The price of freedom
US issues - - Posted on February, 21 at 9:34 am by Ken L
Reliable data about these things is hard to find but it’s widely accepted that the USA spends as much on national defence as the rest of the world put together. You would therefore be forgiven for thinking that this was enough, but you’d be wrong. Apparently when you’re The Most Powerful Nation That the World has Ever Known, ‘enough’ is not a meaningful concept in the context of defence spending.
This situation arises from the USA’s adoption of a simple approach to military conflict, which is to rely on the theory that when two warring nations have seriously unequal resources, the one with the greater resources will eventually win. This might not seem like an especially penetrating insight to us lay people but things like economics have never been terribly well-understood in military academies, which have been more concerned with how the Romans could have won at Cannae if only they’d used their cavalry differently. The yanks, however, worked out back in the Civil War that since the North had a lot more men and money than the South, all they had to do was keep fighting long enough and the North would eventually win, even though the South was much more war-like and enterprising.
That philosophy has informed US military strategy and tactics through Pershing and Eisenhower and Nimitz and Westmoreland to the present day. The ‘Powell Doctrine’ says that you should hit the enemy with ‘overwhelming force’ right from the get-go. Once again, us lay people might scratch our heads and wonder why TF you need to be a five star general to come up with such blindingly obvious ideas but then again the military mind is not easily comprehended by outsiders.
The problem for the USA is that while it has quite a lot of citizens, a few other nations have a lot more. Therefore it can’t rely on its preponderance in human resources to win wars, so it’s turned to money instead. Here it was on a winner for the whole of the last century, having so much more money than anyone else that it could assemble enormous collections of ships and planes and tanks and all the rest of the stuff that politicians like Brendan Nelson and Bronwyn Bishop and Kim Beazley love to be photographed in.
All this hardware is brilliant for winning wars. I don’t care how brave and resourceful you are, if all you’ve got is three clapped out Iriquois helicopter gunships and a bunch of guys carrying AK-47s, you’re not gonna last long against three carrier battle groups and a division of Abrams tanks. Every sane nation understood this, so the mere possession of such an impressive arsenal secured the USA’s defence. After a while, nobody else even bothered to compete. What was the point? The other major powers just got a few nukes to guarantee that the yanks would leave them alone and left the USA to enjoy its toys.
The thing is, these weapons were never intended to actually be used much. They’re way too expensive to go getting lost or broken in combat. The Air Force admits an F-22 costs $160 million so the true cost is probably twice that. Even the USA isn’t rich enough to start losing a few dozen of those babies every week the way the RAF chewed up Spitfires in the good old days. All this weaponry is useful to show the flag and train personnel but in terms of national security it’s mainly a deterrent. The thought that it might ever get to the stage of having carriers sunk and planes lost on a daily basis would have the Pentagon wake up screaming in the middle of the night.
So this was an OK strategy for a long time but now times have changed. The USA no longer uses its military to fight wars, it uses it to occupy other countries. Big difference. The doctrine of overwhelming force is great if you want to invade Grenada but not so good if you’re trying to pacify Baghdad. Sure if some teenage raghead takes a potshot at you with a Bren gun he found in the desert you can call in an air strike and the kid will never bother you again, and neither will his mother or father or baby sisters. But it’s hell on the equipment. Totally fails any rational cost/benefit analysis.
The problem is the American way of fighting by using superior purchasing power is now so deeply engrained that any change would cause howls of outrage amongst the citizenry. Sending up a few F-16s to take care of a deranged sniper might be an idiotic thing to do when you could get the same result using an infantry patrol but the latter involves the risk of casualties and requires large numbers of trained foot soldiers. It’s antithetical to the whole American idea that you win wars by increasing spending in the budget. Valour consists of Congress authorising accounting transactions.
Consequently even though the USA now outspends the rest of the world combined on defence procurement, the air force generals have pointed out that it’s nowhere near enough:
Air Force officials are warning that unless their budget is increased dramatically, and soon, the military’s high-flying branch won’t dominate the skies as it has for decades.
Moreover, a poll of retired and serving officers has found that:
The U.S. military has been stretched dangerously thin by the Iraq war, according to almost 90 percent of retired and current military officers polled on the state of America’s armed forces.
Eighty percent said it would be unreasonable to expect the U.S. military to wage another major war successfully at this time, according to the poll by the Center for a New American Security think tank and Foreign Policy magazine.
How staggering is that? They outspend the rest of the world and after two crappy little shitfights in Iraq and Afghanistan - hardly the greatest military forces on the face of the planet - they’re worried about having to fight another war any time soon. So what is the answer? Well rational people would say the US should urgently revise its whole foreign policy and defence philosophy but I doubt that’s what the yanks intend. The answer, as always, will be Spend More Money.
Meanwhile General Motors has just announced the biggest loss ever by an American car company, the nation’s financial system is slowly imploding and the best response Congress can come up with is to borrow some more money to hand out to consumers to keep them spending at Walmart.
I guess the only question left is how long they can keep the house of cards in an upright position.
Posted in US issues |
February 21st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Excellent appraisal. The house of cards analogy a perfect closer.
Considering how many yanks believe in the whole “end of the world” prophecy, I seriously think they don’t really care. The worse it gets, the higher the house of cards is stacked, the better.
Their mass murder-suicide horror/porn biblical world-f**k psychotic fantasy becomes more and more real with each passing day, and each passing congress bill.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:36 am
GM would not have lost money if they didnt crush their electric cars they built (EV).From all accounts from the lease /owners they were great and didnt wont to give them back ,even after offering to buy them.One problem with them,they dont drink petroleum or need oil changes.If the USA spent the money(Trillions) they wasted on their oil wars on R&D into other power needs, they would still be a super power and not looking like the old Russia.When the top 3% own more than the bottom 90%, they wont have to worry about outside invasion, more like a revolution from within.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I’ve often wondered why economists talking about the problems with the US economy don’t mention any of this. I understand that a lot of the money spent on the military stays circulating around the US economy, but an awful lot doesn’t. They’re spending squillions propping up various regimes and building bases in the wider military strategy and depending on friendly nations to prop up their own economy for the sake of stability.
Meanwhile, great gobs of the cash consumers spend at Walmart ends up in China. I don’t get it.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
If only the US used it’s power for good instead of evil. I think GM’s problems stem from churning out huge gas guzzlers while Americans are downsizing to more economical imported vehicles as fuel prices bite into family budgets.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Meanwhile, great gobs of the cash consumers spend at Walmart ends up in China. I don’t get it.
China gets it. That’s why they’re using all the huge mountains of cash they have accumulated to buy up large stakes in some of Wall Street’s biggest names.
It’ll be a case of fade away rather than burn out, I think.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Morally bankrupt America has never been any different. They originally became rich and powerful not from hard work and guts, but from kidnapping entire nations of people into slavery; 650,000 all told.
240 years of free labour makes the cotton plantation owners very rich men indeed. Nationwide, this bonanza of human toiling wretches was the baseline that underwrote today’s very wealthy USA - bottomless greed and its resultant destruction of all human rights.
Now the great cotton bosses reside in similar white colonial houses legislating such disgraceful abominations as the recent $US7-trillion budget which rewards the stinking US military with whopping chunks of this while axing dollops of the most basic human compassion to pay for it: health care for their very own people. Millions more Americans will now suffer and die to pay for more terrorising cruise missiles and gung-ho carrier groups that will, as always, be flung at innocent and defenseless nations whose only sins are that they’re the USA’s perceived enemy of this month.
Always hiding behind the cowardly skirts of their concocted religious fanaticism, the USA dangerously spruiks phrases of venom such as Axis of Evil, terrorists, insurgents, rebels, anti-American etc, against absolutely everyone who does not attain their level of psychotic insanity, while they constantly fail to comprehend that it is they themselves who are actually the Greatest Satan, the greatest-ever ‘Axe of Evil’ and the REAL terrorists of this world.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Yo Robin! The US could reduce its budget by trillions if it just stopped being aggressive arseholes of the world.
Someone might even get to like them then.
After a few hundred years.
Maybe.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Yo Robin, didn’t you used to be Jesus?
February 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Yeeah, I reckon the US is a declining power, and like all fading Empires it gets overstretched because it won’t face that ugly reality. And like the USSR, they’re hastening their own decline (as well as corrupting their polis) by wasting far too many resources on guns.
But I don’t rejoice in this at all - quite the contrary. For one thing, declining powers tend to lash out while they still can to try and prove that they can still get it up - viz Iraq. For another, I don’t think Oz’s new Great and Powerful Friends - China and/or India - will treat us nicely. And finally the US, for all its bad behaviour, is a vibrant democracy that has given and can still give a lot to the world.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:58 pm
My wife works for GM in a reasonably senior position.
Her colleagues are in despair at how the new model Commodore is going. That is, it ain’t going at all.
It’s a gas-guzzling monster that only appeals to petrol heads.
Nice car - for about 10 years ago - which is about how long it took to develop.
Nobody buys them privately. It’s all fleet sales. The company is going bankrupt and it seems they don’t have a clue why, not at the top at least.
Just whistle a few notes and I can Hummer the rest.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:01 pm
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land where I was born in
Early on one frosty mornin’
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Chorus:
O, I wish I was in Dixie! Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand
To live and die in Dixie!”
There are cruder versions of this, but I like this one.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The original Republican Reptile, PJ O’Rourke, pointed out the moral of the attack on Iraq, “it would have been cheaper to buy the oil at ten times the price than try to steal it.”
Well it’s only five times the price at the moment so I guess that economics really don’t get much of a look in at West Point.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 am
A couple of years back, GlobalSecurity.org used GAO reports to estimate that the US armed services had purchased five billion bullets for the Iraq war (up to that point), 250,000 “small- and medium-calibre ammunitions” (for each of the estimated 20,000 insurgents the military claimed it had killed in Iraq at that time.
I’ve got a chart and some other numbers.
http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_item.php?ItemRef=351
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:09 am
There is a large percentage of our population that is so delusional and fanatic that they will never change, and their is a huge percentage of the population just waking up to the back stabbing they just recieved from the Republicans and the multinational corporations that now control Washington. It’s like that song by The National. “We’re half awake in our fake empire.”
Please know that all the bad things you hear, all the crazies you here about, and all the ignorant assholes running the country you see, they don’t represent all of us. We were weak after 2001 and taken advantage of by some truly sick people, and now so many still can’t admit to the error in judgement.
Also, America got rich after the depression because of the renewed confidance and investment in the wealth of everybody with FDRs New Deal. Having successfully tipped the scales in WW2 also helped a lot. We took this and ran with it, and gave the world so much in terms of technology and knowledge, only for it to be squandered by a selfish, disgusting ideaology that came about during the excesses of the 1980s. Most of us, and especially the younger generations, are deeply sorry! A new wind is blowing here, I assure you.
PS Don’t have time to proof read this post, at work. Please excuse mistakes and typos lol.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 am
As a petty serf in this land, the staggering amount of our money that is pilfered by the Pentagon does nothing but disgust me.
The article talks of military budgets, but even worse are the contractors, Halliburton, Blackwater, etc. They have no oversight, there is no way for them to be held accountable by our government nor the Iraqi puppet government for the massive number of crimes their death squads commit. The “services” they provide are massively overpaid for ($45 cans of soda, anyone?) But worst of all, a lot of the things they do were originally done by the military itself, for far less cost. It’s robbery, plain and simple, our tax money being siphoned off to thugs, with plenty of kickbacks to the corrupt suits who make the arrangements for them and who usually end up on their payroll after their terms end.
As our services are cut, as government regulation is suppressed and dismantled for corporate benefit, as our jobs flee the country, as our debt is financed by the Chinese, and as our children and grandchildren are robbed before they’re even born, these thieves accumulate enough to buy their own islands while our country dies.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:57 am
It would seem that if anything were to happen we would be forced into a draft situation.My solution draft anyone who voted for bush between the ages of 18 and 50 kill two birds with one stone so to speak.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am
“When the top 3% own more than the bottom 90%, they wont have to worry about outside invasion, more like a revolution from within.”
Brilliant!!!
Why I believe that sums it up Roger!!
Great minds really do think alike!!
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
My Froggy friend, the neocons who designed the war are lifelong civilians to a man (except for the one who’s a woman). It’s true that W was in the air force reserves, and thus was never up for West Point on two counts. Also, from what we know of him as an undergraduate, it may be assumed that USMA would not quite have been his cup of tea.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
The US has fought a long and protracted war involving significant numbers of ground troops in more recent times, that being Vietnam. Of course that was hardly a success and the casualties for the US were enormous. I think this contributed to the reliance on high tech hardware, but even in Vietnam they tried massive bombing as an adjunct/substitute to invasion by ground troops (the \
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Whoops looks like my comment had a delimiter … here’s the rest …
… “Menu” operations for example) and although areas were cleared the ground couldn’t be held. The weapons of the 1960’s are stone age by comparison to today’s however the US still faces the same problem, unwilling to commit ground troops it will have short term success only to see the opposition return to the same area or set up shop elsewhere.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
No Pat, they can and do hold the ground militarily. Problem in both cases is that the enemy had/has places to regroup where it is politically impossible for the US to go. It wouldn’t have been politically impossible in either case, of course, if the threat posed by the enemy was in fact “existential”. But as Mr O’Rourke apparently notes, the US would actually be far better off to take its expensive military hardware, go home, invest more of its public money in its civil infrastructure, and get on with “the business of America”.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
A big part of the problem is that their foreign and military policies appear to derive from the works of Tom Clancy et al where the super duper whiz bang American army/navy/air force defeats the more numerous evil Soviets/Chinese/Islamists overnight and everyone then returns to normal programming.
Of course the administrations in those works of fiction are not made up of the intellectually, morally and ethically challenged pygmies of the current American leadership.
Time for a reality check, guys.
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Felonious Punk @ 15 -
The old Military-Industrial Complex, the Boeings, Northrup, GM, etc, only need the U.S. to have potential opponents which develop new weapons every few years, and perhaps the occasional small war to test/justify the new toys, to keep them in business.
However, the new MIC - the Halliburtons etc, need continuous war to make the big bucks. That is their real danger, not the lawlessness, profiterring, etc, bad as those things are.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Lyn Says:
“I’ve often wondered why economists talking about the problems with the US economy don’t mention any of this.”
Here’s Paul Krugman talking about it just a few days ago:
http://tinyurl.com/238dkd
February 24th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
To take the original post a little further, the US by purchasing huge amounts of advanced weaponry, far exceeding potential rivals, did exercise a policy of deterrence.
As the saying goes..”better the devil you know”. The US has now shown it’s hand fully and it is now known what their weakness is. Money.
Strictly talking about conventional warfare here, all opponents now know that the successful strategy is to wait them out and watch them go broke.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Good people,
It is not only about prolonging the Empire, championing Liberalism/Capitalism and propping up the Military Industrial Complex. And it is not even all about transferring wealth from the poor to the rich, though we are getting warmer. The US budget is enormous, and if the MIC can’t siphon off most of it, it may find its way back to the people via universal health care, public housing, schools, infrastructure, etc. Without constant faux emergencies, more people would be focusing on the third-world country growing on the North American continent. And while I despair at the lack of opposition in the States (and here at home), as they say, we are only three missed meals away from a revolution.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.