this causes me to re-evaluate my views on military spending…an interesting side-effect.
One might well suppose that the support of an overwhelming military capacity might be economically feasible, until some loon decides to use it. How the Viet Nam or Iraq Wars may be determined to be a good deal for the average American eludes me, I hesitantly advance the notion that they were not. By the way, how is that Grenada Memorial coming along?
And, of course, “interests”. What a wondrous amount of international mischief can be hidden under such verbal drapery! Men given to stern self-discipline when it comes to the well-being of our people just get all wet and gooey when it comes to pouring money into our military, to protect our “interests”. Interests such as preventing foreigners from adopting foolish and unappealing forms of social change and governance. Much of the history of Central America is written in the blood of the poor and meek, the handwriting looks familiar. Of course, we saved a lot of money on bananas, that must not be overlooked.
I’ve heard other people claim that the United States never built an empire. And I’ve always told them look at a map of the United States in 1800. Now look at a map of the United States in 1900.
I don’t know. Continue punishing the people who make themselves useful so we can support them?
The Geek Heres Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerrys explaining the budget. Of course we also have Eisenhower explaining and predicting the dangers of the military/industrial complex. The military is the problem, not the solution.
In general, economists think that military spending has a smaller multiplier than domestic spending. When the money is spend abroad it is worse. Using a $100K missile to blow up something in another country is wasteful. At least if we used it to blow up Detroit or Flint we’d have the benefit of money spent to rebuild them.
IOW: We’re losing the Cold War more slowly than the Soviets did.
History shows that all empires fall. It is impossible for one nation to have full spectrum dominance over every inch of the planet forever and ever, amen. I dunno if a peaceful run down is in the cards, either. The last time the East tried to play the West’s game we cut off their oil and nuked 'em twice. I find it difficult to believe our betters will take a sober look at the situation and fold.
Well, it’s not the cause of all our problems. But it certainly is a cause of problems.
Quoth Sam Stone:
Sure, it’s got some stimulative effect, but it’s a broken-window stimulus. Money spent on the military is ultimately money spent destroying things. It might give the economy a shot in the arm in the short term, but in the long run, it’s negative.
No, I actually agree with the Professor. In my last message, I pointed to research that suggested the multiplier from military spending was more like 0.8, which means you lose 20% of each dollar you spend. I’m not a big believer in government stimulus spending - as your own link pointed out, private sector spending is much more effective. Governments are horrible at allocating resources.
In a recession, stimulus spending may help because it’s not necessarily crowding out private spending - it’s adding to it because it’s using resources that are idle. Theoretically. In practice, I don’t think that’s true, and I believe that’s why the current round of stimulus spending has been so ineffective. Paying states to allow them to give the public sector 4% raises isn’t very stimulative.
I would argue that military spending is probably more stimulative than the crap the current stimulus is funding. At least military spending tends to have a large component of R&D, and the salary money tends to go to people who are going to spend it. Stimulus money that lands in retirement savings accounts doesn’t stimulate a thing - it just transfers wealth from one group to another.
It’s also money spent developing new navigation systems. How much value has the military-funded GPS system provided to Americans and the rest of the world?
It’s also money spent developing more efficient aircraft and ships. A lot of modern aerodynamic and hydrodynamic technology came straight out of the military.
It’s also money spent paying the salaries of millions of Americans, many of whom are below the median age and have families, meaning they spend the money instead of saving it.
It’s also money spent developing robust networks. DARPA was the father of the internet - a military program.
It’s also money spent developing new materials technology. Many modern production methods have their roots in military R&D. Titanium has become much more common in civilian applications, because the military figured out how to work with it.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a Keynesian, and I would never justify military spending on Keynesian grounds. But if YOU are a Keynesian, it’s hard to argue that military spending is less stimulative than any other kind that has actually been implemented.
I like that part! You can use Keynesian reasoning to support your case with the trapdoor that you can ignore it if it doesn’t. Cheeky!
WEll, as i say, the burden of maintaining a large military falls largely upon the poor. How many senator’s and rep’s sons and daughters serve in the military?
Plus, when we ally ourselves with a crook, inevitably, we are tarred when the crook falls from power.
We face qa challenge from North Korea-so why don’t we suggest to South Korea that THEY deal with it? Going to war because of a 60 year old treaty seems like a mistake to me.
Why would you say the military was a burden on the poor? It seems to me quite the opposite: The military is one way in which poor people can build careers and develop needed skills.
I might point out that there’s no draft. The only people who are in the military are people who want to be in the military. So I’m having a hard time seeing how it’s a burden for them.
Nice sentiment, but not reality. In the real world of geopolitics, you’re sometimes forced to ally with unsavory characters - the lesser of two evils. Would you have objected to the U.S.'s alliance with Stalin in WWII?
Even better, NOT going to war, because you maintained a peacekeeping force in the region. The American soldiers in South Korea are a tripwire - they’re kept near the border precisely so that the fanatics in the North understand that the result of any war they start with the south will be thousands of dead Americans - which means they’re going to have to fight America. Had those soldiers not been there, we might have seen another Korean war by now (yes, I know the original one never ended, but major hostilities did).
WWI and WWII are an example of what isolationism leads to. A small conflict breaks out, it gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until you have no choice to become involved anyway. It wasn’t just the Nazis - the Japanese were convinced that America would stay out of its ambitious march through Asia because A) America had already ignored previous aggression, and B) the isolationist movement in America convinced Japan that if it struck a blow against the American fleet it would have no stomach for further violence and would agree to terms that would allow Japan to have control over much of Asia.
I think that American international involvement around the world is the result of hard lessons learned from the first half of the 20th century, where isolationism and appeasement wound up involving the U.S. in two world wars and a war in Korea.
And isolationism is even more dangerous today, because the existence of nuclear weapons and ICBMs means America is no longer isolated from attack. And also, the globalized, connected world, where supply chains spiderweb throughout countries everywhere, means that any large conflict will have global ramifications.
As for America not needing to spend as much on the military as Europe or Asia because of its isolation, that’s exactly backwards. America has to spend more, because the only way it can have influence is to project power far from its shores, and that’s extremely expensive and difficult to do.
Quite a few I imagine (not that it’s relevant or that politicians set the bar for what is considered “wealthy”). I think you will find that our military has a large number of highly educated men and women from more affluent families. Although I suspect that they will tend to be more concentrated in certain MOSs and in the officer ranks.
Well I think China and some other nations would take exception to your simplistic interpretation of WWII.
Also there has never been a nation in history that could project force anywhere in the globe nor was it possible to have instant communication between any square inch on the globe. So I’m not sure where you are drawing your historical reference.
The “fall” of the American “empire” will likely take the form of a long, gradual errotion of international clout to bodies like the EU, China, India and parts of South America (maybe Brazil) as it becomes too expensive or irrelevant to maintain that influence. But I don’t foresee the United States itself breaking up or anything.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/12/opinion/oe-schwartz12 Did we include about 30 to 50 billion a year across many agencies maintaining our nuclear arsenal. The real amount we spend on our military dwarfs the amount in the budget.