Defense Spending

Seattle P-I story today states that George W. told the annual convention of the American Legion, the country needed what he called "the largest increase in military spending since Ronald Reagan was president," or $39 billion over 2001 levels.


He continued, "We have a clear-eyed foreign policy...I know this nation still has its enemies and we cannot expect them to be idle. And that's why security is my first responsibility, and I will not permit any course that leaves America undefended."


Ronald Reagan served during a time when the United States (ostensibly) still faced the biggest threat in the in the history of our country--the USSR. That union is long gone but military spending continues to rise and this year our President takes pride in increasing military spending more than his predecessors (who assumedly governed during a period of similar threats as he).


Are these increases really necessary?


Would America be "undefended" if we failed to spend on military at higher than Cold War levels? Will the Pentagon ever consider themselves fully armed and ready or are perennial increases inevitable?


Who benefits most from increases in military spending?


Is this a responsible way to spend federal money during tight economic times and a dwindling surplus?


KJS


<a href=http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/37039_bush30.shtml>story in p-i</a>

At least when you spend it on weapons you get cool stuff. I mean, B-2 bombers are cool. The new fighter plane is cool. You can sneak in other peoples' countries. You can blow stuff up. When you spend it on health care and old people and programs, all you get are whiners who vote for Democrats. :-)

Only HALF of defense spending is on "cool stuff" like the B-2 bomber, tanks, artillery, battleships, and so forth.


The other half is spent on PEOPLE. That is, military pay and benefits, retirement, medical, housing, etc.


Why don't those who want defense cuts ever lobby for DECREASING THE MISSION? Do we really need to be in the Balkans, the Persian gulf, Haiti, Korea, and all points in between?

Theme: I keep my gun loaded and so should you.


There is no doubt our defense spending is mismanaged and costs us more than it should due to inefficiency and pork-barrel orders that benefit corporate contibutors to members of congress. That is a mess, certainly.


However... I hesitate to downplay the importance of a strong military. I simply refuse to believe that this is the first time in the history of the human race that the world is a safe place. The rest is in the details. We may need to spend more, we may need to spend less and just focus more on certain aspects. Whatever the approach we need a strong military because humans suck.


Remember, World War One was called the "war to end all wars". In the aftermath, many of the world's most brilliant and influential leaders believed and acted as if we had entered a new era of everlasting peace where it was simply impossible to imagine any kind of threat to the world's peace and freedom. We know how that turned out, and how quickly.


It's easy to become complacent and I don't think now is the time for it. Now is not the time to think of Russia as a harmless old man or to think of China as an eager hopeful participant in responsible world leadership.


Personally, I believe there's a good chance there will be a major conflict in Asia sometime within the next forty years and western nations could easily be dragged into it.


natedogg

Conservatives throw money at defense and criticize liberals for throwing money at social problems. Liberals throw money at social problems and criticize conservatives for throwing money at defense. If simply putting more money into the pot is wrong, it is wrong wherever it is done.


If George W. thinks we need to spend more money, he needs to tell us why. Where and how is our inadequate spending hurting us? Precisely what weapons and programs do we need and why? What threats does he see on the horizon and what strategy does he advocate to go along with the increased spending to counter those threats?


I doubt he can answer these questions, but hopefully some people in his administration can so that we can judge the merits of their views. We pissed away a lot of money when the Evil Empire was allegedly the root of all evil in the world and we therefore had to counter on every front. We should be wary of those who might present the same faulty arguments now.

One of the reasons we are seeing a requirement for increases in defense spending is the US public's lack of willingness to see casualties in combat. Body bags are very bad press for any military commander. Because of that, we see the nation's military investing in things like F-22 fighters and stealth technology. Big dollar, high cost, high overhead systems that make big news when they drop bombs and get away unscathed.


If the US is going to continue to insist on the silly assed mission of "peace keeping" then we're going to need more weapon systems that can deliver effective strikes without putting troops at risk. The same holds true for future war fighting. Look at the Gulf War. It is still viewed as a video game with real planes. For every frame of footage showing a group of grunts running across the desert, you see a dozen frames of FLIR images showing laser guided bombs dropping through air vents and Hellfire missles swatting tanks.


The nation needs to decide what it wants. If they want to continue misusing the military in humanitarian and peace keeping missions, then they're going to need to spend the money on complex technologies to keep the soldiers from getting hurt. If they want a military which is intended to engage in warfare, then they need to restructure their budgets to provide training funds, training ammunition, workable boots for the Infantry, modern parachute technology for the Airborne, etc. Unfortunately boots and parachutes aren't billion dollar defense programs. They don't provide pork to a dozen congressional districts and get the congressdrones face on TV. What they do provide is adequate equipment for soldiers, airman, sailors and marines to do their job.


Throw away the F-22, replace each of them with something approaching 250 cruise missiles. Do the same with the B-2 fleet only then replace each of them with closer to 2500 cruise missiles. Get rid of the JSF and develop specific mission aircraft. Upgrade the A-10s and forget the stupid idea of using F-16s and F-15s as ground support aircraft. Upgrade the 15s and 16s to meet the avionic standards necessary to employ the AMRAAM to it's fullest extent and turn them back into fighters. If we need a limited range, tactical bomber, build one dedicated to that mission, throw the F-15E away and replace it with a dedicated Attack plane. Replace it with what the F-111 was originally intended to be.


Then replace all of the politicians and military commanders who want to put soldiers into police officer's jobs and nursing positions. When politicians want to committ troops to places like Kosovo, if there's not a war there, there's no business putting soldiers there. Same goes for Somalia, Haiti and every other piss trickle place the US has sent soldiers and warfighters to enforce the peace. It's a conflict of purpose for the troops and it does little but reinforce the public impression that our military can do its real job without anyone getting hurt. Of course, YMMV.

You make some good points about defense spending, but the Soviet Union really was a problem. The Cold War made sense. We won it and stopped a true force of evil in the world. I don't understand the retro-apologizing for the Soviets, who were absolutely rancid, murdered millions, and took over any countries they could. Good riddance, but too bad we have the ChiComs to deal with now.

agree about the need to stop the commies. I just wonder if we didn't devote a little too much of our resources to the military build-up. I mean the amount of nuclear weaponry we have is just ridiculous.


I've also heard some sound arguments that once both the Russians and US had nukes, neither side was going to battle. the cost is simply too high.


this is also the reason I don't fear a large scale confrontation with China. It would be suicide to go to war if either side had even a small nuke arsenal. the commies may be evil, but they're not crazy.

The Evil Empire was indeed evil. I didn't mean to retro-apologize. Certain aspects and policies of the Cold War did make sense.


But not all. The United States assumed that Stalin and his successors were responsible for all the trouble in the world. They were not. This caused us to spend unwisely and to make a lot of bad decisions that caused a lot of suffering. The people of Guatemala come to mind, following our overthrow of their government in 1954. Vietnam, of course, is another prime example. People we supported, in the name of anti-communism, also murdered large portions of their own country's populations.


This is not retro-criticism. George Kennan, Walter Lippman and Henry Wallace, to name 3 prominent people, foresaw all of the problems in the 1940s, including the rise of McCarthyism. These were not radicals. Kennan basically invented containment. Lippman was a mainstream political commentator, the most respected and famous in his time. Wallce moved left, but he was Secretary of Commerce in the Truman administration and Vice President before Truman. (Interesting to speculate how the world would have been different had Roosevelt died while he was VP.)


There are certainly still evil people in the world and we need a strong defense. But to blindly spend more for the sake of doing so is foolhardy, as it was during the Cold War. We were told then that we needed to spend more because the Soviets were. It never ocurred to us that they were A) woefully inefficient; B) bastards who didn't care about the welfare of their own people; and C) spending themselves into bankruptcy.


By all means let's not revise history to make the Soviets anything other than what they were. Your "rancid" seems particularly apt. But let's also not revise history to sugarcoat our own evil actions and mistakes.

I am not an expert on nuclear strategy, but I have read some stuff that leads me to believe we came closer to nuclear war than we might want to imagine. There was a long period of time where we could have had a successful first strike against the Soviets, and I am not naive enough to think we didn't think long and hard about it. Once the Soviets had enough weapons we went to the MAD strategy, at least for public consumption, but our victory in the Cold War was because we always explored the first strike option. That is, accurate silo busters and counterforce strategies put pressure on the Soviets to spend more on missiles because of the threat of a survivable first strike. Not many missiles are necessary for a credible MAD strategy, so I don't think the nuclear war planners believed in MAD as a strategy. As a result of their strategy perhaps, but not as the goal. The brilliance of the Star Wars program was that we sent the Soviets into a spending panic trying to keep up. We spent very little money, relatively, on Star Wars stuff but forced the Soviets to spend a very high percentage of their miniscule wealth on weapons. No doubt there was wasteful spending in the Cold War, but we got a lot more for our dollar than the Soviets.


China may not get into a direct conflict with us, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them take over Japan and other Pacific nations. They will test us by attacking Taiwan, then go on to other things. I think this is why they are developing technology for accurate MIRVs and nuclear missile submarines. Our response to the Taiwan attack will say a whole lot. Given the fact that the Chinese have a very long view of things, I don't think they've forgotten what Japan did in WWII. I don't think they have forgiven and forgotten the war crimes and genocide committed by the Japanese. But this is speculation on my part. Read some Bill Gertz stuff to heighten your suspicion level on China's motives.