May 15th, 2009 at 8:31 am
US Defense Spending In Context
I’ve shown charts before showing how absurd the American defense budget looks in context. Now a new chart making the same point, but with slightly more up-to-date 2007 spending data:
As you can see, not only is the United States spending well over double the combined defense budgets of Russia and China, but America’s close allies constitute the bulk of the other big spenders. Indeed, if you add all the European countries together, they spend about 50 percent more than Russia and China combined.
72 Responses to “US Defense Spending In Context”
Register
RSSLogin
Advertisement
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Books By Matthew Yglesias
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Abortion
Afghanistan
Basketball
Blanche Lincoln
Budget
China
climate
Congress
Crime
DC
Demographics
Economics
Economy
Energy
Environment
EU
Finance
Football
Gender
Health Care
History
Inequality
International Law
International Relations
Iran
Israel
Media
Monetary Policy
National Security
NATO
NBA
Palestine
Political Reform
Public Health
Public Opinion
Race
Regulation
Russia
Sarah Palin
Sports
Stimulus
taxes
Technology
Trade
transportation
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Contact Matthew Yglesias
Use this form to contact blog author Matthew Yglesias.
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
May 15th, 2009 at 8:43 am
MattY, don’t you find these comparisons to be the slightest bit disingenuous? I suspect that salaries for soldiers are much higher in Europe than they are in Russia and China.
I’ve been hearing these comparisons of US defense spending vs. the rest of the world for a good 15 years, but it doesn’t really tell me anything useful.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Tis true, tis true. It’s yet another spot on argument for withdrawing to our own borders and letting the rest of the world fight it out amongst themselves.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:47 am
This calls for a pie chart.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:49 am
I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I know I won’t feel safe until I have my own private nukes.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:53 am
You are a funny little guy, Yglesias. You compare the budget of the only country in the world who has some military capacities with countries whose defense is notably insufficient and who are dependants on their american ally to defend them. The fact is that countries like France, Japan or Germany were and still are unable to project forces abroad on a large scale, and we saw in the past their inability to resolve conflicts alone (in Yugoslavia for instance). Imagine the Gulf Wars without the american superpower ! England, Spain, Australia,… (and the other 48 countries who helped the international community to remove the outlaw regime of Saddam Hussein in order to implement US resolutions in Iraq) would have been unable to act against Iraq. And Iraq was a very poor and ruined country ! Imagine a conflict involving Pakistan and India ! Or China ! The fact is the international peace and the implementation of international law are related to the existence of the superpower.
Let me remind you what President Jacques Chirac said to Christiane Amanpour in 2003. It proves that, even those who thought that Saddam Hussein was beginning to respect international law, said that the only reason so was the superpower of the United States of America.
“I have said that it is indeed thanks to the pressure of British and American troops that the Iraqi authorities and Saddam Hussein himself have changed, have shifted their position and have had to agree to cooperate”
The best way to avoid wars is dissuasion.
“Absurd” ?
May 15th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Tyro, you’re right that this comparison is not the most valid ones available. I think comparisons like this drive home the point much more effectively.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Wow! Fleur argues with Matt’s point by using bush’s stupid, optional failure in Iraq as his/her supporting case.
Keep up the good work.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Jeffrey Davis @4:
Just for you…
May 15th, 2009 at 9:05 am
“I’ve been hearing these comparisons of US defense spending vs. the rest of the world for a good 15 years, but it doesn’t really tell me anything useful.”
Yeah, I have difficulties interpreting the data too.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Imagine the Gulf Wars without the american superpower !
That’s got to be the least convincing case you can possibly make for American military might.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Fleur Delacour @5:
…
…
May 15th, 2009 at 9:11 am
The best way to avoid wars is dissuasion.
we should try that.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:14 am
“Tyro, you’re right that this comparison is not the most valid ones available. I think comparisons like this drive home the point much more effectively”
But why to conclude that the american budget is absurd, and not that the other countries are mostly disarmed ? The important question is : what are the operational capacities ? Are they sufficient or not ? It is widely viewed that the european ones are not, and that they enjoy the comfort provided by the Americans.
Europe has became a kind of Switzerland.
In a famous chapter of one of his major works (Phenomenology of Spirit), Hegel presents the conflict between prototypical two positions : the “conscience opérante” and the “conscience jugeante” (I don’t know how to translate in english).
The “belles âmes” (”beautiful souls”) lives in fear of soiling the splendor of the moral precepts that houses it. Refraining from any action, they will only regret the sad course of events and freezes in a contemplative posture exclusively.
In fact, this awareness, which claims to sit on top of the excitement of human affairs, is, says Hegel, the lowest and most vile. The dirty victories of consciousness and its effective honey failures and other misfortunes of the latter.
The chart provided here do not prove that the US budget is “absurd”. It would only be absurd if they were not let alone to protect our collective security and implement international law. For me, this chart only emphases on the necessity for the others to increase their spendings. With all its consequences (stop whining about what the US do or do not, and beginning to be part of international affairs and collective security).
May 15th, 2009 at 9:16 am
What I love about comments like #5 is how they are always, always carefully constructed to be completely non-falsifiable and can be deployed at a moment’s notice to defend every single dollar the defense establishment ever wants to spend, no matter how wasteful or idiotic.
Q: Why do we need to purchase 387 stealth fighters that are useless in Iraq and Afghanistan?
A: The fact is the international peace and the implementation of international law are related to the existence of the superpower.
Q: Why is the Pentagon installing $900 toilet seats?
A: You compare the budget of the only country in the world who has some military capacities with countries whose defense is notably insufficient and who are dependants on their american ally to defend them. The fact is that countries like France, Japan or Germany were and still are unable to project forces abroad on a large scale.
Q: Why are we attaching frickin’ laser beams to the heads of sharks?
A: Imagine a conflict involving Pakistan and India ! Or China !
May 15th, 2009 at 9:27 am
But it’s an asymmetrical contest: the US military’s role is attack, get onto and then hold territory in far away lands, while the role of other militaries is to prevent us from doing this (or support us, mostly by filling in gaps in our force structure created by doing our thing). Different strategies create different cost structures.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:28 am
“I have said that it is indeed thanks to the pressure of British and American troops that the Iraqi authorities and Saddam Hussein himself have changed, have shifted their position and have had to agree to cooperate”
The best way to avoid wars is dissuasion.
What a poorly chosen example. Are you actually trying to sound stupid? Because you don’t have to try so hard.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:28 am
LaFollette, it’s just the standard form of wingnut “argument”, which they employ on every subject under the sun. “The reason why you liberals are full of it is that- hey, look at that bright shiny object over there!”
May 15th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Fleur, this is a blog, not the archives of The Center for Defense Information. If you want detailed analysis of individual weapons systems, military capabilities, defense strategy, and the US military budget, follow that link.
Over at CDI you can find this chart, which is dated but still useful. It shows the level of US military spending from 1945 to 1970, measured in constant 1996 dollars. The peak was in 1963, when the US spent $376 billion (again, measured in constant, 1996 dollars).
According to the CPI’s inflation calcluator US inflation between Jan 1996 and Jan 2007 was 31.1%, meaning that the peak US Cold War spending scaled to the above chart was $494.44 billion.
I think it makes absolute sense to ask whether the security threat the US (or, if you prefer, the Free World) faces in 2009 is approximately 50% greater than the security threat we faced at the height of the Cold War. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that it’s ludicrously stupid to believe that such is the case, and to say that sustaining the current level of military spending is also ludicrously stupid.
Europe has became a kind of Switzerland.
Well, the French and British cantons of your Switzerland happen to have the world’s 3rd and 5th largest nuclear weapons arsenals.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:34 am
But why to conclude that the american budget is absurd, and not that the other countries are mostly disarmed ? The important question is : what are the operational capacities ? Are they sufficient or not ? It is widely viewed that the european ones are not, and that they enjoy the comfort provided by the Americans.
Comfort? In exactly what way do the “Future Combat Systems” provide comfort to Europeans?
When asking whether our military spending is sufficient, we should probably take into consideration the actual level of threats faced by the people doing the spending. Europe is not presently in grave danger of being overrun by Mongol hordes, therefore their level of military spending has dropped to historically low levels.
Would they be in greater danger of invasion or a crippling blockade if the US closed all of its European airbases? Probably in the very long run, but not in the immediate future. Did the hundreds of billions of dollars we spent in Iraq make Europe safer? Arguably less so.
Europe has became a kind of Switzerland.
This is the sort of arrogant, hyperbolic BS that pisses me off. You are aware that Europeans have fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq, yes? You are aware that France and the UK maintain a nuclear deterrent and far larger and more modern air and sea forces than China, Iran, and Pakistan combined, yes?
The US is the only country with a large enough military to play global policeman, for better or worse. You could also vaporize a third of our military hardware and that sentence would still be true. So I’m frankly tired of seeing these grandiose, chest-thumping arguments used to defend wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and starting unnecessary wars.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Here is James Dunnigan’s current LAND power rankings of the world’s major military powers. NOTE that most nations –other than the USA and to some extent UK –can NOT project much power beyond their national boundaries. The outsized expenditures in the US military budget are matched by its power rankings — it obviously budgets for EMPIRE , NOT for Defense.
USA: 10,000
Colombia: 435
Brazil: 400
Canada: 166
Mexico: 130
Russia: 1,726
UK: 1,037
Turkey: 972
Germany: 614
France: 585
Italy: 312
China: 2,757
South Korea: 920
North Korea: 688
Japan: 523
Taiwan: 449
Vietnam: 327
Indonesia: 199
Australia: 172
Thailand: 156
India: 2,290
Pakistan: 699
Myanmar: 202
Sri Lanka: 196
Israel: 2,098
Egypt: 532
Iran: 453
Saudi Arabia: 311
Syria: 230
Iraq: 196
Algeria: 177
Ref: http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/databases/armies/m.asp
May 15th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Right, Fleur.
Good thing we had enough power to avoid war in Iraq.
Umwhat?
May 15th, 2009 at 9:38 am
From the post:
May 15th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Sorry, I failed to close a tag there on the CDI chart link. The CPI link is there, under the words “the CPI’s inflation calculator”.
Matt, could you ask the Think Progress development department to send out a special appeal to fund previews on your blog? I might even kick something down for that one.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:39 am
“it obviously budgets for EMPIRE , NOT for Defense.”
Ding ding ding!!! Contra Tyro, these comparisons do tell us something.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:40 am
So, let me get this straight: Europe spends a great deal more than Russia and China combined. Russia and China’s spending levels make them strong enough that we need to worry about fighting global wars against them, but Europe – which spends a great deal more than they do – would be incapable of fighting a global war.
That doesn’t make any sense.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:41 am
But wait, it’s worse.
Fleur’s argument isn’t that Europe would be incapable of fighting a global war, but that they would be incapable of defending themselves if attacked…attacked specifically by countries with much smaller military budgets.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Here is James Dunnigan’s rankings of major world naval powers. Again, nothing comes close to the USA
and most of the other naval powers are US ALLIES. WHY do Republicans refuse to acknowledge that
the American people are being heavily taxed for Corporate EMPIRE , NOT for Defense?
USA: 302
Russia: 45
UK: 46
France: 14
China: 16
Taiwan: 10
Japan: 26
India: 10
Ref: http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/databases/navy/navalforcesoftheworld.asp
May 15th, 2009 at 9:45 am
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
It doesn’t HAVE TO make any sense. The whole argument is a fantasy novel. “Imagine a conflict involving Pakistan and India ! Or China !”
Even the screen name, in this case, comes from a juvenile fantasy novel.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Does anybody have these tables/figures without the spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
May 15th, 2009 at 9:47 am
This is degenerate, fasciocialist Europe, joe. I’ve read that at any given time, as many as 75% of European soldiers are on publicly subsidized, 16-week vacations with their gay, civil-unioned partners and their non-white, muslim, adopted children.
You’ve got to think these things through.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:52 am
“This is the sort of arrogant, hyperbolic BS that pisses me off. You are aware that Europeans have fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq, yes? You are aware that France and the UK maintain a nuclear deterrent and far larger and more modern air and sea forces than China, Iran, and Pakistan combined, yes?”
What have we done in the past fifteen years to solve the problems in the Middle East (or the world in general) ? Virtually nothing. How many constructive proposals and diplomatic victories can we save our assets ? Virtually none. Which of our beautiful proclamations have had any impact on the course of events ? Almost none. Europe is happy to denounce unilateralism of the Americans and to shake the hands of dictators in the name of the virtues of dialogue, cooperation, etc… but the only significant success in this area, sometimes ephemeral (like Oslo or Camp David) but actually giving hope at the time, are up to the Americans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhxEW4zrgc
“The US is the only country with a large enough military to play global policeman, for better or worse. You could also vaporize a third of our military hardware and that sentence would still be true. So I’m frankly tired of seeing these grandiose, chest-thumping arguments used to defend wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and starting unnecessary wars.”
I repeat. This is from the own admission of Europeans themselves : without the american superpower, nothing is possible, nothing prevents a country to break international and/or to threat an other, no UN resolution can be implemented,… This will remain words and good intentions. This is what Jacques Chirac (France) said during Iraqi Freedom : Saddam Hussein changed his attitude only thanks to the existence of a military threat. Have you even read the memoirs of Lady Thatcher ? In 1990, when he invaded little brave Kuweit, the proud Britishs admitted they would not have been able to deal with it, had the US chosen not to act. And I repeat : Kuweit and Iraq are a little piece of cake compared to the potentiel threats facing Free World today (like a conflict with China about Taiwan, with Russia or Pakistan, and of course Iran). Si vis pacem, para bellum.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am
When you add up the budgets for DOD, Department of Energy nukes, Intel community, Homeland Security, Veterans Administration,etc we spend close to $1 TRILLION per YEAR on “defense”.
So how well prepared is our healthcare system for a flu pandemic?
May 15th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Re Fleur at 31: “What have we done in the past fifteen years to solve the problems in the Middle East (or the world in general) ? Virtually nothing. How many constructive proposals and diplomatic victories can we save our assets ? Virtually none.”
—————-
You stupid fuck.
If we had diverted just a FRACTION of what we have pissed away on military operations in the Middle East into R&D to develop new energy sources, we would not be paying $40 per GALLON for Middle Eastern gasoline: $2.40 at the pump and $38 on our Income Tax return.
It was US aggression on behalf of Big Oil’s foreign investments that provoked the Sept 11 attack — which cost us 3000 lives, $2 TRILLION, and several parts of the Bill of Rights. That’s why your WHORE of a President had to LIE to the nation about what caused that attack and why your stupid bitch of a National Security Advisor had to threaten the CEOS of the 5 US TV Networks to not broadcast Bin Laden’s remarks.
Our policy should be what our Founding Fathers advised: leave the rest of the world alone to manage their affairs as they see fit — and exterminate anyone who invades our shores. Which 300 million Americans with 200 personal firearms could do even if you scrapped the entire Department of Defense.
We are sick and tired of your deceitful bullshit , crafted to fuck the common citzens while promoting the hidden agenda of wealthy billionaires. The main threat to this country is people like you –the enemy within.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:04 am
The comparison would be fine, as long as one accounts that all the powers that the US is compared to can’t conduct operations more than 50 miles outside their borders. It has been noted that the Brits for instance couldn’t do a Falklands War with the military they have now.
Per expensive fighter jets, the US losing a plane is ‘news’ nowadays. We lost tons of them during Vietnam, and one of the reasons that we cut the South off in 1974, is that the we weren’t fighting on the ground anymore (and they seemed to be doing okay with that) but we were doing the air side, and we were losing lot’s of pilots and planes (I think is was about 100), so it was costly. Get rid of all those new planes, and we’d lose more aircraft, if and when they were to go into action.
If one thinks that not being to project power more than 50 miles beyond the border and losing lots of planes to surface to air missiles and the like is no big deal, in fact a good thing, and not worth the money, then the graph makes sense though.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:05 am
What have we done in the past fifteen years to solve the problems in the Middle East (or the world in general) ? Virtually nothing. How many constructive proposals and diplomatic victories can we save our assets ? Virtually none. Which of our beautiful proclamations have had any impact on the course of events ? Almost none.
Then our military budget not only is disproportionately huge, but also gets a piss-poor ROI. Nice.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I had a response to Fleur all ready to go, but Gregory said it twice as well with far fewer words in #35.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am
But it’s an asymmetrical contest: the US military’s role is attack, get onto and then hold territory in far away lands, while the role of other militaries is to prevent us from doing this (or support us, mostly by filling in gaps in our force structure created by doing our thing). Different strategies create different cost structures.
The question then, though, is why is that the US military’s role? It didn’t used to be. Up until WWII, the US military’s role was largely to defend the United States (and kill Indians), not to conquer territory in far away lands.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:19 am
“It was US aggression on behalf of Big Oil’s foreign investments that provoked the Sept 11 attack”
“Our policy should be what our Founding Fathers advised: leave the rest of the world alone to manage their affairs as they see fit”
American far left sometimes sounds so close to the american far right.
If your plea is to put down the american spendings to the level of european ones, you actually need this kind of intellectual coherence : without the force, there will be no more law, no more diplomacy, the world could go on fire and blood, but but but… you just don’t care. Well… As a citizen from a little european country who paid an heavy price in 20th century, I can just hope (just as most of the people of the World) that your ideology will reach the White House no more. The United States are the “indispensable nation” or, as President Bush said before the United Nations : “We [the US] stand for the permanent hopes of humanity, and those hopes will not be denied.” (November 10, 2001).
May 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Fleur quoting Bush: perfect.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Fleur, you stupid hack. We could play world policeman and project the exact same power we do now with half of the current defense budget we have. Probably less.
Not living in America, you don’t have the slightest idea what an incredible waste our defense spending is. A few miles from me on the nearest AFB is warehouse after warehouse of thousands of defense employees that do nothing but watch YouTube all day. They do two hours of work per week. I myself do about that much working for a defense contractor that produces roughly 10% of what we would have to produce in the private sector to remain competitive. It is the biggest boondoggle in American fiscal history, and idiots like you saying that we’ll lose the ability to protect Europe if we cut out people like myself is simply hilarious. All defense spending here is is a massive jobs program.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Timeframe carefully chosen to leave out the Clinton-brokered peace agreements in Northern Ireland and between Israel and Jordan.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Pesto at 18 and 25: Is the CPI really an appropriate adjustment here? I may be over-fixating on the “C” part, but saying “the price of bread went up 31% since 1996, so a billion dollars doesn’t buy as many main battle tanks as it used to” seems a bit suspect. On the other hand, perhaps the price of those tanks have been increasing faster than the price of bread; having a customer who doesn’t question the price can do that.
I’m suddenly having a “guns or butter” moment…
May 15th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Please cut tasks and requirements before you cut budgets and capabilities. I’m tired of multiple deployments to third world bungholes and equipment that doesn’t work.
Thank you,
American Soldier.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I think comparisons like this drive home the point much more effectively.
Thank you for that. I’d like to seee more of those comparisons and less of the simple dollar-to-dollar comparisons that MattY has been harping on over the past few months. On this issue, he’s becoming less about analysis and providing an interesting POV and more on trying to push a rhetorical point.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Ken @42, re: CPI
That’s a good question, but I don’t know the answer to it. I suppose I assume that when you see any kind of table tracking spending over decades, they calculate “Spending for X in constant dollars” with the CPI. But I’m not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. Question for those who are: is there another method to track inflation/currency value that’s more appropriate for this kind of government spending?
That being said, I think it’s probably fair to use CPI for a couple reasons:
1) The Pentagon is spending its money largely on things that the CPI would help track. When they buy weapons systems from military manufacturers, the price of the weapon is affected by the rising price of steel and electricity and everything else, just like the price of a new washing machine or car. Presumably, military personnel expenses would track CPI-type inflation as well.
2) Even if the percentage is off, there’s still an enormous increase in our military spending since the peak of the Cold War. Maybe it’s not a 50% increase, but a 33% or even 25% increase. It’s still patently absurd to claim that our security situation is 25% more dangerous than it was in 1962, and furthermore that the dangers we face justify that kind of military expense.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Your missing an important point. China gets at least 20 times the benefit per each dollar spent. I would suggest that China’s military is getting stronger vs the US at a double digit annual rate. Not that any confrontation is even conceivable but it is the perceived weakening of the US which will mandate even more growth in US military spending.
These dollar comparison charts are useless. Everyone knows our number is so high because of the stupendous waste and corruption along with our far flung active commitments. China should make it a point to tweak Americas relative decline vs China with some occasional mild rhetoric from time to time to insure that we continue to throw our money down rat holes.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Thank you for that. I’d like to seee more of those comparisons and less of the simple dollar-to-dollar comparisons that MattY has been harping on over the past few months. On this issue, he’s becoming less about analysis and providing an interesting POV and more on trying to push a rhetorical point.
Yet, Matt takes a single chart, writes two paragraphs, posts it after about twenty minutes of work. Then you folks provide hours worth of detailed and sophisticated analysis glossed with informative rants from various points of view.
That’s cost effective blogging!
May 15th, 2009 at 11:34 am
While it is perfectly fair to complain that the US spends way too much money on defense spending, you can’t just look at the money spent and compare that to other countries to get an idea of how militaristic we are. You have to look at where the US defense budget is being spent. The biggest problem is that there is just tons of waste on needless program that would be better spent elsewhere. I think a more accurate presentation of the importance other countries place on their military is better represented by the number of active duty soldiers they have. The costs of raising an army are not the same all across border which makes comparisons like the one MY made here extremely weak and intellectually weak.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_active_troops
May 15th, 2009 at 11:52 am
We’re just going to assume that there is no waste and corruption in China?
Many of which are aimed at China.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I think a more accurate presentation of the importance other countries place on their military is better represented by the number of active duty soldiers they have.
That would be a reasonable argument… in the 19th century.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
The ranking of Chinese power are not related to spending levels but to, well, “power”. And how threatening this power is?
Our ability to project our forces to, say, occupy Szechuan, is nil. We can smash a lot of stuff there, but to occupy? No. Occupation is a labor intensive task. Conversely, the ability of Chinese to project their forces is probably even more modest. And who are the targets? Basically, Russia (but Russia has much better nukes, and not our worry), India (but China does seems content with the status quo on un-reconciled borders, plus, the logistic chain across Himalayas can be a force equalizer), Vietnam (not our worry), and then our allies, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Unless China is capable of over-powering Taiwan with a blitzkrieg, the situation in the region is stable with only modicum of our efforts.
With Europe, it is more tricky, but in a nutshell, military spending in Europe are insanely high. The little mischief that is possible happens anyway, the gross mischief that we could be paranoid about is impossible, and again, perhaps a modicum of our effort can patch some weak spots.
If our forces are to be adequate for the defense of our territory and to adequately bolster the defense of our allies, it is hard to see why we need more than half of the forces we have. If we are to be able to “project, occupy and hold”, we are not in particularly good shape, and what improvements are possible, they would involve very little spending.
Imagine that we have a force consisting mostly of bears, and a task that involves a lot of dancing, and it does not go too well. Solutions? 1) Spend more money on ballistic missile defense. 2) Complete some system like “Osprey”. 3) Recruit more, and larger, bears. 4) Root out all bears with homosexual tendencies. Etc. All the while, bears dance as badly as before.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
For those who moan that Chinese spending has to be treated differently, this is the note for the chart:
In other words, a conversion is already done to re-valuate Chinese forces up. In the same time, in air and sea, lagging in technology means that you cannot credibly attack, regardless how many air- and water- craft you have.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Re Midland at 47: “Yet, Matt takes a single chart, writes two paragraphs, posts it after about twenty minutes of work. Then you folks provide hours worth of detailed and sophisticated analysis glossed with informative rants from various points of view.
That’s cost effective blogging!”
—————
Actually, Matthew’s Mom pays us to do this. But she asked us to keep that part quiet.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
You’re asking the wrong question. Why does it matter if we spend several times more than Russia? That’s not what we should be basing our defense policy on. The question is, what’s our stated mission for the military and how do we cost-effectively support that? Right now, our strategic aim is to operate in every ocean, deliver and support hundreds of thousands of troops to any area, and provide air dominance over any other air force. You can question whether those are the right missions. And you can certainly question whether we are attempting to achieve those goals cost-effectively. But comparing our spending to Russia’s or China’s does not move the discussion forward – any more than all the reports on how little we currently spend as a share of GDP.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
“The best way to avoid wars is dissuasion.”
Yeah, we’re doing a great job of that, aren’t we?
May 15th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Overextension. Exhaustion. Collapse.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
[...] to other Nations. US partners in Western Europe alone spend 50% more than China/Russia combined. Matthew Yglesias
May 15th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
OMG, China’s getting stronger at 20 times the rate! The Commies are Back! Aux Armes, aux armes! One if by land, 2 trillion if by sea! We need to keep the F-22 program going because it is a JOBS program! Our soldiers are more effective in modern battle space than _____________’s! Playing War Games with Hellfires from Predators is like, totally cool! We must extract pithy QUOTES from great literature like “Aviation Week And Space Technology” and “Jane’s” and the other Consumer Reports for the military-industrial gearheads, to PROVE OUR POINTS that you can never have enough DEFENSE! Ignore those Old Lies about stuff like Bomber Gaps and Missile Gaps and Windows of Vulnerability and the invincibility of the Soviet Red Army in the West! This time THEY really are a THREAT! And boy, are we good at recognizing THREATS, there in our bedroom closets and hiding under the bed just waiting to GET US and TAKE US OVER if we Even Once Close Our Eyes For A Moment! Because we know that there are People Just Like Us over on The Enemy Side, who think and talk just like we do, and are busy every day scaring the hell our of their own average citizens with Tales Of Demonic Threats from Rabid Capitalists! We must focus on the STATISTICS, and maintain our HEGEMONY, the future of the Free World depends on destroying villages and Constitutional rights and our antiquated notions of what constitutes America the Beautiful in order to save them! We must pretend that we are part of the great Engine of Democracy, and so very intent on the minutiae of Weapons Systems and involved in Keeping The Money Flooding Into War Contractors and onto pallets of $100 bills to be delivered to loading docks in Iraq and “Afghanistan” by C-141s and C-5s for pickup by Our Allies the Corrupt Baksheeshers of the Third World we are Sworn to Protect! And Defend! And get it on with the DoD, which was so wisely renamed the “Defense Department” from its original “War Department,” because after all, Who Can Be Against DEFENSE? After all We are not In Favor of War, now are we? And while we’re at it, let’s build lots of stuff that doesn’t work, even Autonomous Battle Robots that shot up our own troops when once deployed, and V-22s which, having been snuck into a nice safe corner of Iraq and flown in a few missions we can now declare are “just another successful program” and keep building a shitload of, and short-change the grunts with the stuff they might actually be able to use like body armor and up-armor for their Hummers and MRAPS and all that, and flood the media with so much noise that nobody can even think clearly enough to ask if ANY OF THIS TRIP DOWN INTO HELL IS NECESSARY, so that we can continue to play or geopolitical games of jerkmeat RISK! using live action figures and lots of splatterable soft targets to have Our Troops blast, so those people’s families can wind up their own anger at US as The Enemy and take their Own Revenge, so we can shoot them some more, all justifying the whole stupid game that seems to this Vietnam vet to be proof absolute that the human race is too stupid, collectively, to survive and clearly has a species death wish.
May 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
And why does La Fleur hate Switzerland, anyway?
May 15th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
[...] to other Nations. US partners in Western Europe alone spend 50% more than China/Russia combined. Matthew Yglesias
May 15th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Have you ever noticed that so many of the threats we face today are the result of our empire-directed policies of the past? Iraq is fubared largely because we helped to put Saddam Hussein in power and keep him there. Our current relations with Iran are a direct result of our overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953(?) and the installation of the Shah of Iran. We literally created Osama bin Laden. Who got the medal for that? Zbigniew Brezinski actually admitted that the US intentionally baited the USSR into invading Afghanistan. Look how well that turned out! Latin America hates us for our 186-year war against their right to control their own destinies.
A large portion of the world hates us because, to put it simply, we are a country that respects nothing except the desires of our own ruling elite and its insatiable quest for world empire.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Adam Says:
Oh, come on, Adam. When the government spends massively on the military thereby distorting the market and impoverishing us all, that’s just the free market in action, right? Just like the Fed and Fannie and Freddie.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
[...] to other Nations. US partners in Western Europe alone spend 50% more than China/Russia combined. Matthew Yglesias
May 15th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
One of Ronald Reagan’s officials admitted after he left his job that Reagan’s tax cuts and military spending were done on purpose to put the country heavily in debt so that social programs would later be slashed.
The purpose of war spending now is to enrich Republican corporations and make life worse for Democratic workers. If the latter complain they are called unpatriotic, and told that their slowly eroding standard of living would in fact collapse overnight if America did not hold the world at gunpoint.
Here’s two ways of using war spending to carry out stealth social engineering:
1. FDR financed WW2 (and according to the GOP, only then ended the Depression) by raising the top income tax rate to over 90% and selling low-interest debt, War Bonds, to the masses. When the war ended, the high taxes remained to pay down the war debt and thus the war bond holders, supported by both Congressional Republicans and Ike, who would not recognize what their party has mutated into today. Result: economic inequality in America declined in the late ’30s and stayed at the same level for the next 40 years.
2. Reagan financed the last stage of the Cold War by dropping the top tax rate in stages until it went under 40%, while Volcker pushed high interest rates to crush inflation. So buyers of T-bills (in those days, the rich) got huge real rates on them for years. In effect the rich went from getting taxed to pay for war, to getting to be loan sharks to pay for war. Result: economic equality exploded, making more cash available for the rich to buy the government and deregulation they desired and silencing everybody else.
Both FDR and Reagan knew what they were doing. The supporters of infinite war spending know too. They are creating a militarized feudal system where redneck bullies join the right-leaning military/police/prison-industrial complex, serving Halliburton and Lockheed (which now does welfare-to-work programs) and Blackwater and private prison corporations. They are like the slave overseers and Klan enforcers of the old Southern feudalism. They get shipped around the world to create new corporate plantations for Wall Street. The rest of us get poorer and poorer so that we can be protected against dark-hued criminals and aliens. If we cut spending on these things, we might reward the values of the New Deal and start fighting to get our wages and benefits back. As Kevin Phillips described in “American Theocracy”, we’re looking more and more like Spain, who terrorized the world while remaining medieval at home until it went broke from sheer stupidity.
Our slogan should be, “Millions to kill Ni**er babies, but not one red cent to feed Ni**er babies.”
May 15th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Jon Says:
While it is perfectly fair to complain that the US spends way too much money on defense spending, you can’t just look at the money spent and compare that to other countries to get an idea of how militaristic we are. You have to look at where the US defense budget is being spent. The biggest problem is that there is just tons of waste on needless program that would be better spent elsewhere. I think a more accurate presentation of the importance other countries place on their military is better represented by the number of active duty soldiers they have. The costs of raising an army are not the same all across border which makes comparisons like the one MY made here extremely weak and intellectually weak.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_active_troops
Adding up the EU countries on that list I got 1.7 million. That seems competitive. It’s actually more than the United States.
Germany + France + Italy + UK + Spain + Greece is 1.3 million putting it at number 3 in active troops, about even with India.
Europe spends adequately on defense.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
America supports the major dictatorships in the Middle East. This leads to problems with terrorism and so forth, which apparently demands a military solution. It’s very neat, if you are in the military industry or the oil industry, but it’s not smart, unless you’re very cynical.
The claims that France and Russia support oil tyrants are made to cover that it is mainly America who does so.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
And did I just read that the same transportation companies who are delivering humanitarian aid to “war-torn” areas like Darfur are also conveniently transporting weapons, on a large scale, to those same areas? Now THERE is marketing and opportunity-grabbing capitalism for you — blow ‘em up, encourage the cycle of violence, then make another buck by bringing in the mops, buckets and donut dollies to kiss the booboo and make it all better.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
My favorite version of the graph is the Ben and Jerry’s video that explains our military budget in terms of oreo cookies:
via videosift.com
Another question to ask ourselves is what percentage of US GDP is spent on Military an how does that compare with the rest of the world? That (besides the insurance and testing industries) might explain why Europe has decent health care and education systems for its citizens and we do not. Another important connected question is how much of our productive industry and exports are connected to the military. You will find that the US economy depends heavily on arms sales. America the beautiful is trapped in the business of death.
If we actually made ourselves safer with the sacrifices made by US workers maybe you could say it was worth something but the brutality with which we employ our “defense” only serves to further isolate and endanger those same citizens.
Example: Attack drones being employed in Afghanistan and Pakistan currently have a kill rate that is 97% civilian. Do we really win hearts and minds with this approach and if we isolate the rest of the world are we really strong enough to remain safe?
May 15th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
@47 Midland: “cost effective blogging!”
No kidding. Great thread.
The only thing I would add is that real Defense/Empire spending is easily at or above $1 trillion. I know we can’t use the $1 trillion figure in public, but I’d like to see the next chart or graph come close to accurately reflecting the true cost of Empire. The $680 billion figure is laughable.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
[...] to other Nations. US partners in Western Europe alone spend 50% more than China/Russia combined. Matthew Yglesias
May 19th, 2009 at 4:56 am
The more pertinent point is that we are now spending *substantially* more than the *entire rest of the world combined*.
And we’re still losing the wars we get involved in.
Clearly, this is not a wise use of money.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I was a weapons eng. at a fed. shipyard. The largest cost in these defense contracts are-
1. Retooling, Pentagon weenies constantly demanding design changes.
2. Safety, all the fail safes and tolerances are so tight it costs a fortune. Take the 6 barreled elliptical breach patch in the CIWS for example. it fires @ aprox 3000 rnds per min with a breach that never closes. If a round fails to be pulled out of the barrel it becomes useless. Since this is a last ditch Missle defense it cannot be subject to failure so I bet nearly 10 million dollars alone went into retooling the Breach Block, path and ammo to prevent this from happening.
3. Awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. General Dynamics has produced some of the best weapons systems the world has ever seen. But they spend hundreds of millions of dollars designing and tweaking a system and then after 3 years GE come in and under bids them by millions, takes a loss for 2 or threee years till GD retools and moves to a new system and then GE is the only bidder and then they triple the price per system and parts. This causes GD, Raytheon, TRW… to price the Entire development costs over the initial 3 years because they will never be able to underbid GE or FMC.
4. Cutting edge technology. Being first has it’s price. How much did it cost in engineering, design, testing, and production of the first cd player. Then brand X hacks in your network steals your schematics, design specs, pays 10% more to your manufacturer, who dumps you. Now imagine this with a weapon system whose radar can track a tungsten round travling @ 5600 fps outbound over a mile and then correct it’s own aim if the rounds vector is not going to intersect with an inbound target travling 650mph.
5. Bribes- The cost of doing business. Do not think that Billions are not given to the same politicians that are complaining about spending.
So Now lets Take China.
1. They toilet train their children at gunpoint. Send them to the finest US colleges. We give them 1H1B visa and then allow them to work on work for Sandia or Lawrence Livermore for 5 years to learn everything they can. Then they go back to China with a thumb drive in their pocket with $500 million dollars worth of designs, research and testing materials and turn it over to the State. Cost $80K for education, $60 for thumb drive, $1200 for plane ticket.
2. China then takes all this information to a Plant that lets say Ford help set up to make cars 5 years ago. They take all the old equipment and Ford Trained Machinist, Mechanic, Electricians and have them now work a second shift making the new XXX they just stole from the US.
3. Wow Just look at what happened with the IPHONE. They had clones made so well that Apple was repairing them without noticing.
What we should do at this point is to Suspend development on System for 2 years. Spend all the money on hardening our infrastructures. Electrical, water, transportation, Pharmacutical, banking and communications.
Develop New Operating systems for Secure Private networks with Random Shifting Quantum Cyphers that cannot be hacked remotely.
Start teaching the hard sciences and quit dumming down the classes so we do not hurt the esteem of Manny the drug Czar of Hewlett county. We need to encourage our best and brightest not hold them back while Nellie changes her Plastic babies diaper.
Stop equating fame with infamous. When Snoop dog appeared with Lee Iacoca in a Chrysler commercial I went to Home depot to buy Gopher Wood.
Lets quit exporting all our Education to other countries.
Stop trying to make everyone equal. I know I am better than alot of people and deserve more. I also know that alot are better than me and deserve more.
Put a moratorium on professional Sports for 5 years and Hollywood movies for 10.
Lets get back to NEEDING each other and valuing what they have to offer NOT who they are or who they Know.