Defense Spending as a Global Public Good
In this clip, both Cato’s Will Wilkinson and Joseph Heath from the University of Toronto agree that America’s massive defense spending is, in effect, subsidizing the national defense of other countries and both agree that it’s perverse that American conservatives like this. As they say, the right would be none-too-keen on the idea of the United States paying for Italians’ health care, so why should they like paying for Italians’ defense?
I like the conclusion of this argument (that defense spending should be cut) and I like the subsidiary thesis that conservatives are stupid and hypocritical. But I’m not 100 percent satisfied with the conclusion. Is it really the case that cutting U.S. defense spending would force Canada to increase its defense spending? In a generic sense, it’s hard to see the argument. If our military were smaller, Canada would need a bigger military to defend it against . . . what? Invasion from the United States? An amphibious attack mounted by Peru?
It’s even harder to see when you pour into the details. Right now our nuclear arsenal has about 4,000 warheads. If we entered a bilateral agreement with Russia that cut that arsenal down to about 1,500 warheads we could spend money. But obviously that wouldn’t imperil Canada’s defenses and require it to build up a nuclear arsenal. Or say we had one fewer carrier group what would the implications of that really be for, say, Portugal.
Now I think it’s true that if the United States massively scaled back our defense spending then other allied countries would need to step up to an extent. The US Navy does provide some real public goods in terms of freedom of the seas, and some of the responsibility for shouldering that load would need to devolve to Europe and Japan with hopefully China and India pitching in as well. But a considerable portion of American defense spending is genuinely wasteful. If we didn’t do it, it just wouldn’t be done. After all, it’s important to understand that excess capacity in military equipment is about as close as you can get to a real-world example of entirely wasteful public sector activity. A land-based nuclear missile that’s not genuinely needed to establish a credible deterrent threat is absolutely useless. Even a “bridge to nowhere” might help someone have a fun camping trip. Consequently, arms races where China builds up its military aviation to counter American superiority and then we build up our military aviation to maintain our superiority is a negative sum enterprise. And many actual uses of our defense capacity—invading Iraq, for example—are directly harmful to us. The kind of instability that results from misguided adventurism (see also, on a smaller scale, the US and Ethiopia in Somalia in December 2006) is a global public bad.
52 Responses to “Defense Spending as a Global Public Good”
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May 8th, 2009 at 11:31 am
As they say, the right would be none-too-keen on the idea of the United States paying for Italians’ health care, so why should they like paying for Italians’ defense?
We do subsidize Italians’ health care. For example, the US’s largely unregulated pharmaceutical market provides gigantic profits to the pharmaceutical companies, which are (a) used to subsidize the pharmaceuticals sold to countries that regulate prices and (b) reinvested in R&D to create new drugs that those countries benefit from.
I, for one, think that there ought to be a law prohibiting pharmaceutical companies from selling a drug in this country for a price higher than the price at which the company sells it in the rest of the developed world.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:31 am
America does subsidize the health care of other countries through the high premiums we pay the pharma companies for new
drugs while other countries get them cheaper.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:35 am
We do not, Al. About half the patents for drugs come from the U.S. and half come from the E.U. They actually do subsidize R&D and they prioritize important research. What we do with our magic market is make a bunch of generic reverse engineering, hard-on pills, baldness cures, and flavors of anti-depressents.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Matt,
You can’t look at the easy cases like Portugal and Canada; you need to consider what it is actually designed to address. The argument generally is that U.S. defense spending prevents security dilemma driven policies by Eastern European and East Asian states in particular. Therefore, failure to provide other states with the reassurance that they can trust the U.S. to safeguard their vital national security interests may lead them to take actions that would ultimately prove destabilizing and carry a greater risk of involving the U.S. in a regional struggle. For instance, to take a recent example, according to this view the cutting of the F-22 and refusal to export it to Japan means that Japan is developing an independent strike force capability that is more threatening to China than the if Japan relied on the U.S. force. The logic of this was partly laid out in this Asian Wall St Journal piece the other day about the new Australian White Paper on defense policy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124154819719288285.html
May 8th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I think the argument for hegemonic stability theory is probably strongest in East Asia where Japan does have a notably small military and WWII holdover antagonisms and local power politics over disputed islands are still in play. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be able to cut down without endangering that stability, but I think there’s an argument there.
People do argue that we maintain hegemonic stability in the Middle East and other powers would step up to ensure free flow of oil. This thinking seems to derive from the first Gulf War. However, I’m much more dubious of that proposition. Shutting down the occasional invasion may be conducive to stability, but otherwise the situation is highly dysfunctional and has not been conducive to the sort of non-resource based growth that East Asia has experienced.
For the rest of the world, I think you tend to be right. There’d probably be a bit of rebalancing but nothing too dramatic.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:42 am
But surely even Canada benefits from the R&D of the american military establishment. We don’t need to dump billions of dollars into testing F-14, F-15, F-16, etc. We go to check yours out, maybe test drive ‘em and then buy what we need.
We also save by not having to get drawn into every stupid little conflict – you guys will be. And if you can drag along a couple of other OECD suckers, Canada is – by (false) association – off the hook. Iraq would be very costly for us, but the US plus those other guys save us having to become embroiled.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:42 am
S. Korea, Japan, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, australia and probably some Mid-East “allies”
Not CANADA
are you intentionally being obtuse?
May 8th, 2009 at 11:47 am
As they say, the right would be none-too-keen on the idea of the United States paying for Italians’ health care, so why should they like paying for Italians’ defense?
Because they haven’t given up the dream of scoring with hot lesbians like Kelly McGillis.
Anyway, as many are pointing out, we probably would see more defense spending by our developed allies related to providing defense coverage for their allies in Eastern Europe and Asia. It wouldn’t be a one-to-one replacement, but it wouldn’t be zero either.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:57 am
“After all, it’s important to understand that excess capacity in military equipment is about as close as you can get to a real-world example of entirely wasteful public sector activity.”
I’m torn between Orwell and Rumsfeld.
On the one hand, Orwell: In “1984″ (actually, in the book-within-a-book, “Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”), the main reason for the endless three-way war is to soak up all available production. Production that isn’t wasted in this manner might make life easier for the people, and people with time to think are dangerous.
On the other hand, Rumseld: You go to war with the army you’ve got. Even, apparently, if that means an army without enough armored vehicles and body armor. I don’t like that; I want the military equipped with sufficient, or even excessive, supplies of the right equipment.
Perhaps that’s the key phrase: “right equipment.” The difficulty here is figuring out what will actually be needed.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:59 am
The biggest spending boondoggle in American history, billions and billions and billions of American dollars flushed down the toilet for an endlessly incompetent program riddled with failure, and yet supported by the executive and legislative branches of government, without ever one fiscal conservative so much as making a peep–Star Wars.
It bankrupted the Soviet Union, true, but one can argue looking at the debt we have incurred as a result of this misbegotten hoax that while not being the only thing that will bring our economy down, it well may be the proverbial straw that either breaks the camel’s back or stirs the drink.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
“Russia’s game plan was to extend its territory almost up to the Pole itself, to claim the vast mineral and energy resources many feel lie underneath the Arctic ice.
The North Pole is considered an international site and is administered by the International Seabed Authority. But if a country can prove its underwater shelf is an extension of its continental border, then it can claim an economic zone based on that.
And that’s what Russia is doing by systematically charting the reach of its Lomonosov underwater shelf. As a spokesman for its Arctic and Antarctic Institute said, “It’s like putting a flag on the moon.”
For Canadians, of course, this is more like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/02/27/f-arctic-sovereignty.html
Because, without the ability for the US to protect Canada what would stop the Russians from claiming all the artic resources for itself?
May 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
The US’s massive defense spending discourages regional powers from increasing their military spending to become regional superpowers (which would lead to regional arms races, more instability, and possibly more regional conflicts). Without the threat of US intervention a lot of bad actors would be encouraged across the world, leading to a disruption in global commerce, which has been moderately beneficial to the US.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Europe spends about 200 billion dollars per year on defense, compared to the US 500 billion (outside of war). It really hasn’t been the case recently that Europe needs to be defended by America.
The nuclear balance would be more interesting, but if the US wasn’t a member of NATO I guess we could make a deal with Russia. Or develop more nuclear weapons of our own. Iran may have problems with the technology, but we haven’t.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
“It bankrupted the Soviet Union, true…”
Umm…not true.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Canada actually could use a couple of nukes.
There is a country full of warmongering resource hungry religious zealots right on the border that the Canucks should be worried about.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Interestingly Matt is mum about Afghanistan. Is he agnositc? Waiting to see how the politics play out? Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan were/are for the most part preventative so it’s easy for critics to say they weren’t worth it.
It’s like TARP where the government intevention staved off disaster – for the moment at least – but it’s impossible to prove that fact to the critics.
CATO should shut the hell up. They should be ashamed. Their free-market/government-is-bad ideology has ruined the economy and caused much pain. You’d hope they do some soul-searching and honest reappaisal, but no like all fanatics throughout history as Santayanna said, they redouble their efforts when they lose sight of their ends.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Because, without the ability for the US to protect Canada what would stop the Russians from claiming all the artic resources for itself?
Yes, if the US were to have 8 carrier groups instead of 12, heavily armed Russian oil platforms would immediately spring up on the North Pole and fire mortars at any Canadians who approached them, with no repercussions. Likewise, Russian hockey players would all withdraw from the NHL, causing the Capitals to suck.
Nuts. The whole lot of you are nuts.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
“It bankrupted the Soviet Union, true…”
Umm…not true.
Care to elaborate? Excess defense spending played no role in their economic collapse?
May 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
heavily armed Russian oil platforms would immediately spring up on the North Pole and fire mortars at any Canadians who approached them, with no repercussions.
Yes, because a Russian politician facing domestic opposition would never try and gin up a resource war to rally his supporters. No, never – politicians never do that sort of thing.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
The US’s massive defense spending discourages regional powers from increasing their military spending to become regional superpowers (which would lead to regional arms races, more instability, and possibly more regional conflicts).
This is true, and a crucial point. Our military remains very good at wiping out opposing military forces, which helps prevent arms races and armed conflicts. And were the U.S. for some reason to completely withdraw from this role as the world’s “Oh no you don’t” power, our developed allies would have to step up.
That said, even holding aside our allies potentially stepping up, we don’t need Cold War levels of spending for that purpose. So I really don’t see why we can’t cut defense spending as a percentage of GDP as we (hopefully) pull out of Iraq and then Afghanistan/Pakistan, at least down to like 3% of GDP (if not less).
May 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
“Without the threat of US intervention a lot of bad actors would be encouraged across the world, leading to a disruption in global commerce, which has been moderately beneficial to the US.”
Lo, if we cancel a bunch of ineffective, overpriced weapons systems designed to fight the Red Army, bad actors will no longer fear us!
The Rock will be installed as Presidente-For-Life in Paraguay and will disrupt international freight through sheer force of will and stern glares. Ben Affleck will amass a legion of cargo cult followers in the South Pacific and seize container ships for his personal pirate navy. Billy Baldwin and a gang of seasteading objectivists will overfish the Straits of Magellan and destroy the Chilean economy in their mania for profitable sea bass. Adam Sandler will sow mayhem in the Ukraine with his devastatingly unfunny street comedy until the people of Kiev pay him millions of dollars to go away.
AND WE’LL BE POWERLESS TO STOP THEM!
May 8th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
DTM, you give these yahoos far too much credit. Even a 10% cut in American military spending would be completely politically unfeasible, and if you put together a Congressional Caucus dedicated to withdrawing from our role as the world’s major military power, they could all fit around Dennis Kucinich’s breakfast table.
This is a pure straw man argument, aimed at protecting wasteful spending that benefits a powerful interest group and validates the cock-swinging fantasies of people who don’t know a damn thing about international relations and don’t even want to.
These people do not deserve to be taken seriously.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
It’s sort of amusing to see people demonstrate on this thread EXACTLY why conservatives have won almost all the military arguments for the last 30+ years.
That the absence of a global hegemon would lead to the existence of regional hegemons is about as close to “2+2=4″ as political science gets, yet some folks still can’t wrap their pretty little heads around it.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
That not a single liberal on this thread has suggested that the US should cease to maintain global military hegemony is crystal clear, yet some folks are so wrapped up in their own self-contained universe of talking points that they equate massively wasteful surplus defense spending with hegemony.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
DTM, you give these yahoos far too much credit. Even a 10% cut in American military spending would be completely politically unfeasible . . .
There is a proven model for cutting defense spending as a percentage of GDP, which is basically to keep it fairly steady in nominal terms but let the economy grow out from underneath it. I claim this model is proven because it was basically how defense spending was cut as a percentage of GDP through the Bush I and Clinton terms, from about 6.2% down to the aforementioned 3%. In fact, it also worked from 1968 to 1976 (dropping from 9.5% to 4.7%).
May 8th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Care to elaborate? Excess defense spending played no role in their economic collapse?
Oil prices were at least as important. Arguably, Saudi Arabia did as much to destroy the USSR as the US did.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
“That not a single liberal on this thread has suggested that the US should cease to maintain global military hegemony is crystal clear, yet some folks are so wrapped up in their own self-contained universe of talking points that they equate massively wasteful surplus defense spending with hegemony.”
Uh, “massively wasteful surplus defense spending” is just another way of saying “hegemony”. You don’t have hegemony unless no one even thinks they can challenge your dominance and you can’t have that without massively overspending on the military compared to everyone else. Once again, “2+2=4″.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
“There is a proven model for cutting defense spending as a percentage of GDP, which is basically to keep it fairly steady in nominal terms but let the economy grow out from underneath it.”
True enough, and that’s more or less my preferred option. But I also think it would be extremely misleading to say the US “cut military spending in half” through the Bush I and Clinton terms. Government spending as a percentage of GDP is a statistic that is not without its uses, but more often than not its use is to mislead people. The dominant variable in annual change is economic performance, not spending.
A 10% annual cut in military spending in real dollars would cause significant job losses, seriously impact the economy, and possibly impact military readiness. This is a suggestion that is too radical to ever see the light of day in Congress. And yet the US would STILL be the undisputed global hegemon after several consecutive years of such cuts.
Talk about eliminating a few of our most egregiously wasteful programs or scaling back some of our least-necessary overseas deployments, and an army of suburban couch potatoes in camo pants rises up to warn us in dire tones of Russian polar domination. These people do not deserve to be taken seriously. They deserve to be mocked.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
“Once again, “2+2=4″.”
Um, no. Massive overspending does not equal massive waste. Sorry. Nice try. Maybe 20 years from now someone with a short memory will give a flying hump what you guys think.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
LaFollette Progressive,
I agree we could likely cut defense spending quicker without unduly endangering our global hegemon role, but I was trying to point out how you can achieve some sort of defense spending cut in the long run despite the political forces arrayed against doing so.
I’d also suggest that in the long run, cutting defense spending as a percentage of GDP is quite meaningful: the bottomline is that means more resources available to our society for other purposes. Again, I freely admit that without politics as a constraint, we could do more, but within the realm of the possible this seems to me a worthwhile goal.
Uh, “massively wasteful surplus defense spending” is just another way of saying “hegemony”. You don’t have hegemony unless no one even thinks they can challenge your dominance and you can’t have that without massively overspending on the military compared to everyone else. Once again, “2+2=4″.
But of course we could spend a lot less than we are spending now while still spending a lot more than anyone else. In other words, 2+2=4, so why are we spending like 2+2=6?
May 8th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Mrs. Conclusion, meet Mrs. Premise. Or wait. What’d I say?
May 8th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Joseph Heath talks nonsense. Always has, always will. Also, he spits when he eats.
I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but Canada protects the US.
2 points.
1) We’re a buffer state. Like Poland. To say the US protected Canada during the Cold War is like saying the USSR protected Poland (which the USSR did, in fact, actually, say, many times).
Ridiculous …? Consider the scenario outlined in the movie ‘Red Dawn’: the Red Army launches a two-fold invasion of the North American continent. One force air-lifts itself to the American mid-west and the other, armour-based, rushes across the Canadian prairie toward the US border, probably aiming to sweep under the Great Lakes and take Chicago (how this force by-passed Alaska goes unremarked upon). China gets nuked. Luckily for the US, however, Canada, by its sheer girth, slows the Soviet armour down enough the US was able to counter-attack and halt this second force on the Canadian border, thus preventing it from hooking up with the army group the Soviets had established in the US mid-west. If those two army groups had managed to hook up organized US resistance would have quickly fallen apart, consisting only of guerrilla groups like the Wolverines.
So what? It’s only a movie you say. Consider this true fact. The Canadian airborne regiment disbanded after the Somalia debacle last decade was originally formed specifically to slow Soviet invasion. The airborne regiment was to parachute to bases on the Prairie and dig in, harassing the Soviets enough the US had enough time to organize a counter-attack. Just like in the Red Dawn scenario outlined above. The Polish and Soviet Red Army trained for similar scenarios and had designated parachute units ready in case Nato invaded the Warsaw Pact. Poland’s real military worth, like Canada’s, lay in its geography. It protected Russia, unwillingly.
Like now, how much choice did Canada have? Just when did we sign up to be a buffer state?
Consider this: What would happen if Canada decided to pull a France and develop its own nuclear deterrent? Would this have been allowed? What about if we decided to pull an India and declared ourselves neutral? Would the United States have tolerated a neutral Canada on its border …
What if, in 1963, a democratically-elected Canadian government had decided to hold naval exercises off Vancouver jointly with the Soviet navy? Kennedy undermined the Diefenbaker government for lesser reasons.
Not to be paranoid, but how long would a Canadian government who accepted Soviet military aid have lasted? Two weeks? 72 hours?
It’s like how for the last eight years how the Bush Administration similarly expected congratulations for protecting Canada from the US’s enemies.
2) Divas. The United States is protected by the magic shield spun by the power of Canadian chanteuse. Ann Murray and her near-constant incantation of ‘Snowbird’, that’s what keeps you safe. Look it up.
Hey, America: You’re welcome.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
“This is true, and a crucial point. Our military remains very good at wiping out opposing military forces, which helps prevent arms races and armed conflicts.”
Yes indeed, we did a great job of preventing that Iran-Iraq
War … and then we deterred Iraq’s military buildup … and
then we prevented the Iraq-Kuwait war … and maintained the legendary peace and stability of the Middle East. And
everything in Syria, and Lebanon and Gaza is all for the best
in this best of all possible worlds. And we fixed up
North Korea just fine.
US defense policy is just absolutely 100% batshit insane.
How can you tell it’s batshit insane ? Because every single
justification for it requires you to imagine a reality that
just bears no relationship to the real world. It’s as if
we’re all freaking Republicans, for God’s sake.
Meanwhile, there’s a *real* crisis in Pakistan, where a bunch
of actual nuclear weapons with questionable safeguards are
scattered around heaven knows where, while actual radical
Islamists take over large parts of the country. And all the
trillions of dollars spent on F22’s and carrier groups and
nuclear submarines and 6000 active nuclear warheads is just
completely useless and irrelevant to the problem.
So-called “defense” spending has no obvious beneficial
effect on national security, and arguably has had considerable
negative effects over the last 50 years. It never fixes
anything: the places we spend a lot of money on military
operations are precisely the places that blowback and cause
bigger problems later.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
not a single liberal on this thread has suggested that the US should cease to maintain global military hegemony
Well, I will. America’s protracted, decades-long campaign to rule the world has been costly, self-destructive, foolhardy and immoral. The United States military hasn’t been engaged in actual defense of the United States since Pearl Harbor, and that’s seriously fucked up.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“Canada actually could use a couple of nukes.”
Canada HAD a couple of nukes back in the day, and remains the only country to voluntarily leave the nuclear weapons club.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Not to mention that the existance of nukes makes great power wars untenable. Say the U.S. shrinks back to its own borders, and you end up with Chinese, Western European, Russian, and who-know what else blocs. Sure, you’ll have conflict – the same as we have now. But Russian can’t invade China, China can’t invade Europe, Europe can go on living its decadaet ways until the Muslims take over – and even the batshit crazy muslims that will rule Europe in 70 years won’t be able to invade anyone, because Nukes take such things off the table.
The only purpose of the U.S. military is as the single greatest R&D department on the face of the earth. But it could perform that function with a lot less money.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Well, I will. America’s protracted, decades-long campaign to rule the world has been costly, self-destructive, foolhardy and immoral. The United States military hasn’t been engaged in actual defense of the United States since Pearl Harbor, and that’s seriously fucked up.
This is a horrible slur on all those brave men and women who died to keep Vietnam American.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
@ Strasmangelo Jones –
You’re hardly the only one willing to stand up for that point of view. But I’m sure you’d agree with me that it’s laughable to accuse Congressional Democrats of advancing that agenda, or to claim that Yglesias is endorsing that view in this post.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you on the merits of most of what the US military has done over the past 60 years. But I also think that our ability to passively deter territorial wars around the world, and protect the safety of sea and air transport, is nothing to sneeze at.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
This is just a hilarious thread.
The American defense establishment? You’ve got to be kidding. They did such a great job on 9/11. I think we can all be pretty sure on that date, every ranking officer in the Pentagon was masturbating furiously over the thought of future years budget increases, every screaming victim jumping from a burning skyscraper was a guarantee of a lucrative post-retirement consulting career. Yep, there was a whole lot of defending going on that day.
Feel free to be offended.
As for the mighty unstoppable military machine – so far, not doing so good in Iraq or Afghanistan, I notice. Knocking over pissant third world countries seems about the limit these days. And, sadly, not even particularly good at that. What’s the rule: Panama yes, Vietnam no, Iraq borderline?
But you know, I think we can all get behind the principal that someone ought to be paying nine hundred dollars for a screwdriver, which is what the Pentagon is really about.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
“Um, no. Massive overspending does not equal massive waste.”
Thanks for proving that you’ve paid precisely zero attention to the way government and business actually works.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
“But of course we could spend a lot less than we are spending now while still spending a lot more than anyone else. In other words, 2+2=4, so why are we spending like 2+2=6?”
Show your work. How much could we cut U.S. military defense spending while still holding onto the unquestioned role of hegemon and why does your number work but not +or- 100 billion or so?
And let me be clear, I favor huge cuts in defense spending. I think the role of hegemon is overrated.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“Not to mention that the existance of nukes makes great power wars untenable.”
Korea. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Not to mention all the mucking around in Africa as well as Central and South America. And let’s also recall that we were rather uncomfortably close to great power nuclear wars at least a few times during the Cold War.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I just want to say that I am totally with Al on this one and I endorse his suggested price control scheme.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Well, if the US is a global hegemon, we’re doing a damn poor job at it. Which part do you like best, the part where we keep the mid-east unstable by helping Israel, the African part, or the near-collapse of the Mexican government in their states that border us?
As for the idea that the US will once again save Britain’s bacon by breaking the U-boat stranglehold on England’s overseas empire so thousands of bombers can pummel Germany’s war factories from the air…
And really, who would be less suited to be a global hegemon? Why would you pick a country that doesn’t have a functional national health plan, unemployment and retraining for workers laid off, or in fact any productive industries at all other than war manufacturers? A country that can’t even get to work in the morning and thinks the traffic jam is improved by the chance to listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio?
By the middle of the last century, our two oceans had protected us and left us as the strongest military power in the world. But the ‘Greatest Generation’ never got over the shock of Pearl Harbor and decided that that, and the ability to get cheap oil and make good money in the war industries, meant we should rule the world.
By the middle of this century, we will see that the ‘Greatest Generation’ blew off the biggest windfall ever buying guns and bombs, and left us sadly unprepared for the future. Fortunately, we’ll still have those two oceans.
May 8th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Yes indeed, we did a great job of preventing . . . [lots of examples of things we didn't prevent].
I didn’t claim this strategy worked perfectly to prevent arms races and armed conflicts, just that it helps.
Show your work. How much could we cut U.S. military defense spending while still holding onto the unquestioned role of hegemon and why does your number work but not +or- 100 billion or so?
The number I offered was 3% of GDP, which is what we reached at the end of Clinton’s second term (and we weren’t much higher on average during that term). My sense is that despite some carping from the “military-industrial complex” and their pocket members of Congress, we did not in fact lose any ground on the “global hegemon” scale during that time, and indeed continued to increase our relative advantage during that period. So, while admitting I am not an expert in this field, I think that 3% of GDP is a reasonable goal, at least for the medium term.
But could we go even lower? Probably, at least if you targeted the right things . . . even in Clinton’s second term, we were undoubtedly still wasting resources on Cold War relics. Fortunately, getting lower using the plan I suggested (more or less keep defense spending flat in nominal terms, and letting the economy grow out from underneath it) is just a matter of taking more time.
Conversely, I have yet to see a really compelling argument for more than 3% (or the equivalent in dollars today). So in the absence of seeing such an argument, I’m sticking with 3% as my medium-term target.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
“I didn’t claim this strategy worked perfectly to prevent arms races and armed conflicts, just that it helps.
Any examples where it has helped ? Because what I see is that
the USA blunders around with no understanding of other regions
and other cultures, and more often than not just causes more
problems than it solves: the CIA overthrew the democratic
government of Iran in the 1950s and installed the Shah; then
we got the Islamic revolution as a consequence; so we helped
build up Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime as a way to hassle Iran;
and that got us the long bloody Iran/Iraq war, a brief naval
war with Iran, and then the invasion of Kuwait.
Afghanistan has been a mess forever, so we may not really be
to blame for that. But US involvement with Pakistan’s ISI
and the mujahideen when the Soviets were there certainly
furthered the militarization of Islamic radicalism. And now
we’ve got Islamic radicals threatening to take over a
nuclear-armed nation.
Elsewhere, we have notoriously backed bloody right-wing
dictatorships in South and Central America against more
popular and less corrupt alternatives.
As for the whole “freedom of the seas” thing, whatever
advertising agency thought of that one ought to get a big
fat no-bid contract from the Navy. Because it’s a great
slogan, but when you come down to it, it doesn’t mean a
damn thing. Freedom for who, from what ? The USSR is gone,
China doesn’t have much of a navy yet, and Al Qaeda sure
doesn’t. What’s the threat ? And where ?
Basically what it comes down to is that maybe Iran will try
to shut the Straits of Hormuz some time and oil won’t get
through. That’s a real problem, but not one that requires
10, or even 6, carrier battle groups. Nor do the Somali
pirates: the answer to them is to let the Somalis develop
some form of semi-functional government without going in and
screwing them again just for the hell of it.
In fairness, I’ll grant that US actions in the Balkans have
been a good thing. Occasionally we do something good. But
mostly we spend a fortune making things worse.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Along the same lines, by having as good of a biomedical research enterprise as the rest of the world combined (and spending handily for it), are we “subsidizing” the rest of the world’s science and healthcare? To an extent, yes. But sharing the benefits of research, for example, isn’t all that different from protecting our allies. Matt’s on fire today.
May 9th, 2009 at 5:53 am
Defense spending is like subsidising the Italian health budget? It’s just unbelivable!
May 9th, 2009 at 8:59 am
If our military were smaller, Canada would need a bigger military to defend it against . . . what? Invasion from the United States? An amphibious attack mounted by Peru?
Canada has nothing to fear on the international scene? Please. This is just naive. When Palin rears her head…where do you think she goes? It’s Canada. It’s just right over the border.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] while Christian Brose figures it’s about time our allies started taking defense seriously. Matt Yglesias, meanwhile, figures we’re wasting so much on defense that others won’t even notice if [...]
May 9th, 2009 at 9:15 am
[...] while Christian Brose figures it’s about time our allies started taking defense seriously. Matt Yglesias, meanwhile, figures we’re wasting so much on defense that others won’t even notice if [...]
May 9th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
The real trick with cutting defense spending and commitments is that we don’t know where the point exists in which a certain US cession of military capability will cause other countries (and particularly the strong regional powers of an area) to change from thinking, “The US could flatten our asses, let’s do this instead” to “Maybe we can get away with this”. Sort of like the case of the Falklands War; had the Falklands been possessions of the US, could you see the Argentinian government of that area making a move on them?