Oredigger77, I don’t know your stance on nuclear proliferation (I’m guessing you wouldn’t be in favor of it,) but this is a point I think needs more addressing:
If the U.S. ever did cut back suddenly and hugely on its defense spending, you’d see a lot more allies going nuclear. Poland, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc. - maybe Germany as well.
I admittedly haven’t spent a ton of time thinking about this through a nuclear proliferation lens.
My first thought is that the reason Germany doesn’t have nukes is they’ve agreed not to due to treaties so they would need motivation to break those treaties. I’m not sure I see a motivation for them. Their ally France has them next door and the US would still be an ally with their arsenal in the same location including submarine based. So I’m not sure how their security would change. On a larger scale I would guess that more countries would try to gain nuclear weapons to assure their regional security as we saw in India and Pakistan. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan make the most sense out of your list, since I think the math for NATO countries lines up pretty well with my outline for Germany. I’m honestly surprised that more Middle Eastern Powers haven’t tried for it already. I would guess that Africa and South America would likely not have countries develop them.
The primary reason for Asian powers to develop nuclear weapons would be threats of Chinese expansion since otherwise their military’s are of mostly comparable size. We have already seen moves for many of these countries toward China economically and I won’t be surprised when military alliances follow after a US withdrawl. That would be more likely than the expense of developing new weapons.
In the end I would think there are 3 new nuclear powers (maybe 2 since I’m not sure Taiwan has the industrial capacity). I’m certainly less worried about any of them joining the nuclear brotherhood than India or Pakistan. I don’t think any of them would sell a bomb or the technology to terrorists so they would be less dangerous than current powers so I would rank the whole thing a meh as far as my concern for the issue.
^^ I forgot to add, the Southeast Asian nations might also go nuclear. China hasn’t been shy in recent years about bumping them around.
If your goal is to reduce the US defense budget by what was it? 75 percent or something? it will necessarily mean very, very substantial reductions to the US nuclear arsenal.
The cost of keeping the same size of nuclear arsenal we have today is approximately half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, or about $50 billion a year. Cite. Between the required expenses of pay, fuel, operations, etc. even with a much smaller military, there’s just no way to maintain a similar level of nuclear deterrent as we have today. At your level of suggested spending, first to go would be the bombers, and then maybe the submarines because of the incredibly high operations costs. We’d probably maintain the ICBM force at reduced levels, just because it’s cheaper than the other legs of the triad.
And once that happens, of COURSE other countries are going to start looking at their own nuclear deterrent.
Part of the problem re:NATO is that most NATO countries have very… defense oriented(?) militaries. They just don’t have the transport capacity to get their troops where they’d need to be in order to actually fend off a Russian invasion of Estonia. And the Estonians have like a couple of brigades at most to fight with. One of the lesser known, but vital capabilities of the US military is that it’s extremely capable in terms of logistics and transport. We’re about the only country in the world that has the capability to move multiple divisions to a different continent, mount an amphibious invasion if need be, AND keep those troops, and any follow-on troops supplied and equipped indefinitely while they fight the war.
So a lot of the time, the US provides a lot of the transport and logistical support for NATO allies when they’re deployed to Afghanistan and other places.
I agree that other countries are going to look for their own nuclear deterrent. It just seems to me that NATO has theirs even not including the US.
As for how I’d get there (which is wild outside the scope of this thread so I’ll be brief. The current military budget is roughly $1 Trillion for FY 20 out of a projects $22 Trillion my goal would be to reduce military spending to between 1.5% and 2.5%. Or roughly $440 Billion. I would remove the VA from the DOD budget and transfer that into the single payer system (paper savings of ~$200B). Then I’d cut all OCO spending (~100B). I’d probably leave the $70B for weapons programs though slight haircut there wouldn’t be world ending. Without the OCO spending the munitions budget could be cut by $50B. I’d leave the ~$6B for nuclear modernization and the ~$14B for since and technology.
Where I would make most of my gains would be closing all overseas bases and a Reduction in Force equivalent to all of the troops stationed overseas and I’ll use the number from the OP ~$150B and I would drop 1 of our carrier groups (the one constantly forward deployed to Japan) for about a billion per year. I’ve saved $450B out of my goal of $460.
The point of the cold-war build up in Germany and Japan was to put American lives in harms way if there was an attack, thus guaranteeing American involvement, thus guaranteeing that there would be no attack. More recently, Ukraine would have been glad to have had some American bases, but didn’t have any, and was abandoned to be carved up by the Russians.
Australia has a similar split attitude to American bases. We don’t like them, we don’t like annoying China, but we put up with being in the front line between China or Russia and the USA because it’s better than being in the front line between China or Russia and Australia.
^^^ Interesting. Russia has always been land grabbers at the drop of the hat. It kind of went away until Putin got back into power. Maybe Ukraine should have just became part of NATO. I know that would have stirred up a hornets nest, but it would have probably have been more effective than another American base, even so, if it came down to that, seems like Ukraine would have been glad to foot the bill.
GDP is tied to a countries wealth, that along with its military expenditures is a reliable indicator of what percentage each are using and is capable of spending. All reliable sources use such figures.
Money spent isn’t always a reflective indicator of how ready a country can fight a war, anyway. Ask the old Soviet Union how well they fared against Afghanistan. After a decade, they had enough and went home. America showed them, after a much longer time still over there, and we’ve blown enough of the same rocks up many times over to have made sand out of much of the landscape. Just seems like we get into these situations too easily, and never find an exit plan. Our past history also often shows the infrastructure and money we spent to fix the very things we just blown up.
Osama bin Laden had a strategy for America. He knew America couldn’t be defeated militarily, but he thought the best way to defeat them, was to have us spend so much on the military and security measures, it would eventually collapse the economy. I can’t help but feel like Putin goes to sleep each night thinking about this with a smile on his face.
If you don’t want any military cuts, where do we cut the annual trillion dollar cuts from?
For sure they would have. They - and the Baltic states - would have been by far the most vulnerable members of NATO. It would be worth the membership fee no matter what.
^^^ Guess America was scared to do it at the time, Putin was talking a pretty mean game.
I appreciate your input. Like you, I think we need a major paradigm shift. What it ends up becoming, I don’t know, I’m flexible. Just don’t want it continuing like this. We just can’t afford it.
For the longest of time, it was the cold war build up was why our strategic interests were needed for the overseas bases. That time has passed.
When it did, politicians decided it was still needed because of much of the Middle Eastern (ME) conflicts, mostly oil, keep it flowing with our energy dependent country. Thanks to fracking in America and the new technology, that time also has passed. It comes with a price though, not the most environmental friendly, and the oil wells peter out fairly quickly. This has only bought us a limited amount of time, and the window to go green and get on with that technology is going to be ignored with the present administration.
Our military is only as strong as our economy. It’s not sustainable in the long run, and by being more efficient, more lean, and by keeping NATO and being a part of it, we can do better.
Besides, even without our military, America’s private citizens alone are estimated to have 200-400 billion firearms, and trillions and trillions of bullets. But yet we need this trillion dollar plus annual military, to help us sleep better, or what exactly?
We have great neighbors, nothing too serious on this side of the world is happening. Most of the conflict is far away.
AIUI, the trillion dollar annual figure for our defense is because the $649 billion dollar figure leaves off a lot of stuff. This figure doesn’t include past military expenses that are still there, and pensions each receives, it doesn’t even include the war costs when they are active. Imagine that, a defense that doesn’t use wars in their annual military spending. That too is a separate costs. Nor is the money we borrow and interest we pay for that reflected in that $649 billion dollar figure. This is from memory, but I believe is accurate, would doublecheck before I considered it engraved in stone.
Well you’re over by like $300 billion.
It isn’t in DoD and it already is a single payer system.
The munitions budget is a subset of the weapons spending. This doesn’t make sense.
You mean you would cut it from ~$50B to $6B?
I’m not trying to nitpick your plan, but just illustrate that actual defense spending is quite different than what you think it is. For example, overseas bases don’t cost $150B a year. The entire operation and maintenance budget for DoD is like $280B annually, of which something like $50B or something is for civilian salaries.
Ravenman, thank you for posting that. I hate when people use false, or wildly improbable numbers, for budgets and planning purposes. (You can guess why I’ve largely given up on national politics.)
If someone wants to cut the military budget, they need to figure out what capabilities they are willing to sacrifice, and even then we’re talking about a fraction of our nation’s wealth. The military has long been in the habit of closing and consolidating overseas facilities that were no longer needed, and in percentage terms we’re already at close to the historic low since 1941. Given the long-term political requirement to protect strategic allies, ensure free shipping lanes, and weigh in on international affairs, I am unsure that’s we’re not getting a wildly favorable deal on the money spent right now.
Is he? Trillion is closer than you think if you add it all up. Some may object to it being a war resister site, but if the numbers don’t match, concentrate on that.
Meanwhile, tomorrow I’ll try to find the GAO numbers that also bare out the true cost of the military when it’s all added up, of which I also think that site relied upon.
Actually, I’m way off if that site is right. $908 billion for current military. $760 billion for past military that is in the 2020 budget. Like all sites, it helps to fact check them, I’ll try to do the same tomorrow.
No, the cite isn’t right. VA spending isn’t military spending. Certain political stripes assert that, but it has no basis in law, budgets, or anything else other than trying to inflate military spending. Plus, the assertion that a certain amount of the deficit is attributable to the defense budget has no basis in law or budgeting either. I might as well argue that the military budget is inflated by $35 billion each year because that’s how much it costs to provide health care for troops and families, so that should be counted as health care spending, not military spending. Or that $100 billion in defense R&D actually belongs with NASA, DoE labs, and the NIH budgets because they are actually all about innovation.
The current budget deal has defense spending, including the war budget, at about $730 billion.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/08/02/trump-signs-budget-deal-1444908
Let’s not forget that the excessive cost burden of empire maintenance is a major factor which has bought down every empire in the past, and will bring down this one too. Probably sooner rather than later.
Various figures need to be included if we are to get the real picture of what this is really costing us. We are not paying cash for our military, we have interest that has to be paid to cover it, much like our cars and homes, if we want them, there are associated costs that goes with it. But we’ll over look the interest we are paying to cover the money we are borrowing to sustain our defense for now, because that one figure alone would knock it out of the park. We’ll concentrate on a few others.
Here’s a figure similar to yours, but that only covers the base military budget, and only adds the $69 billion dollar overseas contingency to get a $705 billion dollar figure. That $69 billion used to fight the Islamic State group. These two get cited by the DOD. There are more programs, departments and expenses that are still not getting accounted for if people really want to know what it all costs.
The Balance goes into far more detail. They also have proposals on how to get some of this under control. Many are not going to want to hear it, they still want to think we can afford all of it, and then some. Do you think it’s sustainable?
The projected estimation from Oct 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021, is going to be $934 billion. And that still doesn’t consider all the other past militarily expenditures that are not being accounted for here that the war resisters site adds into the cost, and I think is equally important if people really want to get a realistic picture of what all of this is costing us, and is going to cost us. It’s going to get a lot worse in just a few short years. But for now, let’s just concentrate on the $934 billion. Other costs associated with our Defense that it lists:
Look at their charts with the years that start with 2003 and see where it is now, and where it is going. They have three proposals to try to get this under control, most are not going to want to hear it. Politicians are wanting military votes, so this won’t get talked about this year. It also says the DOD knows it needs to be more efficient. It now spends a third of its budget on personnel and maintenance. In only four more years, the year 2024, it will rise to 100%.
It also understands we need to start closing some of these bases, but Congress won’t let them due to the Bi-Partisan Budget Act of 2013 blocked future military base closings. Congress is also reluctant to do a lot of other things that need to be done, often claiming national security, but really is it that, or self preservation of wanting to keep their seats? Let them keep getting away with this and it’s going to cost us a hell of a lot more than that.
Fact check of the Balance site which gets a high rating.
What exactly are our Imperial holdings again? Guam, American Samoa, the USVI, Puerto Rico and the Marianas? Who do we have actual hegemony over? Iraq and Afghanistan, to a greater or lesser degree.
Having military bases is typically more of a mutual deal; we want an airbase in Kyrgyzstan because it’s handy for flying stuff to Afghanistan and geopolitically handy as a check on Beijing and Moscow. The people in Bishkek like the idea of having that sort of economic boon(both the lease payments as well as local cash infusions), as well as the fact that having a major US installation is inherently stabilizing- who’s going to mess with them if it risks bringing Uncle Sam into the picture?
So win-win- they’re not the modern equivalent of castles, intended to establish power and cow the locals, etc…