Out of the Frying Pan
A Spencer Ackerman source offers an all-too-plausible account of why some in the military might not be all that unhappy with Barack Obama withdrawing from Iraq:
Another challenge for Obama, beyond Petraeus and Iraq, would be senior officers’ desire “to get back to preparing –and procuring — for the big, conventional Russia-China scenario the U.S. military institutionally prefers,” the anonymous Pentagon official said. But the current financial crisis and massive budget deficits create their own pressures on defense spending.
It’s important to avoid simply lurching from one military policy mistake into a different kind of mistake. Or, more broadly, it’s important not to let our foreign policy priorities be defined by the military’s desire to have a good reason for an extremely large procurement budget. Rather, we need to think about what our major priorities are on the international agenda — I would say stabilizing the world economy, combating climate change, curbing nuclear proliferation, eliminating al-Qaeda, and promoting peace and development in the poor world — and then think realistically about the military’s ability to contribute to advancing our agenda on those items relative to other modalities of national power. Note also that the negative space defined by those priorities suggests that maintaining a basically positive relationship with the other major powers is a crucial background condition for progress. Orienting our defense posture around preparing for conflict with Russia and China is antithetical to that.
I think we’ll of course want to maintain a capability to deter attack from another major country, as will Russia and China. But it should be a diplomatic priority to ensure that US-Chinese and US-Russian mutual deterrence take place on a mutually beneficial low-intensity equilibrium (with, e.g., the US and Russia both cutting nuclear arsenals and the Chinese not growing theirs) rather than a mutually destructive arms race. Similarly, the positive lessons from Iraq need to be applied to help us to better conduct stability operations in the future while guarding against hubris and staying cautious about which situations it’s really appropriate for us to involve ourselves in.
81 Responses to “Out of the Frying Pan”
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November 14th, 2008 at 11:42 am
We need at least a 50% cut in the military budget, yet no politician can so much as breathe a hint of that without immediately being marginalized. This is a major symptom of the galloping stupidification of our society and politics.
As Iraq has demonstrated, our huge military establishment is a gluttonous and very stupid dinosaur which is largely irrelevant to our real security needs.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:42 am
The military brass like big ticket items because after 25 years, they retire and slip into a sweet 6 figure job as a “consultant” to some defense industry that is saving us all from that inevitable Chinese attack.
The whole thing is a big, dumb racket.
Unless they know of an impending alien attack.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:47 am
“Some in the military.” I don’t know that I would describe it as “some.” I’d say most in the military want us out of Iraq for the simple reason that it’s destroying the military.
Hopefully Obama will come in and get some independent audits of what DoD is doing. If we were to clean up the waste over there, there would be no need for an increase in military spending.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:53 am
We need at least a 50% cut in the military budget,
No we don’t.
yet no politician can so much as breathe a hint of that without immediately being marginalized.
Yes, because most people realize that it’s a really, really dumb idea.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
OK, Matthew. You’re making the right kind of arguments about having a military that’s actually designed to do things that are a) useful and b) possible. But at some point you’ve got to get to grips with the actual scale of the numbers. I presume you agree that the current $600B+/year is too much ? So what should we be aiming for ? Under Clinton in 97-99 it was around $300B.
I say the figure to aim for is $150B, which would probably curtail our ability to engage in big foreign wars - from my point of view “no repeat of Iraq” is a feature, not a bug.
The whole China business is just nonsense: the only point of contention with China is Taiwan, and that’s an *island*, which means that China can’t grab it without developing their currently non-existent amphibious capability. Besides which the Taiwanese are rich and fairly well-armed.
As for Putin’s Russia, the one best thing we can do to keep them in a box is to start the transition from oil and gas to renewable energy. That would bring down oil and gas prices and take away the oil profits which enable Putin’s posing.
Conversely, since the Pentagon is the #1 consumer of fossil fuel in the USA (and I think probably in the world ?), having a big military driving around in tanks and trucks and humvees and flying jets burns a whole lot of fuel and tends to raise oil and gas prices.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
No, because people like you are too ignorant to actually think about why we really need a military as expensive as the rest of the world’s combined. (Hint- we don’t). And too stupid to ponder the lessons Iraq offers on the very limited usefulness of sheer brute military force. And too clueless to ever have read or understood Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” speech.
You’re not even an interesting troll, Mixner.
DTM- we could have a significantly smaller military and it would still be quite sufficient to deter China. What we have now is gross overkill. Again, it exists for the reasons articulated by Eisenhower way back when (and because of delusional neocon imperial fantasies), not because it’s actually rational.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Mixner is right. If you had some serious cleanup of the procurement waste, you could cut the military budget much more than 50%.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
“an argument can be made for keeping our investment in military superiority high enough that a country like China never perceives the possibility of attaining parity, and so doesn’t try.”
So how much are you going to keep spending ? Numbers please.
And do you think there’s a sustainable strategy which involves
borrowing $300B/year from China while spending $300B+/year on
the US military ? In the long run, you’ll have a great military to defend the USA’s interests, but all the assets in the USA
will be owned by the Chinese government … At some point, don’t we have a strong interest in keeping ownership of our own stuff, as well as being able to kick ass abroad ?
November 14th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Military procurement budgets aren’t going to be slashed for the same reason that Detroit is going to be bailed out: jobs.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
No, because people like you are too ignorant to actually think about why we really need a military as expensive as the rest of the world’s combined. (Hint- we don’t). And too stupid to ponder the lessons Iraq offers on the very limited usefulness of sheer brute military force. And too clueless to ever have read or understood Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” speech.
Yes, that must be it. The loony left’s fundamental message to the American people can be summed up in two words: You’re stupid.
And you wonder why you have so much trouble winning elections.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I mean, some of the stuff is wasted on stuff for wars we shouldn’t fight, like Iraq. Some is wasted on stuff for wars dreamed up on a Risk board, like the China-Russia alliance. And some is wasted for other reasons, like NMD because ronnie raygun said it was good. Doing something about the whole complex might need ot be done before the politcal system could really take a serious look at what our goals actually are.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Wait a minute all you people talking about big defense cuts…. Think about all those poor union tank builders, plane builders, ship builders… the horror, the horror… we’d need a government bailout of the defense industry to prevent that part of our economy from collapsing.. all the lost jobs.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I agree with Steve. I’d say that not only is out-of-control military spending one of the biggest problems facing our country, it’s one that every single major party politician is committed to maintaining.
You want to argue that a 50 percent cut is too much, fine, but a 10 percent cut would be way too little. We spend more on the military than anyone else in the world, but that’s understandable for a large, rich country. The problem is, we spend more than the next four or five countries combined, which is ridiculous for a country with no enemies anywhere near its size*. And for that we get billions of dollars of pork-barrel spending, massive lost opportunity costs, and a big influence pushing us towards foreign policy through military action rather than diplomacy. We also get an Orwellian influence on our culture. Why is the Department of Defense called that when so much of what it does has nothing to do with self-defense? It used to be called the Department of War; now that was truth in advertising.)
Cut the Air Force budget by two-thirds and the Navy budget by one third and use 90 percent of the savings to fund a new Apollo Program for clean, renewable energy. The net impact on the economy would be zero and even if it doesn’t manage to improve energy independence or the environment one bit, at least the deficit wouldn’t be quite as bad and we wouldn’t have as many PR disasters like blowing up weddings because we’re trying to use bombing to fight terrorists.
Yeah, it’s not a detailed proposal and the idea is way too radical to ever possibly happen, but other than that what’s wrong with it?
(*) “Size” in both population and wealth.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“And you wonder why you have so much trouble winning elections.”
The Democrats won the popular vote in 92, 96, 00, and 08.
Your team is batting .200 over the last 20 years. If you’d
care to bring some actual facts and figures to the table,
Mixner, we could have some kind of rational discourse. But you
got nothing. Maybe it’s not stupidity, but it’s at least a
deliberate avoidance of any reality that doesn’t reinforce your
ideological preconception.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Richard Cownie,
If you’d care to bring some actual facts and figures to the table, Mixner,
I said “the loony left,” Richard, not “the Democrats.” If you’d care to read more carefully and not keep responding to strawmen, I might not have to waste so much time correcting your misrepresentations.
I see absolutely no indication that the Democrats seek a 50% cut in the military budget, let alone the even more absurd 75% cut that you just advocated. Our new Democrat President-elect ran on a platform of increasing the size of the military.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Cyrus,
The problem is, we spend more than the next four or five countries combined, which is ridiculous for a country with no enemies anywhere near its size
Er, care to offer an actual, you know, argument as to why this should be considered “ridiculous?”
November 14th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
We spend more on the military than anyone else in the world, but that’s understandable for a large, rich country.
We spend more on the military than everyone else in the world combined, and that’s both a waste of resources and reflects poor strategic thinking.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
“Our new Democrat President-elect ran on a platform of increasing the size of the military.”
“Size” is not the same as “budget”. Only about $70B of the
$600B+ military spending is for personnel costs. It’s very
possible that an Obama administration might cut military
spending considerably (though not to the extent that I would
prefer) while actually increasing the number of troops in the
Army and Marines.
But sorry, now I’m getting to actual numbers, which I realize
Republicans regard as “fuzzy math”.
Anyhow, I think you’re going to find that some things happen
over the next four years not exactly the way they were discussed during the campaign. Who would have thought 4 years
ago that Bush’s administration would be spending $700B on
nationalizing large chunks of the banking and insurance industries ? But when bad shit is happening, you do what you
have to do. And it won’t surprise me at all if the combination of economic depression, new spending on social and health programs, and disengagement from Iraq, leads to substantial cuts in military spending, because where the hell else are you going to find money ?
As for the “loony left” thing, under the last Democratic
president we had military spending of about $300B/year, less
than 50% of the current rate. Is it a “loony left” position
to suggest a cut back to that level ? Heck, that built the
military that could conquer Iraq in a few weeks. A dumb
thing to do, and it’s hard to imagine we’d want to do it again,
but that $300B/year military had the capability.
But I should know by now that it’s pointless to expect any
substantive debate with you.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
What people fail to realize is that grotesque military spending during peace time is a waste and actually hurts your ability to out produce your enemies during war. Better to save money and invest in your economy during peace time and rachet up the investment in fancy toys when it’s time to use them.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Richard Cownie,
“Size” is not the same as “budget”. Only about $70B of the
$600B+ military spending is for personnel costs. It’s very
possible that an Obama administration might cut military
spending considerably
Obama wants to add 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marines. He also wants to give them “new equipment, armor, training, and skills.” Doesn’t sound like a cut to me. Hillary wants a bigger military too. No one except the loony left is proposing a 50% cut, let alone your absurd 75% cut.
As for the “loony left” thing, under the last Democratic
president we had military spending of about $300B/year, less
than 50% of the current rate. Is it a “loony left” position
to suggest a cut back to that level ?
Yes. The only candidates who might have favored anything even close to that are loony lefties Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
We spend more on the military than everyone else in the world combined, and that’s both a waste of resources and reflects poor strategic thinking.
No it isn’t and no it doesn’t.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Re: the Chinese not growing theirs
All right, this really annoys me. “To grow” is not a transitive verb in the sense of ‘to make the size of something increase’. You can “grow” something in the sense of ‘to cultivate”, as in growing bananas or rice. You can’t “grow” a military. One would hope that an Ivy League graduate would know better than to contribute to dumbing down the English language, but apparently not.
Mixner, there was a time when only a few loonies (on the left and right, I’ll give religious conservatives credit) wanted to abolish slavery.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
“Obama wants to add 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marines. He also wants to give them “new equipment, armor, training, and skills.” Doesn’t sound like a cut to me.”
Well, about 2/3 of the money goes the USAF and Navy. It’s very
possible to increase the land forces (and especially the
infantry, which don’t have so many expensive toys) while cutting
elsewhere (obvious candidates are any and all nuclear forces,
next-generation air superiority fighters, maybe even a couple
of carrier battle groups).
Anyhow, what happens over the next 4 years is not necessarily
predetermined by campaign rhetoric. Wasn’t there a 2000 candidate
who promised us a “humble” foreign policy ? How did that turn
out ? And I must have missed the part of the 2004 campaign where Bush/Cheney promised a $700B bank-nationalization program ? And where did we invest that big budget surplus that was such a big issue back in 2000 ?
Right now Obama’s people don’t even know what’s going on, and
they’re following perhaps the most secretive and dishonest
administration in history. Once they know where the $600B+
is going, they’ll be in a better position to figure out what
to do next. And I wouldn’t mind a little bet that military
spending in 2008 will be substantially less than in 2004
(though still more than I’d like).
As for your position, I still don’t know whether you want to
continue the current $600B+, increase it to $1000B, or even
put it up to $2000B or more. You don’t admit any limit to
the usefulness of more and more military resources, so I don’t
know what the hell you want, or how you want to pay for it.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
“You can’t “grow” a military. One would hope that an Ivy League graduate would know better than to contribute to dumbing down the English language, but apparently not.”
Simple trick to understand the rightwing (or even “centrist”)
approach to the military budget: replace “military” with “penis”
throughout. You want it to be bigger than anyone else’s. And
no matter how big it is, you want it to be a bit bigger. And
there’s really not much you can actually *do* with it but f*ck
someone. [This also explains the "growth" metaphor].
November 14th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
“better conduct stability operations in the future”
Let’s not and say we did. It’s fun to watch the gradual change in tone, as Yglesias starts dreaming about all the useless wars _his_ guys will soon be able to start. About as fun as a root canal.
It’s enough to make you believe in the death wish.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Richard Cownie,
I love your deft attempt to change the subject from “I want a 75% cut in military spending” to “I think it is possible that Obama will cut total military spending by some amount even though he wants 100,000 more troops, new equipment, armor, training, and skills.”
November 14th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
As the sole Conservative on this forum let me posit that if we would independently audit DoD, we’d find plenty of money to maintain a robust defense…and cut spending/waste.
While I’m a big believer maintaining the two-war capability (given Pakistan and North Korea), the Pentagon pisses away billions of dollars on waste, incompetence, and just plain corruption. There should absolutely positively be no increases to our defense budget.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Whatever, Mixner. I’ve said clearly what I want. I’ve also
said what I expect. And I’ve said clearly that the two are not
the same.
You, on the other hand, have given us no figure for what you
want. And nothing but childish taunts at anyone who thinks
spending $600B/year of borrowed money, much of it on weapons
of no use in the current conflicts, is not a good long-term
plan.
Clinton, with a booming economy, thought that $300B/year was
enough. What was wrong with that ? And why, in a time of
economic crisis, crumbling infrastructure, and deep recession,
would we need to be spending 2x more ?
November 14th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
You, on the other hand, have given us no figure for what you want.
I don’t have any such figure. I’m pointing out just how extreme and unpopular your position is.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
“I don’t have any such figure. I’m pointing out just how extreme and unpopular your position is.”
So what ? If it’s right, then it’s right, no matter how many
fools there are.
On an earlier thread, I suggested that given the USA’s geographic sitauation and the lack of any hostile neighbors,
what we “need” is comparable to Canada’s “need”. And they
spend about $18B/year. *That* would be an “extreme” proposal.
My suggestion of $150B/year - roughly 2x more than anyone else - accepts the desire for global reach, and even unchallenged
military superiority.
If you don’t have a figure in mind, then you’re obviously
just following the herd and not thinking about this. And if
you’re not thinking about this, I don’t give a damn about
your unconsidered opinion.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
as noted above I agree that at over 4% of GDP, we are likely overshooting. Off hand, I’d suggest more like 3% of GDP right now
Even 4% is way below the historical post-WWII average. We spent a far higher proportion of our wealth on the military even when we were much poorer than we are today. Unless you can offer some credible argument for the claim that 4%is “overshooting,” the claim isn’t worth much.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
So what ? If it’s right, then it’s right,
It’s not right. The fact that so few people share your position should clue you in on that. But, I know, I know: Americans are stupid. That’s what all loony left positions ultimately boil down to.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Er, care to offer an actual, you know, argument as to why this should be considered “ridiculous?”
Um, care to offer any argument as to why it isn’t? I mean, it’s ridiculous because there’s no reason we need that much, therefore it’s wasteful, and wasteful spending of that magnitude, especially in a country with such devotion to soi-disant limited government, is ridiculous? What part of that do you disagree with?
I don’t have any such figure. I’m pointing out just how extreme and unpopular your position is.
So you’re saying you have no contribution to the discussion on military spending, except maybe for a fallacious argument from popularity. Got it.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
There is more to national defense than the military. We cannot defend ourselves against hurricanes and the financial elite.
The military should be used for defense only and it should be strictly MILITARY—not privatized. It’s vulgar when our nation hires mercenaries to kill people who pose no threat to us. Get rid of the PNAC. We actually reserve the right to use a nuclear first strike against nations that don’t have nuclear weapons. The idea that we can only deal with insurgency by using overkill technology and drones is disgusting. We can simply not invade countries and understand that people have a tendency to defend themselves from foreign occupiers. A little empathy is sane.
There is something inheritently (sp?) weak about the perception that we are at a supreme disadvantage if we do not have a supreme advantage.
Cut the budget by half.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
There seems to be some implicit assumption here that it’s the nuclear forces that that are breaking the bank. Or are anybody’s priority for those that already have them. Comparatively speaking, nuke forces are fairly cheap, and besides trying to get a reliable sea based detterence force, no one who has them already is really spending all that much on them, realatively speaking. It’s the conventional buildup (e.g. to build an amphibious capability and naval aviation) to which China, India, and Russia are more engaged and committed.
On another note, as other’s have stated, I can’t speak for the AF budget, but the navy budget (both procurement and operations) is mostly spent in blue states (Hawaii, Washington, California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and now even Virginia - a good chunk is also spent in Florida, but mostly in the red areas of that state). So before you worry about the Pentagon or the Navy Annex sabotouging efforts to reduce the navy budget, you need to look at Webb, Inoye, Dodd, Cantwell, even Feinstein. Heck, very orthodox liberal Abercrombie is always reluctant to cut Navy spending
November 14th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
“So, the idea would basically be to spend something like 3% of GDP now (see below) to avoid spending more like 6% of GDP later (what we ended up spending under Reagan as the Cold War was being won through winning an arms race).”
Ah, an actual logical argument. I’m very skeptical about
measuring any defense spending as percentage of GDP: when you
have a lot of dangerous enemies, it’s worth spending a lot
even if your GDP is small; conversely, when you don’t face a
lot of threats, then you don’t *need* high defense spending
even if your GDP is big. There’s just no logical reason
why military spending should move in lockstep with GDP
(and incidentally, I’m betting the hawks will still fight like
hell against any budget cuts even if the recession brings a
big fall in GDP). I prefer to look at the harsh
realities: what kind of conflicts are worth fighting to serve
the national interest ? And what resources do we need to
fight those kind of conflicts ?
From that angle, the whole China issue is just nonsense.
China has no real amphibious capability, so the Chinese army
isn’t going anywhere - not even to Taiwan. And we’re not
going to invade China. So where would we fight ? And the
Chinese navy is only just starting to dabble in the very
difficult field of carrier aviation. If they work really
hard at it and spend a lot of money, they might have a decent
carrier force 15 or 20 years from now. But we have how many -
10 or 11 ? - fully-trained highly-effective battle-tested
carrier battle groups (plus British and French allies with
small capabilities).
In raw numbers, I believe China’s military budget is estimated
at about $70B/year. But it isn’t really clear what that means, since the military has been entangled in running a lot
of non-military businesses as well. Overall, I think it’s
pretty simple: if you try to invade China you’ll be in a world
of hurt; but as long as you stay well away from Chinese soil,
they don’t have the force-projection capability to interfere.
“Again, I think a return to about 3% of GDP on defense spending would be enough for this purpose”
Last time I checked GDP was around $13T, so that would be about $400B. Fair enough, though I’d go a lot further myself.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“the Chinese may work less hard and spend less money on this effort over the next 15 to 20 years precisely because we are already so far ahead. That in turn will make it very hard for the Chinese to threaten to project power outside of their immediate neighborhood”
I think the difficulty of the “maintain dominance” strategy
is that a US military establishment which is sold to the US
public on the argument of “big enough to deter anyone from
trying to compete” can equally well be interpreted by potential
rivals as “big enough to be a threat to us, against which we
need to defend”.
And the asymmetry of offensive force means that a $600B
(or even a $300B) military with a strong global force-
projection capability, doesn’t cause a medium-scale country
to feel that it’s just altogether hopeless. Rather it makes
them feel that the USA is a serious threat, but if they
spend enough on the right kind of weapons, they can still
deter any possible US aggression. North Korea is desperately
poor. But they’ve got a big army poised to crush Seoul, and
a handful of nukes. We’re really not going to mess with them.
Even the Bush administration wasn’t crazy enough to mess with
them.
That’s clearly what Iran - a smallish, relatively poor country -
would like to achieve. And they can do it at manageable
cost, with ballistic missiles, Chinese Silkworm-derived anti-
ship missiles, and perhaps a few nukes.
So that big expensive global-dominance military doesn’t
stop the arms race in the way you would like. It just makes
medium-sized countries extremely keen to acquire the kind
of defensive and deterrent capabilities that would keep them
from being the next Iraq.
And personally, I’m much more worried by the prospect of a
host of medium-sized countries pursuing guided-missile and
nuclear technology, than I am by the distant prospect of China
acquiring the same level of force-projection capability as
say, the UK or France.
Now that discrepancy between the purpose of the US military as perceived by the US public, and the likely use of the US military as perceived by other countries, leaves open the
question of what the policy-makers actually believe. But it
doesn’t actually matter why they’re building a big military.
Even if their hearts are in the right place, there’s no
guarantee that the next administration will have the same
intentions. So China, or Iran, or North Korea really have to
assume the worst and act appropriately. If someone walks
down your street carrying a gun, you don’t speculate about their motives, you get scared and go looking for your own
weapons.
This argument raises the possibility that a world with a
smaller cheaper US military might actually evolve towards
being a less militarized, more secure, and more prosperous
world all round. Not a certainty, but a possibility. And
if not, at least we’d have a few trillions less debt to pay
off, which would be good in itself.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Cyrus,
I mean, it’s ridiculous because there’s no reason we need that much,
Another assertion for which you offer no argument. How much do we “need” to spend? How have you arrived at that figure? And why should we spend only what we “need” to spend, rather than a higher amount? We spend more than we “need” to spend on all sorts of things.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
If the Chinese government ends up with more disposable income than the US in 20 years, there’s a not a damn thing we can do to stop them from building a bigger military than ours.
Nor would it take that long. It doesn’t take 20 years to learn carrier ops: we stank in 1941 and were damn good at it by 43. The question is what good military superiority would do the Chinese. If the strategic situation is like what we see today, not much. Their minimal deterrence strategy is far more sensible than our strategy of wog-stomping, which is utterly pointless if you haven’t already noticed.
By the way, nobody can have truly sensible opinions about military affairs unless they know a lot about it: so the general public, the right, the left, and almost all politicians are effectively stupid. That’s democracy for you.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
DTM,
4%, which you claim is an “overshoot,” is obviously less than 6%. So why shouldn’t it be 4%? Or 5%? Even if we grant the dubious premise that the proper level of spending today is lower than the spending level during the Cold War, that still doesn’t justify your claim that that proper level is 3% rather than some higher figure.
So I would now turn the question around to you: 3% of GDP seemed adequate under the Clinton Administration for this purpose.
Who says it “seemed adequate?” The Clinton years were free of major military threat or conflict, which lulled us into a false sense of security. 9/11 was a wake-up call to the fact that we live in a dangerous world with many emerging threats. Obama explicitly justifies his call for 100,000 more troops by saying that our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate that current forces are insufficient to meet even the current military commitment of fighting two regional wars at the same time.
In addition, the proper level of spending is not simply a matter of the size of the threat, but of how much protection we wish to buy. We’re a much richer nation than we were in previous decades, and we can afford to buy a higher level of protection.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
That makes no sense. Do you expect the Chinese to believe that we would *attack* them if they started building aircraft carriers? Do you think we actually would or should? Ditto the Indians or any other “emerging powers”.
As China modernizes, it will acquire more global strategic interests (if indeed it doesn’t have them already) where a force-projection capability will be critical to maintaining flows of trade or resources China needs for the stability of its own economy. In the event that they need to use force somewhere far from their borders, they will have to try to keep us from interfering either by diplomatic means, or by the plain fact that full-scale conflict between great powers in the post-nuclear age would be incredibly destructive to both sides, so nobody wants to commit to a side opposed to a great power that’s already committed. The more powers are playing this game, the more dangerous it gets for everyone, but since we started it, we’re in a poor position to complain about it.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
“Nor would it take that long. It doesn’t take 20 years to learn carrier ops: we stank in 1941 and were damn good at it by 43.”
Well, you had the USS Langley in 1920, and then the USS
Lexington commissioned 1927 which was the first one that
looked like a real aircraft carrier. So actually there was
at least 14 years of experience before 1941, albeit not
under real combat conditions. And I don’t think the US
really “stank” in 1941, though the Japanese were better,
until they lost their good pilots at Midway. Pearl Harbor
was a massive intelligence failure, and after Pearl Harbor
the situation demanded caution until the force could be
rebuilt.
But I think carrier ops in the 21st C are a good deal more
complex, jets don’t like to fly slow, and doing carrier
landings at high speed is about the most difficult and
dangerous activity that anyone attempts routinely.
“By the way, nobody can have truly sensible opinions about military affairs unless they know a lot about it: so the general public, the right, the left, and almost all politicians are effectively stupid. That’s democracy for you.”
I disagree. Plenty of people knew it was a dumb idea to
invade Iraq. Plenty of so-called “experts”, including many
with a lot of knowledge about military affairs, went along
with it. And heck, the founders of the USA made damn sure that the ultimate decisions about the size, composition, and use of the military would be made by people outside the military.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
“The Clinton years were free of major military threat or conflict, which lulled us into a false sense of security. 9/11 was a wake-up call to the fact that we live in a dangerous world with many emerging threats”
But Al Qaida is neither new, nor is it a “major military threat”. In fact we’re still remarkably free of “major military
threats”. And the great big $600B military seems to be a rotten
tool for dealing with non-state actors like AQ: a jackhammer to
swat a mosquito.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
But Al Qaida is neither new, nor is it a “major military threat”.
Since I didn’t say al Qaeda was either of those things, this comment is just yet one more entry in your seemingly endless parade of nonsequiturs.
In fact we’re still remarkably free of “major military threats”.
Numerous unstable and undemocratic, or only nominally democratic, nations have substantial military capability, or could develop such capability, and pose a significant threat to the interests of the United States or its allies.
November 14th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“Numerous unstable and undemocratic, or only nominally democratic, nations have substantial military capability, or could develop such capability,”
And now you’re just talking complete mumbo-jumbo again. Nations that are, or are not, democratic, that “could develop” such capability ? That’s every f*cking nation on the planet, except pehaps Lichtenstein, Andorra, and Fiji. This isn’t strategy,
it’s pure clinical paranoia.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
mumbo-jumbo, pure clinical paranoia
These are pretty much all Mixner has. Look, this is a guy so stupid he thinks Clinton’s actions in Iraq somehow excuse Bush’s brutal thuggery there. A guy so insane that he thinks that if only you could get a majority of Poles to sign off on it, then the holocaust wouldn’t be such a bad thing and Hitler’s invasion would be “just one of those things, you know?”
Mixner knows less about what it takes to make a strong nation than does your average rottweiler. And is less useful than your average cyst.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
“Not as stupid” is a racist genocidal maniac.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
“From that angle, the whole China issue is just nonsense.
China has no real amphibious capability, so the Chinese army
isn’t going anywhere - not even to Taiwan.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa - How could we assume that will be the case into the indefinite future? How quickly could they adjust to ramp up amphibious capability compared to the speed with which we could maintain effective counterss?
November 14th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
“How quickly could they adjust to ramp up amphibious capability compared to the speed with which we could maintain effective counterss?”
An opposed amphibious landing is desperately difficult. Think
D-Day. Or more recently, but on a much smaller scale, the
British retaking of the Falklands. You need complete air
supremacy. You need massive logistics to supply an army
over a beach. You need to keep any enemy warships or submarines
well away from your ships. And the air/sea/land components
have to be perfectly coordinated in a fluid and unpredictable
environment.
They’re not going to throw it together in a hurry …
November 15th, 2008 at 12:54 am
As a permanent resident of Taiwan, I’d like to thank everyone for their concern about protecting us from the evil Chicoms, but given our new government here, that’s like trying to defend your sister’s honour by blocking her boyfriend at the front door while she’s climbing out the back window to elope with him.
During last week’s visit by the latest emissary from the People’s Republic, the Republic of China’s government was arresting people for displaying the ROC flag, to avoid offending the visiting delegate (who denies the ROC even has a right to exist.)
November 15th, 2008 at 1:34 am
“Well that is the thing: our military actually isn’t well-structured for offense, as we have been proving in Iraq for quite a while now. So it would be pretty irrational for the emerging significant powers to fear the U.S. military in that sense, at least provided we kick the neocons out of power and don’t attempt to change the fundamental nature of our military.”
Fooey. All those carrier battle groups and amphibious ships and
armored divisions and stealth bombers ? Of course it’s
absolutely the most amazing offensive force in the history of
the world. They’re damn right to be scared.
What we don’t have is the vast number of boots on the ground
to sustain a big long occupation. But that’s no comfort at
all to those who fear they might be the next targets of
“shock and awe”. Saddam Hussein is still dead.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:44 am
“And heck, the founders of the USA made damn sure that the ultimate decisions about the size, composition, and use of the military would be made by people outside the military. ”
Who ever said that the military knew anything either? Thomas Ricks said that the average general spends his spare time reading Bassmaster Journal: I believe it. Especially Tommy Franks.
When the average voter can’t find Iraq on the map, even after years of pointless war, you have to work pretty hard to have faith in the system. If the voters are wise, they are wise in a way that cannot be explained. They work by intuition, or possibly sense of smell, While right now the President-elect is apparently considering a candidate for Secretary of State who had no trouble endorsing an aggressive war that didn’t even get us any oil.
November 15th, 2008 at 2:41 am
“When the average voter can’t find Iraq on the map, even after years of pointless war, you have to work pretty hard to have faith in the system”
I guess I agree with you. I’ve made the argument for a much
cheaper military with less force-projection capability at
greater length in the past. The gist of it is that the US
political system has a terribly poor record at deciding when,
where, and how to use the military. Since WW2 we have an
expensive bloody stalemate in Korea, an expensive bloody
failure in Vietnam, a quick victory in Kuwait which however
left a mess in Iraq, a quagmire in Afghanistan, and a quagmire in
Iraq. We’d be better to do less; perhaps - now the USSR is
gone - we’d even be better to give up these adventures
altogether. A chainsaw can be a useful tool, but a blind
man wielding a chainsaw is a danger to everyone, including
himself.
November 15th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Events like 9/11 and our subsequent efforts in Afghanistan certainly suggest the need to restructure our military spending in some respects. I don’t see why they suggest that the level of our spending had to be higher than it was at the end of the Clinton Administration, however. Perhaps you can explain why you think that in more detail.
Perhaps you could explain why you think the level of spending at the end of Clinton Administration, which was the lowest level in at least 50 years as a share of GDP, should be regarded as the baseline level rather than an anomalously low level that resulted from an unusually long period in post-WWII American history without significant military action or threat. And one of thes lesson of Afganistan and Iraq, as Obama has argued, is that the military is woefully short of the troop levels needed to meet its commitment to be able to fight two regional wars simultaneously. That’s why he wants 100,000 more troops. According to the GAO, this increase will cost something like $100 billion over 5 years.
Please note that I have been describing spending levels in terms of a percentage of GDP.
Yes, I know that. So what? Since we’re richer overall, we can afford to spend a higher percentage of our GDP on defense without sacrificing other things we value. If we can now buy for 96% of our GDP the non-defense goods that used to cost us 97% of our GDP, we can afford to raise our defense spending from 3% to 4% without sacrificing any of those other goods.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Here’s a place to cut corners on military overextension - Get out of South Korea, and get out of any understood commitment to use ground forces there. The ROKs have plenty for defense and counter-offense, we just add conventional overkill and over the horizon nuclear deterrence.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
DTM,
Again, from what I have read on the subject, by every estimation we were still increasing our military superiority gap relative to every other country in the world when spending at 3% of GDP.
Do you mean relative any other individual country, or relative to the total capability of all other countries combined?
Regardless of the answer to that question, you’re still ignoring the fact that we can afford to buy more security because we’re richer. In fact, even if we weren’t any richer, we might still choose to buy more security anyway. There’s no “right” answer to the question of how much security is enough. If my opponent threatens me with a knife, I may choose to arm myself with a bigger knife to defend myself. Or I may choose to spend more money and arm myself with a gun, for greater security. Or to spend even more and arm myself with a gun and a kevlar vest. The richer I am, the more I can afford to spend on security without sacrificing other things I value.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
DTM,
Your theory about investing in future productive capacity vice depreciating military hardware sounds sensible.
I would note that by that standard, defense spending reductions in the U.S. and U.K. made total sense. The naval disarmament talks and the Ten-Year rule, which are often criticized by people looking back from the perspective of WWII, perhaps were not such bad moves. More hardware purchases in the ’20s would have left the U.S. and U.K. in the 30s and 40s with a somewhat smaller productive base and more obsolete equipment.
The 20s were not the 30s. Germany and Japan and even Italy and the Soviet Union were weak and/or bahaving themselves, so they were a legitimately low threat period in which cuts were totally understandable.
Now, I think there’s a good chance this effect has slowed down, because over the course of the Cold War, the time it takes to build and the effective service life of large military platforms has lengthened alot.
Interesting idea though.
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