Slashed? $487 billion over 10 years is not slashing.
Ineffective at what, though? Invading foreign lands and staying for a decade? I’m fine with that being prohibitive.
What degree of superiority do you need, sir? Would you settle for the most effective defense force, or do you need expeditionary abilities that trump the next ten or so nations combined? There’s no upper bound to superiority if you’re willing to pour hundreds of billions into the military every year.
It’s also a very potent symbol in parts of the country. Whenever anybody has the temerity to suggest Lockheed Martin might get by on a few hundred million less in profiteering, at least 28% of the country goes ballistic, and not all of them are just worried about the public teat.
It’s theater, and the pols see it as job security.
When I go to work every day all I hear about is reduced promotion opportunities, mandatory seperations, furloughs for civilian workers, and lost contractor jobs. Every unit I know of has seen its budget decreased. Discretionary training spending has been frozen. They’re lecturing soldiers on using both sides of sheets of paper just to keep costs down.
I don’t know what Army you are talking about, but the Army I’m in is reeling from massive budget cuts.
And here’s the big problem: Everybody wants a smaller budget. Even the Pentagon agrees we need a smaller Army. But when it comes time to cut a program, what do you give up? Do you fire highly competent soldiers to reduce headcount? Do you violate your contractual obligations to veterans? Less training? Less aircraft? Somebody, somewhere, has to take the hit. THAT is the reason it is so hard to cut the Army budget.
Yes, that needs to be rethought as well.
If you are the one recommending budget cuts, it is incumbent on you to explain what capabilities you want to cut.
You can’t make the argument that you want to cut the budget to some arbitrary number unless you are also prepared to explain why you chose that number and what capabilities you expect to sacrifice.
I’m not married to some arbitrary number, I just pointed that a $500 billion gets you halfway to balancing this year’s budget.
I’m prepared to sacrifice all capabilities beyond defense of the U.S., and a focused, limited expeditionary capability tailored to the actual threats we face; terrorist NGOs.
So to hell with South Korea and NATO, then?
If that’s how you want to put it. Yes, I expect South Korea to be able to see to its own defense.
NATO was formed to counter a superpower that no longer exists. Who, exactly, should NATO be armed against now?
Or, we can just stop fighting so many useless wars. We don’t need anywhere near the military we have. We could cut military spending to a third of what it is and still grossly outspend any other nation in the world.
Why do we need to fight global terrorism? I hate this straw man. Can we take care of our own backyard? Most of the global terrorists we are responsible for in at least some part, anyway.
It’s very idealistic to go charging off, sword drawn, banners raised, to fight “global terrorism”. I’d rather make sure everyone has enough to eat first and our schools have money.
It’s a bad time to reduce military spending. It’s a good time to reduce stupid military spending.
We’re probably overloaded on high end pay. We should incentivize retirement for the oldest in the military so we can hire more at the low end to provide jobs and training.
Obviously we’ve wasted a lot of money on war lately that should stop.
We need to end military spending programs for tanks and planes we don’t need and get that money into new technology research and production.
Those are all good valid reasons, but they don’t cover why you can’t attrit out of future growth.
Part of the problem is we have “militarized” (in an economic sense) parts of our budget that could/should transition to other funding vehicles. I don’t think VA commitments should count towards military spending at all. Neither should some DARPA and R&D efforts, particularly longer term projects. In that sense there are line items under the “military” rubric that don’t really belong there, and that inflates our eval of what the social cost of the military is. To that extent, you are absolutely right.
The real problem with cutting military spending is not located within the military. It’s the draping of other efforts in military garb because they then become subject to far less scrutiny. Hand in hand with this goes the natural tendency of business to follow the money, so the opportunity cost of having scientific and commercial efforts diverted to the military warps the entire economy. None of that is the fault of the military. It’s the iron triangle of lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats that continually pushes for an increase in the overall slice of the economic pie.
The other consequence is it warps policy. If you have an enormous military sitting around essentially doing nothing, then it becomes “obvious” what the solution is to a pesky Iraqi regime. Then that solution brings about ruinous expenses, but they are justified because we can’t “abandon our men.” So there’s no falsifiability to military expenditure.
Definitely. Infrastructure spending actually produces a return higher than the expenditure. Military spending, not so much.
Some forms of entitlement spending is very slightly productive; the money goes almost immediately back into the economy. Medicare payments are very productive, as they help prevent people from waiting until they are emergency-room patients. If you had the choice, would you rather we socialists paid for the penny of prevention or the pound of cure?
Balancing this year’s budget is a terrible idea. Next year’s as well. And for the next ten years, at least. The debt is not the worst of our problems.
See, this isn’t the proper requirement you would need to actually look at to determine if we should cut military spending, and by how much if we should. What you need to look at is, what do you want the military to do? What roles do you foresee them playing? How will they integrate with our foreign policy, with our treaty commitments to various allies around the world, and with the protection of our interests?
This gets brought up all the time, and my answer to this is always ‘so what’? We spend more than any other nation (about double what the comparable EU spends, to put it in some relative perspective that’s not a complete apples to orangutans comparison)…but, what you have to consider is, do we get more OUT of our military then they do? Take the EU for instance. Can the project power and protect their interests half as good as we can at our doubled price? The answer is ‘no way in hell’. They need us if they want to deploy more than a token force outside of their local sphere of influence, and they have no real navy able to project power globally or to protect their interests on a global scale. Same goes for China…they spend a lot more on their military based on GDP than we do, but they spend a bit less than half that we do. Do they get a military half as effective? No, not at all. Again, it’s a military that could be used only within their borders or perhaps on a limited scale their very near neighbors. That’s fine, as they are a local power, not a global military superpower, but you have to consider what role WE are using our military for before just arbitrarily saying we need to slash US spending, especially at the levels you are talking about later in the thread. Could we shave a few billion here or there from the military without seriously compromising the mission we are currently requiring of them? Certainly, and I’m not opposed. But slashing the military budget by more than half? You’d gut the military and gut our ability to maintain our technological edge, the very thing that allows us to be so militarily dominant and to project power and protect not only our interests but the interests of our allies. The EU and NATO absolutely rely on the US to maintain that dominance, and while I suppose they COULD radically shift their military spending upward to make up the difference I don’t think it’s politically feasible for them to do so…they are struggling right now just to do what they are doing, militarily. But if not them, then who? Or do we just rely on the peace and good will of local powers throughout the world to protect and defend our vital national and strategic interests for us, since everyone loves us so much and really, at there golden hearts, wants peace and a maintenance of the status quo wrt distribution of wealth and trade, oil and other resources?
At the same time, much of our wealth and power stems from our military being able to defend our strategic interests, so I don’t think this is a convincing argument from my perspective. Yes, our powerful military made it possible for us to step into it in Iraq (Afghanistan, at least when it happened, was hardly a military adventure we did as a lark), but it’s been the ability of the US to pretty much convince local powers that it would be better not to try any adventures of their own, at least wrt anything that touches on either our or our allies stated and explicit interests.
To me, if you want to cut military spending, then the first thing you have to do is redefine what, exactly and explicitly, the military’s role would be, how you want to shift our foreign policy, what specifically we are going to honor, treaty wise and what we are willing to let go, and how our global interests will be defended…and if they aren’t, then how willing we all are to accept that and basically let the chips fall where they will wrt things like trade and resources. To me, looking at it from a cost to benefits ratio, I’d say we get a hell of a bang (so to speak :p) for our buck wrt the military and what it gives us, especially wrt being masters of our own destiny. It certainly gives our allies a huge boost by being under our shield, especially collectively when you put their military capabilities along with ours in such a way as to deter most external forms of aggression or attempt to extend their spheres of influence in a way that would impact trade or access to vital resources.
As far as I can tell, we get negative value from our huge military spending.
That’s not true, we spend more than twice what they do by GDP.
And your argument presumes that huge military expenditures are in a nation’s interests, and not a burden.
No one. A huge military is a white elephant in the modern world, a useless prestige project. We might as well be building pyramids.
Nonsense. Our allies have nuclear weapons and are essentially immune to invasion, including from us. Our military is pretty much useless for anything other than bullying poor nations.
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As far as I can tell, we get negative value from our huge military spending.
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Interesting. What do you base this on? A cursory search shows the US has over $2 trillion in both imports AND exports every year. While I suppose it can be hoped that we wouldn’t lose all of that if we couldn’t defend or protect it, we’d certainly lose some if someone decided to interdict our trade or access to something like, oh, say oil, and we could do nothing about it. I know, I know…only the evil US would do such a thing, but assuming for the sake of argument that someone might be sort of as evil as us you can’t simply handwave the possible threat away. Well, you could of course, but I’m not going to.
I knew what they were spending (somewhere between $200-300 billion), but didn’t realize it was such a small part of their GDP. My apologies…I was wrong there.
Still, I think my main point stands…we get more than double the utility from our military, which has more than double the capabilities as China does.
And yours obviously presumes the converse. Yes, we disagree on this…I am certainly aware of that. I’d say that, considering our global commitments and our reliance on global resources and trade for the functioning of our nation, mine is a bit easier to justify than yours is, but if you have an argument for why it’s a burden and not a benefit, feel free to do so. At a guess it boils down to basically that no one really needs to protect our interests, trade, access to vital resources or allies because the world is really a peachy place and only the evil US would want to grab all the goodies. Is that close?
So you say. I disagree.
Only if we and our allies are prepared to use nuclear weapons at the slightest provocation…which, thankfully, we aren’t. How would having nuclear weapons have helped in Libya, for instance? Well, we could have told the Kaddaffi duck that if he didn’t abdicate immediately we were going to nuke the whole country I suppose. When China get’s frisky in the straights, or Iran feels froggy in the gulf or North Korea gets a wild hair up their asses over some imagined slight I suppose we COULD simply send over nukes instead of a carrier…and, certainly our allies could as well. Doesn’t seem a wise plan to me, but it would certainly save some money!
It’s not a straw man. It is a very real issue that has been demonstrated repeately over the last 60 years and it’s only since 9/11 that America has bothered to take the problem seriously. We live in a globally connected world, isolationism is dead and useless, and what happens overseas does effect our lives. We allowed global terrorist organizations to fester in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, and now we are seeing the results.
No one is suicidal enough to do that to a major nuclear power. And even if they were, we could have far less military spending and still crush whomever they were.
No, we don’t. We have far more capability than we need. We arm ourselves like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are going to reappear from the past and attack us, but all we are really doing is attacking Third World nations too weak to put up a serious fight. Other countries don’t arm themselves like we do, because the “utility” you speak of doesn’t exist.
No; you are just talking like it’s the 19th century. No one is going to do that because it’s not profitable, and because we’d burn their entire nation to ash with nuclear weapons if they seriously endangered us, and rest of the world knows it. The rest of the world isn’t required to buy into America’s indulgent self image as the great hero and protector of freedom.
No; we just threaten people with them instead.
I agree 100%. Our global commitments do not permit us to simply ignore our foreign partners and abandon them to whatever perils the world has to offer.
And what impact do you think would result from war on the Korean peninsula? Given that South Korea is one of the wealthiest nations in the world? Hyundai, Samsung, LG, FILA, Hanjin, Daewoo… these are all businesses that have a hand in daily American life. You don’t think that disruption there would be a Bad Thing to the average American? Because Jane-and-Joe American import and sell all of these products. Hope you like international shipping, because Korea is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of merchant vessels. What would the world look like if that went away, or worse, was controlled by Kim Jong Un?
Whether you like it or not, the welfare of these foreign partners directly impacts your life.