While we’re talking military “defense...”
The US is currently spending over ½ trillion dollars (!!!) a year on its military. More still, if you factor in the part of the national debt that is due to military spending.
According to the globalissues website, world military spending was estimated at just over $1 trillion in 2005, when the US military budget was around $420 billion. We accounted for 43% of the total world military budget. We are nearly spending alone on our military what the whole rest of the world is spending.
For comparison, our next largest “competitor” is China, which spent $62 billion in 2005 (compared to our $420 billion).
Additionally, the US currently has over 10,000 nuclear bombs, which cost hundreds of billions of dollars. [More very interesting information at this source.]
Also, the US has 1.4 million active duty soldiers (plus the 1.2 million soldiers in the reserves) spread over dozens of countries and all the oceans of the world – not to mention a vast spy network. [source]
I’m curious what y’all think regarding our military expenditures. Are we:
a. Spending about the right amount
b. Spending wayyy too little
c. Spending wayyy too much?
Or, put another way: How much do you think we need to spend to feel or be “secure”?
Or, put yet another way: Does the size of our military reflect a truly defensive military or is it more what you would expect from a nation with imperial designs?
(I know I asked this question before, but I’m running it up the flagpole again to see who salutes.)
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Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
~George Washington
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience ... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process.
~President Dwight D. Eisenhower
God’s warning to the Israelites who wanted a king to “lead them into battle”:
"This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
"He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants.
"He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.
Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."
~1 Samuel 8
15 comments:
Way, way, way, way too much.
If we, for one year, spent this much on education at home and abroad, imagine the results!
Once again I feel the need to point out that if you didn't spend the money on military it doesn't necessarily mean you have the "money" available to spend on other things.
(By the bye, we spend WAYYY too much on education. The people who are best educated are the ones on whom the least money is spent).
If you dump money on a problem, be it medicine, education, food, housing, whatever, the ONLY result is that what you are buying becomes more expensive, it does not mean there will be more of it.
How-some-ever, concerning our obese military budget. We could, if we chose, which we decidedly do not, to produce a great deal in this country and use from that production modestly, there would be no need for a huge military. But we don't, now do we?
Instead almost everything we use comes from overseas. Now the majority of our technical work, accounting, record keeping and such is done in foreign countries. When you are at the mart the next time, look at the country of origin on the FOOD labels, we will soon pass the point when we will be importing more than half our food (or exporting it to be processed and then importing it again.)
We have a country of people jobs that produce nothing .... activists, coordinators, ministers, teachers, social workers, supervisors, cubicle dwellers, etc. All tossing about bags of air to each other and imagining that they are accomplishing something.
We have to have such an obese military to enforce our status quo on the world, to make them turn over their oil, manufactured goods, processed food, and technical skills (for a song), so we can do nearly nothing and consume a disproportionate amount of the world's goods.
As long as we are willing to ignore our non-productivity, we will need an every increasing military to back up our life of plunder and consumption
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To answer you question directly, Dan, our military is exactly the right size it needs to be to enforce our theft and plunder.
Thanks, brd, I certainly agree. As I do with you, too, E. No matter how much you continue to try to talk down to some of us, we still may choose to agree with you.
At least in your more rational comments.
WAAAY too much on the military. Real security comes from international cooperation and the vigorous defense of human rights. Arms build-ups, bloated military budgets, "preemptive" invasions, and unilateralism look tough, but actually weaken security, isolate a nation and increase global hostility towards that nation, and give incentives for terrorists and tools for terrorist recruiting.
Dan,
I often find myself in agreement with eleutheros, whenever I read your comment sections. He's one of the most articulate commenters around.
So what do I think about our military spendings? What eleutheros said. (^_^)
So, you think our military is the right size to enforce our theft and plunder?
Then we all agree with Eleutheros.
Do you think, then, that is a horribly wrong thing? And that we should change our lifestyles so that we no longer need that size military?
My answer is "A".
If it were to reflect an empire, it would have to be much larger, and we would have to have an actual empire.
Empire, n. - a group of nations or peoples ruled over by an emperor, empress, or other powerful sovereign or government: usually a territory of greater extent than a kingdom
We certainly are not an empire in the strictest sense - Nicaragua, Iraq, Mexico, Liberia, etc are in no legal way obligated to do what our ruler demands (well, maybe Iraq...and perhaps Nicaragua and Mexico, thanks to NAFTA and CAFTA - but I don't think Liberia is).
But in a practical sense, many countries have to ask "how high?" when the US tells them to jump. Or, at least the leaders of many sovereign nations feel like they have to if they want to remain in our good favor. We've sort of an Economic Empire thing happening that all of us (and other nations) are rather free to not take part in, but have committed ourselves/their selves to take part in so that we get the perceived benefits of that economic empire.
Don't you think?
And, don't you think our Department of Defense could be much much smaller if we were only have a truly defensive military?
E, Perhaps we spend too much on education in your community, but when teachers are the lowest paid professionals and children have to scrounge to get paper to write assignments on, we could debate that assertion.
However, education doesn't just take place in public schools. I have envisioned what it would be like if we as a country and communities had those tax dollars spent on military and invested instead in education for human understanding. Call them Peace Camps. 911 was a great wake up call, not to retaliate with exchange of bullets but with exchange of ideas and understanding. The United States chose to exchange bullets.
And by the bye, importing goods is just global capitalism at work. Are you suggesting that we take that military money and economically prop up companies like Campbell Soup? Interesting idea, but I'd demand some caps for those CEO salaries first.
brd, I'm sure Eleutheros may comment hisself, but he doesn't really believe in money as a concept or a reality (at least as I understand his point). He has an interesting blog and great beliefs, with which I agree much of the time.
Just to let you know he's not mainstream in his approach to money, goods, services, etc.
Well...Dan...even E has to pay his internet bill with real money.
Truncated! Dastardly text editor!
That link should read:
http://milesfrombabylon.blogspot.com
/2005/07/beginning-of-wisdom.html
Marty:"Well...Dan...even E has to pay his internet bill with real money."
Do you think so?
I could be typing this at the library, you know.
Or there are several municipalities here with wireless access.
But actually it's more interesting than that.
If you, by chance, have read my diatribes on my own blogs about the nature of money (or anyone else's, there's lots of people who understand this), you might realize that in today's economy and monetary system, when the money comes into being as a debt (fiat money, that is, paper money or bank credit).
It used to be that the money represented at least gold or silver or other tangible tokens. No longer. When more money is "created" as happened last week when the Fed and their European counterparts dumped a third of a trillion dollars into trading to stave off a stock market panic, the governments are saying, "We will back this money we've created by promising to tax the eyeballs off the people at some time in the future."
US dollars are also backed by the promise to use military force to make sure the dollars represent some tangible good. The money, especially government money such as is paid to teachers, might as well have stamped on it, "Payable to the bearer, one bomb to drop on an Iraqi village."
The only way avoid that karma is to deal in a system of barter, straight up goods for goods of equal value. If you are not producing anything, you have no power to purchase anything.
That system does exist, more or less. It's imperfect but it does allow for the exchange or real goods and services for other real goods and services without the promise to bomb or enslave anyone.
If you've ever dealt with PayPal or one of the other like services, they come in generally two flavors. A straight up exchange forum, which is a free servive, or a service that deals in checks, credit cards, debit devices, etc. for which there is a fee, usually around 7%.
Here's how my internet bill was paid. Ramping up to the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, I made some fanciful pirate chests out of oak -- slant sided, round topped, brass and leather fittings, even with a false bottom to make it look like you had more doubloons than you actually have (pirate!). They sold on an online shop like eBay but much smaller and more specialized.
The remuneration appeared as an asset on PayPal, the freebie service of PayPal. That monetary credit did not create a debt nor was it backed by the promise to bomb anyone. It was as if it were stamped with, "Payable to the bearer, one pirate chest or the equivalent in other real goods and services."
I asked the internet service provider if they were equipped to draft against a PayPal account and, yes indeed, they were and glad to do it.
In the real world, if you understand such things, I exchanged a real oak chest for so many months of internet service. It did not involve money because at no time did the credit represent a debt nor did it represent a promise to use military action against someone to obtain what they ought to be enjoying themselves.
So, no, E doesn't use "real" money to pay for his internet.
Yes, in the economic sense, the US can be argued to have/have had an empire. Less so than before, such as the first half of the 20th Century, when most of Central America consisted of American client states. This trend has diminished over time, but not disappeared by any stretch. Mexico is certainly not a colony or part of the American Empire -- or they wouldn't be pulling this crap with exporting their surplus citizens into our country against our will.
And, don't you think our Department of Defense could be much much smaller if we were only have a truly defensive military?
There is no defensive military without offensive capability. For example, if we had only defensive capability, we would not have been able to respond against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11.
It's a good Jeffersonian ideal to have a purely defensive military, but even Jefferson saw the folly of this approach during the Quasi War, the Barbary Campaigns, and the War of 1812. Lacking an offensive navy, we were unable to defend our commercial rights on the high seas, thereby leading to these conflicts.
I think we spend too much. As far as the right amount, I'm not really sure. If you take out the Iraq War, our spending would be high, but I presume much less. Ideally, much less money would be spent towards actual wars and more on actual defense preparation (i.e. being ready in event of missile and/or nuclear attack).
That being said, I still believe that percentage-wise, the majority of our money should go to defense, simply because I believe that is the primary function of government, and it is a function that should belong solely to the government.
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