The Wrong China Hedge
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial to say that the only country one could really imagine becoming a serious military competitor to the United States on any kind of foreseeable time horizon would be China. The first-best approach to military competition with China is to try to avoid military competition with China, recognizing that a fundamentally cooperative relationship between the two countries would be better for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people, better for the overwhelming majority of Americans, and better for the overwhelming majority of people who are neither Chinese nor American. But I think everyone agrees that there’s some logic to the idea of “hedging” against a deterioration in relations. At the moment, that’s one of the rationales for investing vast sums of money in maintaining Cold War-style weapons systems.
I’ve long felt that was somewhat counterproductive insofar as it doesn’t so much hedge against the possibility of a deterioration in US-Chinese relations as it does make such a deterioration more likely. But Ilan Goldbenberg uses the column I published this morning as the jumping off point for the more provocative point that spending so heavily now is likely to counterproductive even in terms of the military balance:
The economy acts as the base of military power. It can be transformed into immediate military power at any time but at a long-term cost of reducing your military power. A country can invest in its economy in the short-term causing long-term economic growth, which creates a bigger base from which it can invest in military power. Or, it can invest in military power in the short-term understanding that this will have a cost to it’s economy and thus long-term military effectiveness.
The problem right now with the Bush administration sreategy is that we are investing well over $500 billion per year in defense once you include Iraq and Afghanistan, while China, the country most likely to present a significant long-term strategic challenge to the U.S., invests only $60 billion. That is a pretty dramatic handicap that we are creating for ourselves, especially when most of the spending is for weapons programs that might be obselete by the time the Chinese really are ready to compete and the fact that we still hold a dramatic military advantage.
He quotes Richard Betts offering a smarter strategy:
The correct way to hedge against the long-term China threat is by adopting a mobilization strategy: developing plans and organizing resources now so that military capabilities can be expanded quickly later if necessary. This means carefully designing a system of readiness to get ready — emphasizing research and development, professional training, and organizational planning. Mobilization in high gear should be held off until genuine evidence indicates that U.S. military supremacy is starting to slip toward mere superiority. Deferring a surge in military production and expansion until then would avoid sinking trillions of dollars into weaponry that may be technologically obsolete before a threat actually materializes. (The United States waited too long — until 1940 — to mobilize against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. But starting to mobilize in 1930 would have been no wiser; a crash program in aircraft production back then would have yielded thousands of ultimately useless biplanes.)
I believe that the experience of Italy during the 30s and 40s illustrates some of the problems with rearming too early (in order to pursue silly imperial ambitions in East Africa) only to find yourself fighting a war with outdated equipment.
59 Responses to “The Wrong China Hedge”
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October 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Paul Kennedy made a pretty compelling argument for this same idea back in 1987 — it was the intellectual basis for much of the defense cutbacks in the 1990s.
Although Ronald Reagan’s 7.5 percent- of- GDP- for ” Defense” policy was idiotic to anyone with two brain cells. We are still paying interest on that moron’s ..excuse..”Republican Fiscal Conservative’s” — 3 Trillion dollar deficit.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Not to mention the fact that long-term heavy spending is more likely to create huge burocracies that wind up wasting much of this money. How much does a military plunger cost these days?
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
We need to figure out what war with China (or Russia) would be about, and is there any f….. reason to prepare for it.
As far as China is concerned, I see only one reason: Taiwan. Basically, Taiwan is our Ossetia, we wish it to remain independent as long as it wishes, Chinese territorial integrity or not. If we want to drastically reduce military spending, I would offer such reductions to the Chinese and Russian as our huge concession, asking for some formal concession on their parts, so in the case of China, of committing to the principle that they pursue unification with non-military means.
As a carrot, we could scale down our presence in East Asia several times down, and encourage our allies to scale down their military forces too, would China scale down its own.
With Russia it is more complicated, but we could offer something similar. Decrease military forces of both Russia and NATO, abandon missile defence schemes and decrease nuclear forces, abandon the pursuit of first strike capability.
Have a goal of halving military spending by 2020, reducing to one quarter by 2030.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Kudos to you Matt on finding a useful learning point from the Italian actions in the 30s and 40s.
OTOH, what does it say about a country, when it engages in the kind of stupidity that only Mussolini could love?
USA! USA!
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
More on point than Italy is the case of France. Understandably concerned about the rearmament of Germany, they committed early to purchasing military aircraft. Too early, in fact – by 1940, most of the French air force was essentially obsolete, and French industry lacked the capacity to upgrade units fast enough.
In the French case, early commitment was catastrophically costly, something Pentagon planners today would do well to keep in mind.
See this review of Anthony Cain’s book “The Forgotten Air Force: French Air Doctrine in the 1930s” for more.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The book to which Don is referring, for the curious, is “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” Good book.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
eh.
1. Russia (especially if oil continues to be dear) could become a near-peer competitor.
2. the unexpected always happens. repeat, the unexpected always happens.
3. the problem is that in 1940 you could design an airplane and have it on the assembly line in months. in 1960 you could have it on the assembly line in a couple years. in 2000 you could have it on the line in nearly a decade.
that’s the problem. I don’t in theory disagree with the general point. but it’s not practical.
4. my general suggestion? increase the end strength of the Marines and make them about small wars/counterinsurgency. decrease the end strength of the Army but keep it heavy as a hedge against near-peer competitors. have the Navy and Air Force concentrate on power projection/support for the ground branches. we wouldn’t cut defense spending enormously but we’d cut it some (despite what people think, procurement just isn’t the lions share of the defense budget. it’s personnel. pay our people like China and treat our veterans like China and you could cut the defense budget in half. is that what you want?). you really have to norm for personnel costs to compare defense budgets (everyone agrees, by the way, that China’s official military budget is a joke)
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Here I agree with Don Williams wholeheartedly.
Paul Kennedy’s current argument about the future of American hegemony — listen to his LSE lectures here — is based around three piecharts.
1. Percentage of the world’s population (4.5%-ish)
2. Percentage of the world’s GDP; (20%-ish)
3. Percentage of the world’s military expenditure. (50%-ish)
How long can a country with less than 5% of the world’s population and 20% of its product (a number that’s likely to drop) sustain 50% of the world’s military spending? Convergence happens, and it’s not going to come via population or GDP.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Where to begin?
Ok at the beginning. China is the most likely competitor, but not the only one. Russia played in the majors for most the 20th century; it’s not too hard to imagine it in the 21st.
The first-best approach to military competition with China is to try to avoid military competition with China
Wow, really? Man, nobody’s ever thought of that before. Not Woodrow Wilson, not Frank B. Kellogg, not Aristide Briand, not the dudes who put together the Washington Naval Treaty. God, if they had only known, how much different things would have been.
A little less snarky – what competition? It’s like Hussein Bolt against a high school track freshman. Granted the latter is going to get better, but he’s got such a long way to go. An even if Bolt would retire tomorrow, that same freshman is still going to work hard to make the varsity, and even the olympics if he can.
I’ve long felt that was somewhat counterproductive insofar as it doesn’t so much hedge against the possibility of a deterioration in US-Chinese relations as it does make such a deterioration more likely
And I’ll just repeat that in no way would our dismantling our military and/or ‘pulling out of asia’ will have any effect on China’s strategic aims, which are enitrely its near abroad – exactly like Japan’s were in the 1930’s. Now, it is not inevitable that strategic aims of both countries (US and China) will come into conflict. But it has nothing to do with the sizes of the militaries of either country. (how they are resolved, however, of course does.)
I see someone above stating why the 60 billion for China is a low ball. Estimates vary widely, but you should use ones that account for PPP but don’t rely to heavily on ’secret budgets’ (the latter of which are in aggregate fairly trivial). So a more realistic number is china is spending the equivalent of about a quarter ($150B) of our 600B defense budget.
And as someone says above, Betts has it ass backwards. The military is still considerably smaller in manpower than it was at the end of the Cold War. Like most endevours in the industrial world, if you want more productivity out of personnel, it takes capital expenditures. So, the military he imagines, small and flexible (which incidently *was* rumsfeld’s orgininal vision, with the RMA) is still going to be expensive (but, what you’re trying to get out of it is that fewer people die, mostly on our side, but also on there’s). We have a ton of the high end, low – no production r&d projects he states, they are very expensive, and heavily criticized. Example: Missle defense.
Using Italy as an example is a pointless historical parallel; they were behind trying to catch up (if anything, China’s in their position) We are in the position of England or France.
And also what was said above, these projects take years (and decades) to come on line not months as it was in mid century.
Now, should the defense budget be cut? Yes. We can do everything we do now with the resources that were applied in the late 90’s (i.e. cut back to about $450 B from the $600B) – the easiest cut is the obvious one. Is military contracting a mess? Yes. But it’s been a mess since Eli Whitney. Should we continue to engage constructively with China the way we’ve done since Nixon? Yes.
This is possibly the worst foreign policy post you’ve ever written. It shows the historical knowledge inferior to that of a high school senior, and the military knowlege that would be substandard in a JROTC cadet.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
The simple fact is that war as we know it is obsolete. Nobody is ever going to get in ships and come over here and invade us, and if we go over there and invade them, they win.
I know a lot of readers have their heads filled with “strategic doctrines” or simply fear of the unknown. Y’all remind me of a guy I knew once who wore a pistol when he went to the grocery store. I guarantee you that as long as he had that pistol, he also had worries I never had about going to the grocery store.
I see Nathan there throwing around words like “near peer” and “hedge”. I agree, all that military stuff is cool talk, but is it really worth about 10% of your pre-tax income? Hell, you can buy phone sex cheaper than that with no lasting side-effects.
Still, I was down at the marina today, admiring the fact that the people who know the least about boats always want the largest one they can afford (or at least make a down payment on) and I imagine the same thing is true of armies too.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Ok, Kolohe gives a good example of a guy throwing around some stuff he doesn’t understand mixed with vague fears. He’s apparently unaware that the purpose of the Washington Naval Treaty was to ensure perpetual dominance of the Japanese by the combined American-British fleets- not exactly a kumbaya hippy kind of thing. And in fact the US Fleet began war-gaming against Japan in 1925 and by the early 30s the dominance of the carrier had been demonstrated in those war games.
Well, on to the vague fears that China will seek to dominate the “near abroad”. Say, how has that worked for us? Have we got stuff from Canada by threatening them that we wouldn’t otherwise have got? And our relations with Mexico are even worse- our War on Drugs has empowered the Mexican drug lords to the point where they can start to make our national forests and urban slums as bad as northern Mexico is right now. We might be better off if we had to put a little more thought into what we do and try to do the right thing.
With the biggest military in the world and hemispheric hegemony we spent 50 years trying to dominate South and Central America, and the end result is that most of them are sick of us.
Time to try something new.
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
And serial catowner shows that he (she?) knows jack squat on how the Washington Naval treaty was sold, nor what lessons were (and were not) learned from pre-WW2 wargames.
And our current relationship with Canada. (Who is the heck is ‘threatening’ Canada? If you’re talking about how Obama wants to renogiate NAFTA, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t really mean it. Or at least is not going to make it a priority. Or that he’s really talking about only Mexico)
BTW, hate the WoD.
So, do you think is in the best interests of the US (and the world) to keep everyone is Asia on their side of the lines? Or shouldn’t we care if Taiwan gets forcefully repatriated (which would happen if China could guarantee no US involvement). (fwiw, DPRK trying to take back ROK is a non-starter, even without us; if there’s one place in asia where we don’t need bases anymore, it’s South Korea)
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Wait now — there are people who think maintaining our Cold War military spending spree is somehow about defense? I mean, maybe a little, I guess, but I thought it was common knowledge that corporate Keynesianism is what we’re really doing here. I mean, come on. There’s some other reason for “missile defense?” Aircraft carriers that exist only to protect themselves? Thousand-dollar hammers? Get real.
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Is Matt capable of writing a post without the word insofar?
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
How the Washington Treaty was sold is relevant…. how? Come on, Kolohe — don’t confuse lies and rhetoric with policy. We’ve had entirely too much of that lately.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Why is the middle Chinese guy wearing a cape? Is he Superman? Or is he gay?
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
All of this conversation is going on at the same time that Congress is debating about whether or not to pass the 700 million dollar bailout of Wall Street. The U.S. is currently running a trade deficit with other countries that’s in the trillions, and millions of Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt. Meantime Congress passes a 600+ billion defense budget with little or no debate. All of this talk about maintaining some sort of strategic edge over possible competitors indefinitely, is just that-talk. Like or not, at some point someone, sometime, is going to have to deal with the economic problems facing the United States and one of the biggest problems is the amount of debt the US government is carrying. Dealing with it will mean either cutting back on spending or raising taxes. Probably it will be combination of both, but when these decisions are being made, I would bet that the strategic objectives of the United States will be pared down considerably from anything that’s being discussed here.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
How the Washington Treaty was sold is relevant…. how?
Because it was *sold* to most of the rest of establishment and the public as a means of ‘preventing war’. Because it was thought that ‘trying to avoid military competion’ between naval powers was ‘the first-best way of approaching military competition’. And failed spectacularly. One because eventually the treaty was flaunted. But two, because the people who wrote it thought only Battleships mattered, so basically only limited those. Carriers, for example, could be built willy nilly. And no one appreciated the carrier until Dec 7, 1941. (and most did not fully apreciate as well, that the battleship was obsolete; we still wound up building a bunch more BB’s)
I agree with sc, that `it was arranged so that the existing naval powers to maintain the status quo, but that fact of course wasn’t widely trumpeted. (and in fact wasn’t thought about because asian people didn’t count).
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Avoiding military competition with China does not mean waving the white flag (as Kolohe seems to imply). It means that if you treat someone like an enemy, they will become your enemy. In Beijing today there are hardliners and softliners like in every country. The softliners argue that the best course for China is to participate in the global economy and create jobs through exports. This requires peace, stability, and good relations with the US and Japan.
The hardliners don’t trust the global market, and they sure as hell don’t trust the US or Japan. They think our intentions are bad, and they seek to increase military spending even more than they have already. But their political position is bad – economic growth really IS good for China, good for the people and good for the party, and starting World War III (over Taiwan or anything else) is not a good rallying call in the Politburo. So hardliners are quiet and bide their time.
But when US politicians start throwing around terms like “strategic competitor” and shaking sabers in China’s direction, it strengthens the hardliners’ hands. They can argue, “The US doesn’t want a peaceful trade relationship – they fear China but don’t respect us! We need to rearm faster so the US doesn’t boss us around.”
This is how arms races start. We talk tough, they build up their military, we do the same, tensions rise, and pretty soon someone’s trigger finger gets itchy. Avoiding a military confrontation with China means treating China like a partner, not an adversary. Of course it takes two to tango, and if they start acting aggressively first it’s a different story. But talking loudly and shaking a big stick weakens our friends and emboldens our enemies. Not smart.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
That’s because we don’t know what we want it to do, so it has to do everything. When confronted with a concrete threat, we could build a new fighter quickly. If it was needed, it could be designed without fears of cost overruns or longterm profitability in sales to foreign markets down the road. We haven’t “needed” a new fighter since Korea. We’ve always built better ones despite a lack of need.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 am
Avoiding military competition with China does not mean waving the white flag (as Kolohe seems to imply).
I will explicitly state again what I’m saying.
I support ‘constructive engagement’ with China. (and Russia. And Iran. and everyone else.)
I support reducing our military exenditures to late 90’s levels.
If we were to do both of these things, we will still have:
1) The most powerful military in the world
2) Occasional conflict with what China (and Russia. and Iran. and at some particular time any given country in the world) wants on some sort of contentious issue, and what we would like.
Most of the time, these sort of conflicts can be worked out, with diplomacy (in other words compromise). Sometimes there will be bright line threshholds that neither side will want to give on. So either the issue just sits there unresolved (which is generally fine). Or one side (or the other) will attempt to force the issue by well, force
Because of this, some other countries will inevitable try to increase their millitary strength to be able to better achieve their politcs by other means. This has been going on for all of human history, and will go on until human history is over by either exinction or transcendence.
So, unless we go the extreme isolation route of the far right and far left*, we will continue to have a strong millitary that some other people will want to ‘catch up’ to. So what I am saying is that military competition with China is unavoidable**
*I don’t have a problem with this view. It’s honest and intellectually consistent. Just don’t expect to see any help in Darfur, Kosovo, Tibet, tsunami relief, etc. And prepare for an increase in piracy (which, however, is good for Global Warming, from what I understand)
**see *
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 am
America has grown to enjoy global military hegemony very much. It will try to hang onto it, even unto the point of bankruptcy.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 am
So Wolfowitz and other Team B members who are responsible for the obscenely large nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and the former Soviet Union are now hyping the China threat.
Lessee, the U.S. has over 10,000 nuclear warheads that can be delivered anywhere in the world, and China (a former rival of the Soviet Union) has a smaller nuclear arsenal than Israel.
The U.S. military hasn’t actually fought an enemy that wasn’t dirt poor and sans a significant air Force and navy since World War II. We have been bogged down in two of the poorest countries on the face of the earth for 7 and 5 years.
The U.S. is insolvent. NASA has to buy a shuttle from the Russians to keep up with the space station. High ranking U.S. generals say our military is “broken”.
I’d say we’d better learn how to cooperate, negotiate, and keep our bombs to ourselves. We’d also be well advised to cut our military budge in half and fix our levees and bridges. We can’t defend ourselves from hurricanes and the laws of physics.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 am
I’d say our position vis a vis the PRC is not strengthened by the fact that we owe them tons of money (actually would be mere tons only if we still had the $10,000 bill in dollar bills it would be dozens of kilotons if I calculate correctly).
Right now, if they stop sending us money, interest rates will rise enough to make a recession into a very severe recession.
Basically we rely on their generosity. Now there are many causes of this, but one of them is the huge federal budget deficit and a major cause of that is military spending.
Why would the PRC confront us militarily when they can bring us to our knees (or at least one knee al la Paulson before Pelosi) just by shifting People’s bank reserves from dollars to Euros ?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 am
The argument that the USA is insolvent looks like the trump to me. Even if we can use our military to acquire low-cost oil, the military itself would use a whole lot of oil getting it, and it’s going to run out fairly quick.
Fairly soon we will see that we are no longer a superpower. We will have to cut our military budget, as russia did.
It surely matters that china holds a whole lot of our debt. I figure they’re likely to replace the dollar with the renminbi as the reserve currency, and they might have various ultimata to deliver to us that we can’t ignore.
So I suggest we’ll want to create a military that’s relatively cheap, but that’s still more effective than it looks. Some possibilities:
1. Eliminate the air force. The whole strategic bombing idea hasn’t worked out real well for us, better to give the cruise missiles to somebody else and spin off the nukes. Cut way back on manned aircraft. Humans impose a giant set of constraints for high performance. For cost likewise. We don’t have adequate AI to replace pilots yet but we can work on it.
2. Try for cheap drones (with good AI since any time somebody might figure out how to jam our telemetry). They need to be cheap so there can be lots of them. Also, cheap PGMs are important because decoys are so cheap.
3. Set up strategies that rely on aircraft carriers primarily for supply. They hold a lot, particularly after you take the planes out of them. Nuclear power means they don’t suck oil.
4. Try to design tactics around COTS hardware, and encourage manufacturers to build dual-use stuff. The result is far cheaper and also more available. It might not be as good, but we can no longer afford the best.
5. Try to teach small-unit tactics etc with video games etc as much as can work. The more civilians that do it for a hobby, the more of them will have a head start when you actually have to recruit them. If that gives them tactical blind spots you’ll have to manage around that.
6. Figure out ways to do logistics etc that can be taught very quickly, so that mostly-untrained recruits can get up to speed fast. A PDA that tells you what to do and rewards you for knowing what to do without it? If we expanded the military quick we’d have lots of support jobs that would have to be expanded quick, things that wouldn’t have the glamor to attract hobbyists ahead of time.
7. We still aren’t very good at military occupation. After we win a war we need to either go home, or else invent something that isn’t quite like a military occupation but somehow different. A nonoccupation force might be, say, 2/3 to 3/4 women with women in charge. The general attitude might be “The war is over and we are here to do _____. When that is done we will leave. Perhaps some of us might marry some of you and live here, or their husbands might come to the USA.” The war is over, and we do something that does not obviously merit armed resistance.
If we have a military that doesn’t look like an obvious threat to china — one that isn’t designed to win a land war in asia — and it looks like china is setting up a military that can win a land war in north america, we’ll probably have some time to change things around.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:19 am
Why would the PRC confront us militarily when they can bring us to our knees (or at least one knee al la Paulson before Pelosi) just by shifting People’s bank reserves from dollars to Euros ?
I don’t think there are that many euros. But if they try to sell a bunch of dollars they could devalue the dollar quite a bit.
Or they could, say, bid up oil on the spot market until it’s around $200/bbl. Then they resell oil to anybody in the world who wants to buy it in renminbis, or perhaps in euros or shekels or zlotys or any currency except dollars.
It might not take much of that before oil goes to $200/bbl in dollars. But the price hasn’t changed much for other countries, just for us.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:16 am
During the time of the cold war, there was a chance, I always thought it remote, but a chance that the Soviets would come pouring through the Fulda Gap and try and take West Germany and maybe the rest of Europe.
Much of our non-nuclear military (Main Battle Tanks, artillery, A-10 warplanes, etc.) was designed to counter this, and to prevent it from going immediately nuclear. The French worried about our willingness to commit suicide for their sake, and developed their Force de Frappe.
That strategic justification for conventional forces is gone, and it is not coming back. If Russia occupied Ukraine tomorrow, would we send in the tanks ? No. We might do many things, but sending in the tanks is not one of them. Likewise, is there any conceivable situation where we would be in a land war with China ? No, again. They are not going to invade South Korea, and we are not going to defend Taiwan with the Abrams MBT.
Even if you ignore our imperial predilection for having bases in basically every country in the world that will have us (and that shouldn’t be ignored) we have a military that is much too large, very imbalanced, and spends a lot of money on stuff for which there is no conceivable need. Reducing military spending by a factor of two would not be unreasonable, assuming that we ever get a Government that is not bought and paid for by Corporate interests.
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 am
“And no one appreciated the carrier until Dec 7, 1941.”
Apart, of course, from Cunningham, the finest naval commander of the war, who used carrier aviation (and other tactics) to destroy the Italian battle fleet in the Mediterranean in a series of brilliant attacks. The US Navy may not have been watching what he did at Taranto, but the Japanese were – very closely.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:06 am
So what I am saying is that military competition with China is unavoidable
It might help if we avoid provocative language the next time we put five carrier battlegroups off the chinese coast.
Politeness can make a difference sometimes. Of course, hardware matters too.
“You can get more money out of a bank with a smile and a gun than with just a smile by itself.”
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 am
And no one appreciated the carrier until Dec 7, 1941.
Luckily, the US Navy appreciated it enough that we had some of them by that time.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:18 am
Question: Is the Iraq war good for overwhelming majority of Iraqi, Americans, Chinese or the people of any country on the earth?
China now has far more powerful weapon to the US security, even more powerful than its military ‘mighty’ 20 years from now based on its current trend of defense budget increases; – it’s holding of one trillion dollars of US bund, bills. China now can easily destroy US financial system, and hence the US defense system in long run without firing a bullet. To counter this threat, we need a bailout/rescue plan of not $700 billion, but $15 trillion, based on the ration of defense budget between US and China. This means in addition to the current income tax, average American will need to pay a $43000 extra tax, or the entire year’s salary to safeguard us from the ‘China threat’.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 am
Correction:
the $43000 figure is based on the entire US population, infants and elderlies included. Think a tax of $80000 for average working person.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
It can be interesting to get into the weeds. Doolittle sank battleships in about 1925 but high level bombing was not a very successful way of sinking capital ships in WW II. In about 1932 a mock attack on the Panama Canal by carriers in a US Navy fleet war game showed what could be done. If doubt remained, Taranto should have dispelled that. However, our Navy thought Pearl was too shallow for a torpedo attack. The Japanese modified their torpedoes with boards made of wood, but of course, their torpedoes were head and shoulders above ours at that time anyway. Oh, and the Lexington was completed as a carrier instead of a cruiser because of the Washington Naval Treaty.
But that was then, this is now. Three times a week I drive past a shipyard that has more carriers in mothballs than are owned by the rest of the world combined. Then I drive past a nuclear subbase. Three of those submarines could hold the entire world at hostage. They can cruise submerged for a year. They can dive deeper than even our ability to detect them. In fact, I believe they have even surmounted the ultimate challenge, living with women in a small space, which should tell you our navy cannot be beat.
However, can you explain the physics of global warming simply and directly? This is the question that confronts the 21st century as simply and directly as the rise of Germany and Japan confronted the 20th century.
Every tool of 19th century diplomacy and warfare was brought to bear on the problem of Germany and Japan in the 20th century. If we show the same skill and dedication in bringing the solutions of the 20th century to the problem of the 21st century….well, suffice it to say, it won’t be pretty.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
Contra Nijorl (20), the lead time for modern designed fighters, with the inclusion of the level of stealth, fly-by-wire, and advanced electronics takes a very long time when not done on war footing (10-15 years). So if you’re not constantly designing something, it’s a guarnatee that you will be obsolete. Our main air superiority workhorse, the F-15, debuted in 1972. The Russians and Chineese have developed comprabable aircraft already (although the electronics is not as sophisticated, thanks to upgrades).
But the F-22 is head and shoulders above the rest.
If you do have to go to war, you don’t want something “as good as” the next guy. And you have to have air superiority to control the battlefield.
To scrap these type of programs would be to radically redefine our posture in the world. But as long as there are potential conflicts with nation-states (China contra Taiwan, Iran, Korea, a resurgent Russia), it’s important to have these tools in our back pockets. But just not efficient or productive.
It’s also a subsidy to our aerospace manufacturerers.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 am
can you explain the physics of global warming simply and directly?
Here’s graph.
RE: submarines: to plagiarize, “Ok, serial catowner gives a good example of a guy throwing around some stuff he doesn’t understand mixed with vague fears.” (I was on submarines until about 2 years ago, and still work with them).
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
one last thing on pre-ww2 navies.
Yes, lots of people saw the future of carrier aviation. Lots of other people did not. Mostly it was this latter group who had sway in the naval establishments of US and UK*, including into the war itself. The carrier aviation people played their own political games to compensate (for instance, that the CO’s of carriers would be aviators, a practice that continues to this day). It’s a complex history that is understated by flippant comments. But flippant comments are all I know.
*for that matter the Japanese decided to go forward on the Pearl Harbor attack despite the fact that the carriers weren’t in port. OTOH, I’m not sure they knew this, I don’t think their intel was that real time.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Agorabum,I’m not an expert on military aircraft, but from what I can see it looks like your F-22 will give you a maximum of 2 hours of controlling the battlefield from 60,000 feet at a cost of around 3000 gallons of fuel.
I suspect that this will get increasingly less cost-effective, even though it’s much better fuel efficiency than older planes.
Sure, the F-22 was vital to the successful plan to liberate iraq. Without the F-22’s air superiority we couldn’t have done it. But in the near future we’re likely to face lots of low slow drones. Things that sip fuel and that are cheaper than the munitions we have available to shoot them down. What kind of air superiority does your F-22 buy you in that context?
I’m sorry, but our long, slow development cycles came from the luxury period when we did not actually fight any wars that needed the weapons produced that way. We can’t afford it. At least we can’t depend on anything produced like that.
We cannot afford a 20-year OODA cycle. It does not work.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Kolohe, I cheerfully admit to being a total civilian. That said, am I really wrong about the endurance or diving capabilities of our Trident class subs? And for that matter, do they have female crew members yet? And, inevitably, are you by any chance retired in Kitsap?
I promise, I will not ask you the real top speed of a carrier…
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:02 pm
That said, am I really wrong about the endurance or diving capabilities of our Trident class subs?
endurance- yes but not for the reason you think. You can’t carry enough food to stay submerged for a year.
diving capabilities – can’t talk about that like i can’t talk about the top speed of a carrier
. But, diving capabilities and acoustic detection are generally two different independent things. (For a data point, acoustic sensors are used to listen for undersea earthquakes, and those are several miles deep)
And for that matter, do they have female crew members yet? No. Some other nations do, Aus & Sweeden, for example, but not USA. Personal opinion, we’ll probably see it no later (but no ealier either) than the end of a 2nd Obama administration. (I hypothesize that we would have see trial programs toward the end of a 2nd Gore one)
And, inevitably, are you by any chance retired in Kitsap? Nope, work in Hawaii. Only been to Silverdale a couple of times, but beautiful place. My next job in a year or so may very well be there.
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Hey, forget Silverdale, go to the waterfront at Poulsbo and rent a kayak for a few hours.
Good point about acoustic detection. Suddenly I’m guessing that between NOAA and the USN, a modern sub can run but it can’t hide. Assuming, that is, that NOAA and the Navy work together…
October 5th, 2008 at 11:20 am
A US and China military conflict, not necessarily an all out war, would be the Armageddon, the beginning of the end. It will be a guaranteed global destruction financially before the first battle finishes. China will try to sell that trillions of bonds and bills and watch their national savings sink like a stone in the water, US will try to wipe the debt clean and watch the creidts of their whole nation vaporize. So relax folks, it wont happen. At least it wont happen over Taiwan.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:43 am
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/%20business/2008/07/24/166890/Wolfowitz-urges.htm
Hey, pod. Check out Wolfie’s new job. I don’t think the military would allow a conflict with China, but you can bet the neocons will stir up as much conflict as long as they can profit from it.
The Red Scare has always been a profitable venture for the military-industrial complex, and I can’t quite put my finger on how it works, but military matters seem to go hand and glove with neoliberal economic policies (that diehards neocons are still peddling).
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