The U.S. Senate recently passed a defense appropriations bill of $460 billion, and that's not counting another $200 billion or so for our ruinous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To put these figures in context, it's useful to compare the U.S. defense budget with the rest of the world. In 2006, even though the Cold War was but a fading memory and our deadliest active enemies were armed with little more than aging assault rifles and surplus artillery shells, our defense budget accounted for over 40% of all military spending in the world. It was almost five and a half times greater than the next largest military budget, and was 12% greater than the rest of the top ten military budgets combined.* Of those other top ten, all are countries which which we have mutual defense treaties, military cooperation agreements, and/or strong bilateral trade relationships; in other words, all of the other countries with large defense budgets are our friends.
In a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun the retired commander of America's second fleet, Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan notes that "national security involves far more than unrealistic defense spending," asking "how many more hundreds of billions of dollars will it take before we step back and say, 'Enough'?"
The numbers involved overwhelm the imagination. But it suffices to note that defense spending consumes over half of the discretionary funds in the federal budget, preventing us from effectively addressing such diverse and pressing needs as health care, education, transportation, homeland security, disaster relief, energy independence and environmental degradation.
We should recall the words of Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded the largest army this country ever assembled and led America through the darkest days of the Cold War:
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."**
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* The Military Balance 2006 (London: Routledge, for The Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006), p. 398-403
** Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 15 October 2007
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4 comments:
The fact that questioning our massive military spending is an automatic political career-ender is evidence of the militarism present in our society and in particular, the militarism present in our elite class.
That is a really unclear sentence. But I think it makes sense.
Note: originally submitted by Jamelle, 8 November 2007
In my more cynical moments, I tend to agree.
But I think a clever and comparatively progressive politico could spin the issue very differently than it’s generally spun in this polity, making a powerfully populist argument rather similar to Eisenhower’s. If that politico could break through the obfuscatory screen — and the Web might provide a valuable mechanism for that — a public increasingly aware of how military spending robs our future could further rather than end that candidate’s career. An unlikely scenario, and one fraught with personal danger to the candidate, I’ll admit, but possible.
Making such change more likely — I think, and hope — will be the growing realization that we are bankrupting ourselves financially, intellectually and environmentally. Reform will become increasingly necessary, even for the elites who depend upon American dominance.
Note: originally submitted by Sanderling, 8 November 2007
I just don’t know when it’d be possible to do something like that. Half of being successful in politics is taking advantage of circumstances; a pitch to drastically reduce the military budget may have made sense following the end of the Cold War, but now, with Americans terrified of the future, I doubt anyone could successfully convince the public that reducing military spending is a good idea.
Then again, I’ve been feeling fairly cynical as of late, so I might be/probably am wrong.
I just don't know when it'd be possible to do something like that. Half of being successful in politics is taking advantage of circumstances; a pitch to drastically reduce the military budget may have made sense following the end of the Cold War, but now, with Americans terrified of the future, I doubt anyone could successfully convince the public that reducing military spending is a good idea. Then again, I've been feeling fairly cynical as of late, so I might be/probably am wrong.
Note: Originally submitted by Jamelle, 9 November 2007
Oh, and by the way, I really enjoy your blog.
Note: Originally submitted by Jamelle, 9 November 2007
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