The inescapable conclusion of my previous post is that we as
a nation simply can’t afford everything we are currently funding unless voters
will accept a hefty tax increase of at least 20-25%, or elimination of all tax
breaks (including popular things like home mortgage deductions, and medical
deductions). And I suggested a list of
things which I proposed were the top priorities we had to fund or ought to
fund, mostly to keep the economy strong so that tax receipts would stay strong.
The most controversial of those priorities, at least among
some people, will be the military, on whom we spend a little over half a
trillion dollars (just under $600 billion) annually. If we spent nothing at all
on the military we could – just about – cover the other current discretionary
spending without borrowing each year.
Now there are certainly valid but highly technical debates
about HOW we spend that $600 billion. For example, are aircraft carriers really
essential for the navy or are they just expensive targets these days for
Russian VA-111 Shkval supercavitating torpedoes and
Chinese Dong-Feng 21 carrier-killer anti-ship cruise
missiles? Are we better off with fewer very capable but very expensive manned
F-35 fighters or with many more inexpensive unmanned drone fighters and cruise
missiles? These are interesting and worthwhile debates, but I would argue that whatever
the outcome of these debates we as a nation HAVE to spend to have a strong
military, and the cost - however we apportion it – is likely to be more or less
what we are spending now.
Could we do it for less? Sure, we could probably cut $50-100
billion or so a year out of the budget if anyone could figure out a way to
prevent members of Congress from keeping open military bases in their district
that the Pentagon says they don’t need, or getting contracts in their
districts for weapons that the Pentagon hasn’t asked for, or get the military procurement
system under control so that new weapons systems don’t always overrun their
budgets by a factor of two or three or more.
Lots of luck on that!
First, why do we need a strong military:
1. A
strong military is like an insurance policy. The primary purpose of a strong
military is to avoid having to go to war; to encourage potential opponents to
estimate that they could not win a war with us, so don’t bother trying. As
Plato said centuries ago and history has proven time and time again, “If you want peace, prepare for war”. And unless the military is strong enough
to deter aggression the money spent on it is wasted. Yes, it is expensive to
maintain a strong military, but far, far more expensive to have to fight a war
and incalculably more expensive to lose that war.
2. Our
economy is highly dependent on control of the sea, and that requires a strong
navy. In 2016 ship traffic carried $1.5 trillion in US cargo to and from our
worldwide trading partners, and much of that cargo was components or raw
materials needed by US manufacturing, or outgoing trade with foreign markets
that support US companies. More than half of the world’s ship cargo passes
through the South China Sea, a major choke point that would be easy for an opponent
with enough naval power to close off.
Disruption of this sea trade would decimate the US and the world
economy, just as Germany nearly drove Britain to bankruptcy and starvation during
World War II by disrupting their sea trade.
3. Optimists
might argue that we have no obvious opponents, so why spend so much on the
military. How trustworthy is that estimate? China, already with the second
largest navy in the world, is building warships as fast as it can, aiming for a
350 ship navy by 2020 (we have 274 deployable warships right now), even while
it makes claims on the whole South South China Sea and builds fortified islands
there. Russia is far behind us in military power, but has quite enough to be
troublesome on its own borders, and of course is a nuclear power. And then we have North Korea, madly building
nuclear weapons and developing long range missiles. I think the optimists are a
bit unrealistic.
Second, why it is so expensive:
1. As
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld correctly noted, “…you go
to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a
later time “. In the days of horses
and marching armies wars used to be slow-motion affairs, with time to mobilize and
train and arm troops. Not today. Wars
occur quickly, and require enormous stocks of munitions and supplies. Today a
military that isn’t ready and constantly trained for immediate use is a
military that is of no use. But it is expensive to maintain and constantly
train a standing army, navy and air force.
2. Many
people don’t understand how expensive it is to maintain forward positions –
troops in Europe and Asia, ships and aircraft deployed around the world where
they can get to trouble spots in time. For example, it takes about 4-4½ ships
just to keep one ship on station somewhere. The rest are in transit to or from
the station, or in maintenance, or in training.
3. Many
people don’t understand that building today’s complex weapon systems - ships,
aircraft, etc – involves tens of thousands of skills and specialized facilities
(shipyards, aircraft factories, etc).
Stop building them for a few years and those skills and facilities are
gone and might take a generation or more to recover with new hires and new factories/shipyards.
More than that, today’s complex weapons require highly trained people to
operate them, and the constant training to keep them proficient wears out the
equipment, which then needs to be constantly replenished and replaced.
So I would argue that military spending is one of the
essential things the government needs to do, not just for the nation’s safety,
though that is important too, but to safeguard the American economy, and the
world economy America is dependent on. And given the way Congress works and the inefficiency of the government, it will probably cost about what we are now spending. In fact, we probably need to boost the spending
for a few years to replace all the munitions we have used and equipment we have
worn out in our fruitless Middle East wars over the past decade.
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