The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America’s imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.
That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $717 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding (called “overseas contingency funding” in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in “black box” intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DOD military spending (that would include stuff like military activies funded through NASA, military spending by the State Department, etc., miilitary-related activities within the Dept. of Homeland Security, etc.), $123 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military during peacetime (whatever that is!).
The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out war footing.
This military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53% of total US federal spending.
It’s also a military budget that is rising at a faster pace than any other part of the budget (with the possible exception of bailing out crooked Wall Street financial firms and their managers). For the past decade, and continuing under the present administration, military budgets have been rising at a 9% annual clip, making health care inflation look tiny by comparison.
US military spending isn’t just half of the US budget, though. It is also half of the entire global spending on war and weaponry. In 2009, according to the venerable War Resisters League, US military spending accounted for 47% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and military preparedness (it's probably closer to 50% now). What makes that staggering figure particularly ridiculous is that America’s allies--countries like France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan--account for another 21% of the world’s military spending. Fully 12 of the top-spenders among big military-spending nations are either allies of the US, or are friendly or completely non-threatening countries like Brazil and India. That is to say, America and its friends and allies account for more than two-thirds of all military spending worldwide.
China, in contrast, probably the closest thing to a real “threat” to American interests because of America’s treaty commitments to the island nation of Taiwan, and China’s counter claim that the island is a part of the PRC, spends only some $130 billion on its military, much of which is actually devoted to maintaining military control over the country’s own 1.3 billion people, some of whom might prefer to be independent, or to be freer, if they weren't under the military jack-boot.
The next biggest military spender, Russia, spends less than $80 billion a year on its decrepit military--about one-twentieth of what the US spends--and isn’t even technically an enemy of the America anymore. Its military is largely busy keeping restive regions from spinning off from the mother country, anyhow.
Meanwhile Iran, which the White House and Congress are portraying as America’s arch enemy, despite its not having invaded another country in hundreds of years, isn’t even on the list of the top 17 military big-spenders. Iran’s current military budget is a teensy $4.8 billion (no surprise since its economy is about equal to Finland's), about the same as the estimated $5 billion spent on the military by North Korea--America’s other “major enemy.” Each of those country’s military budgets is about one-quarter of the military budget of Australia. Combined, they add up to about two thirds of the military budget of the Netherlands.
Just to give one an idea of how small $4.8 billion is in comparison to the $1.6 trillion that the US is spending each year on war and planning for war, that number is roughly what the Pentagon plans to spend over the next year on childcare and youth programs, morale and recreation programs and commissaries on its bases! It’s about what the Pentagon will spend acquiring replacement Seahawk, Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters this year.
For the average American, what all this means is that of every dollar you send to the IRS, 53 cents will be going to pay for blowing stuff up, fattening the wallets of colonels admirals and generals, bloating the portfolios of investors in military industries, and of course funding the bonuses paid to executives of those companies, and the campaign chests and private expense accounts of the members of Congress who vote for these outlandish budgets. Your money will also be going to pay for the salaries and the bullets of those brave heroes over in Afghanistan who are executing kids, killing pregnant women (and then digging out the bullets and claiming they were stabbed by their families), and for the anti-personnel weapons that are creating legions of legless Afghani kids.
Next time you hear that the government needs to cut funds for providing medical care to the children of laid-off workers, or that supplemental unemployment funds are running out, next time you hear that federal funds that are needed to fund extra teachers at your school are being cut, or that Social Security benefits need to be cut back, or the retirement age needs to be increased to 70, next time you hear that your local post office has to be shut down for lack of funds, next time you hear that Medicare benefits need to be reduced, think about that 53% of your tax payment that is going to finance the most enormous war machine the world has ever known.
And ask yourself: Is this really necessary? Is this really where I want my money going? Is this really even making me safer or my country stronger?
Award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 37 years. A regular columnist for CounterPunch, he also writes for Extra! and Salon magazine, as well as for Businessweek, The Nation and Treasury&Risk Magazine. Visit his website http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/
For the past several years, the annual inflation-adjusted budget of the Department of Defense has been higher than the Cold War average of $342.4 billion per year (see Figure 1).
FIGURE 1: U.S. Military Spending, FY 1946-FY2008
Note: Figures for 2007 and 2008 are projected.
Sources: Center for Defense Information, U.S. Military Spending, 1945-2008.
The peaks in the early 1950s, the late 1960s, and the mid-1980s reflect spending on the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Reagan military buildup respectively. With the United States at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might not seem surprising that Defense Department spending is again at a peak. But that's not the explanation: the DoD's regular budget, shown in Figure 1, does not include direct spending on those wars. Add in the special appropriations Congress has made to cover the costs of war-fighting since 9/11, and the current military buildup is even more dramatic (see Figure 2).
U.S. military spending, including spending on the wars, is far and away the highest in the world, dwarfing the next nine top spenders combined (see table).
One of the only countries to spend a comparable amount per capita on its military is Israel, whose population is comparable to that of Massachusetts. U.S. military spending per capita is $1750; Israel's is $1380. Russia spends $432 per capita; China spends $47.
TABLE: Top Ten Military Spenders, 2005
Sources: Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, "U.S Military Spending vs. the World," February 6, 2006, www.armscontrolcenter.org/archives/002244.php (see also www.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_trends.html).
The money the Defense Department has spent on the Iraq war does not exhaust the costs of the war to the government. In a study released last February, Harvard policy analyst Linda Bilmes and Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that if we include spending by the Veterans Administration, demobilization costs, and interest on debt incurred because of the Iraq war, the cost of the war to the U.S. government rises to between $750 billion and $1.2 trillion. If we add in economic costs that are not borne by the government—e.g. the lost economic contributions of reservists while they are deployed, or after they are dead or injured—the price tag for the war balloons by another $187 billion to $305 billion.
Bilmes and Stiglitz also attempt to estimate the larger macroeconomic costs of the Iraq war. One source of such costs is the higher price of oil—now over $50 per barrel, vs. $25 per barrel before the war—plausibly due to instability in the Middle East resulting from the war. They argue that even assuming, conservatively, that only 10-20% of the increase is due to the war, this translates into a $25-50 billion dollar added expense. Addressing a number of other possible consequences of the war—increased security threats, higher interest rates, and opportunity costs of devoting so many resources to the war in Iraq—they conclude that even with conservative estimates, its macroeconomic costs "are potentially very large; possibly even a multiple of the direct costs," that is, possibly several trillion dollars.
FIGURE 2: U.S. Military Spending, Including Wars, 2002-2006
1. Operation Enduring Freedom "covering Afghanistan and other Global War on Terror (GWOT) operations ranging from the Philippines to Djibouti, that began immediately after the 9/11 attacks and continues."
2. Operation Iraqi Freedom "began in the fall of 2002 with the build up of troops for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and continues with counter-insurgency and stability operations."
[Note: Figures for war spending in 2002 includes some spending from the end of 2001.] Source: Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11, updated June 14, 2006.
Bilmes and Stiglitz conclude by enumerating many other ways the vast sums going into the Iraq war could have been spent so as to "buy" greater well-being and more security than the war has achieved. They make a plea for governments to undertake cost-benefit analysis of a planned war before starting it: "The most important things in life—like life itself—are priceless. But that doesn't mean that topics like defense … should not be subject to cool, hard analysis of the kind for which economics has long earned a reputation."
The kind of analysis mainstream economics has a reputation for can certainly provide a balance sheet for a war. But as the figures above reveal, the U.S. government is accelerating military spending even apart from its actual wars. What mainstream economic analysis, with its categorical blindness to deployments of power in the political economy, cannot do is to explain why.
With the release of its annual report on
China's official military budget jumped to $60 billion, an 18 percent increase over last year, but US officials warned that the actual figure is somewhere between $105 and $150 billion annually.
Without a hint of irony, the report expresses concern about, "the purposes to which
Sound familiar? Well,
In February, the Obama administration requested a mind-boggling $664 billion for the
And much like
To make it simple, Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, has written, "A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it."
And who outside of our borders would say that the "purposes" of the
The truth is that the vast sums allocated by both the
Senator Barney Frank is one of the only legislators on Capitol Hill who has been willing to tackle this issue. For months, he has been avidly pushing for a 25 percent cut to the military budget. While his proposal is seen as radical by most in Congress, the Pentagon budget could take a 40 percent hit and its funding would only be back to where it was at the end of
Until the
And if
President Barack Obama has unveiled his new budget, which proposes continued increases in military outlays. What for? The United States is spending far too much on the Pentagon.
There is no more important federal role than providing for the common defense. But what is required for defense depends upon circumstances. Military requirements in 1900 differed dramatically from those in 1940 and in 1980. What are the requirements today?
The latest Pentagon budget suggests that the United States is embattled and isolated, its territory threatened and its future imperiled. The Obama administration has proposed a $40 billion (8 percent) hike in military outlays in 2010 to $527.7 billion. (Counting Iraq and Afghanistan will push annual military spending up to around $700 billion.) President Obama plans to continue increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
This proposal comes on top of a 75 percent increase in real military outlays under the Bush administration. Today, Washington possesses the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, most powerful air force, most dominating navy and most effective army. America accounts for roughly half of global military outlays. Observes the Cato Institute’s Ben Friedman: “Add the wars, nuclear weapons research, veterans, and homeland security, and you get about $750 billion. That is more than six times what China spends, 10 times what Russia spends and 70 times what Iran, North Korea and Syria spend combined.”
Nevertheless, Pentagon officials and conservative activists are complaining about defense “cuts” since the new administration has reduced the Pentagon’s request for even more money. Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace even contends that the Obama administration is signaling that “the American retreat has begun.”
Thus, a mix of officials, lobbyists, and analysts advocate spending a fixed percentage of GDP on the military, irrespective of circumstance. Both Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen advocate setting a spending floor of 4 percent of GDP. Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association says the 4 percent floor should be “front and center for any new president’s agenda.” Former Missouri Senator James Talent has been promoting the same number. The Heritage Foundation calls this the “4% for Freedom Solution.” (Baseline spending currently runs 3.7 percent.)
Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments figures that a four percent rule would increase military outlays above current plans by between $1.4 and $1.7 trillion over the next decade. Even that isn’t enough money for some uber-hawks. Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson wanted 4.5 percent of GDP. AEI’s Gary Schmitt prefers five percent. The Wall Street Journal has editorialized for five to six percent. Former and potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee advocated six percent—more than a 50 percent hike over today’s levels.
Whatever could justify such increases?
The United States already spends more on the military in real terms than it did during the cold war, even as the very hot Korean and Vietnam Wars raged. America devotes a lower percentage of its GDP to the military, but the U.S. economy is much greater today—six times (adjusting for inflation) as big as at the end of World War II. Total resources for defense are higher today than at any other point in over six decades.
Nevertheless, worries Admiral Mullen: “the four percent floor is . . . really important, given the world we’re living in, given the threats that we see out there, the risks that are, in fact, global, not just in the Middle East.” Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal believes that we are in what amounts to a new post-Locarno world like that before World War II, as the forces of darkness were gathering. AEI’s Frederick Kagan argued that “American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result” like World War II, since “the current international environment is by any comparison more dangerous for the U.S. than the one that led to World War II.” Jim Talent contended: “We live in a multipolar world with threats that are highly unpredictable and therefore, taken as a whole, more dangerous than the threats we faced during the cold war.” Representative John Shadegg claimed that “Our nation is facing the threat of Radical Islam, the gravest threat to our national security in history.”
If these claims are true, then why spend only four percent of GDP on defense? Why not 9.4 percent, as during the Vietnam War? Or 14.2 percent, as during the Korean War? Or 37.8 percent, as during World War II? Or even more? After all, we can never be too safe.
The reason why not is simple. These apocalyptic claims are absurd.
There is no longer a Nazi Germany or imperial Japan. Nor even a fascist Italy. There is no more Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact. There is no longer an ideologically-aggressive Communist China allied with the Soviet Union. The patchwork of Third World states backed by the Soviet Union has dissolved. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there in terms of traditional military threats.
At the same time, Washington spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on our military. Sure, some small or poor states devote a larger percentage of their limited resources to defense, but their total outlays remain minuscule compared to those of America. That’s not all, however. The United States is allied with every major industrialized state save China and Russia. America and other NATO members together account for about $1.05 trillion out of $1.470 trillion in world military expenditures. Adding Japan, South Korea, and Australia take the allied up to $1.15 trillion.
Nevertheless, when running for president Rudy Giuliani opined: “The idea of a post-Cold War 'peace dividend' was a serious mistake—the product of wishful thinking and the opposite of true realism.” The Washington Examiner worries that “potential adversaries rapidly are ramping up their militaries.”
Precisely who?
America’s relationship with Moscow and Beijing is civil, if sometimes difficult. Even if one assumes greater hostility not today evident, the United States vastly outranges both militarily. America’s defense expenditures—not counting spending for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars—run at least four times and as much as seven times as much as each of their outlays (for which estimates vary). America has eleven carrier groups, while Russia has one and China has none. Moscow has a nuclear force sufficient to deter U.S. military action, but little conventional capability beyond its own borders. Russia can beat up neighboring Georgia, but not threaten the United States.
Beijing is investing more in the military, but is starting with a far lower base and still spending far less. If the People’s Republic of China (PRC) wants to overtake Washington as a global power, the PRC will have to spend more than America for years. What China is doing today is creating a defensive force capable of deterring U.S. intervention, not an offensive force capable of attacking America. And even as China grows economically, it will remain well behind the United States in wealth. America’s per capita GDP last year was $48,000. That of China was $6,100. The PRC is in no position to match, let alone overtake, America, in the foreseeable future.
Moreover, Russia’s and China’s neighbors, most of whom are close friends of Washington, could do much more if necessary: America’s allies account for about three-quarters of world GDP, and the number goes higher when one includes friendly states like India. The European Union’s GDP alone is thirteen times as great as that of Russia.
Japan’s economy remains roughly as large as that of the PRC (estimates differ). Still, China has a greater prospect than Russia of becoming regionally dominant. But Beijing is surrounded by countries with which it has fought wars: Russia, Japan, India and Vietnam. Further, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and ASEAN states have created or could create militaries capable of deterring Chinese adventurism. Beijing would have to undertake a dramatic military build-up to overwhelm Washington’s East Asian friends, let alone threaten America’s territory.
Could circumstances change in five, ten or twenty years? Yes, but it makes no sense for the United States to waste money today dealing with unlikely scenarios which, even if they occurred, could be dealt with less expensively in the future. America will be stronger and better prepared to face future challenges if it husbands its resources and encourages economic growth today. The United States should work to defuse, not exacerbate conflict. For instance, philosophical distaste for Vladimir Putin’s Russia is no reason to turn it into a military adversary.
If not China and Russia, then who threatens America? Washington has forged better ties with India and has no serious conflicts with other emerging powers, such as Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa. America’s presumed enemies are few and pitiful: North Korea, Iran, Cuba. Maybe Burma and Venezuela. Toss in Sudan and Somalia, as if the latter actually existed as a nation. Stretch to include Syria. This disparate group is no replacement for the Axis alliance or Soviet empire.
None of these countries actually endangers the United States. Nasty actors, yes, but with very limited ambitions and abilities. Writes Friedman, “North Korea and Iran trouble their citizens and neighbors, but with decaying economies, shoddy militaries, and aversion to suicidal behavior, they pose little threat to the United States.”
Only North Korea has a serious military, but it is directed at the Republic of Korea (ROK), not the United States. The ROK is a long-time friend, but can defend itself. With 40 times the GDP, twice the population, a vast technological edge and far more international friends, including the North’s old allies Beijing and Moscow, South Korea no longer needs America’s help.
Iran doesn’t even threaten U.S. allies. Tehran remains far away from developing actual nuclear weapons, is surrounded by potential adversaries and faces Israel, which is a regional superpower with a sizable nuclear arsenal. The other hostile states are militarily irrelevant—brutal towards their own people, but unable to harm anyone else.
Washington is not without serious security concerns, most obviously terrorism. However, carrier groups and armored divisions are largely irrelevant to this issue. Better intelligence, improved allied cooperation and expanded special forces are far more useful tools. Indeed, military involvement itself encourages terrorism: intervening in the Lebanese civil war, placing a garrison on Saudi territory and sending the USS Cole to Yemen all helped spark terrorist attacks. So did the occupation of Iraq. In these and other cases, a smaller and less active military would have done more to reduce terrorism.
Washington should spend heavily, if necessary, to safeguard America’s population, territory, constitutional system and liberties. But this mission cannot explain Washington’s current military outlays. Observes Richard Betts of Columbia University, such levels
cannot be justified based on any actual threats that the U.S. armed forces might plausibly be expected to encounter. The military capabilities of the United States need to be kept comfortably superior to those of present and potential enemies. But they should be measured relatively, against those enemies' capabilities, and not against the limits of what is technologically possible or based on some vague urge to have more.
Today most U.S. military outlays are directed at offense, not defense, to underwrite populous and prosperous allies and remake failed societies. This is why defense expenditures are seen by some as “inadequate.” Military spending is the price of one’s foreign policy, and it is expensive to attempt to micromanage world affairs. Thus, Tom Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute correctly complains of “the large and long-standing gap between U.S. strategy and military resources.” But he is wrong to assume that promiscuous intervention is Washington’s only policy option.
How should America decide how much to spend on the military? Steven Kosiak writes of
considering the range of military threats and challenges the country faces, and determining the strategy, forces and capabilities needed to counter those challenges and advance U.S. interests, at an acceptable level of risk—as well as at an acceptable cost, in terms of other national priorities (including everything from homeland security to health care).
By this standard, military expenditures should come down substantially. The point is not that Washington cannot afford to be a global cop and social engineer, though the economic crisis—with the collapse in private asset values and explosion of federal debt—has made such a policy much more difficult. But it is not in America's interest to devote so much of its resources to activities with so little relevance to American security. The U.S. government should focus on defending America, allowing friends and allies to defend themselves and their regions.
If spending as much as the rest of the world on the military isn’t enough, how much is? If accounting for nearly 80 percent of world military outlays isn’t enough for the United States and its allies, how much is? America is by far the most powerful nation on earth. What the United States needs is not a bigger military budget, but a more restrained foreign policy. That is, a foreign policy befitting a democratic republic.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. A former special assistant to President Reagan, he is the author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press).
Today we hear from John Robb, a software entrepreneur and former Air Force special operations pilot. He is the author of Brave New War.
The current global economic and financial meltdown may yet become something worse: a protracted global depression. As with the last century's Depression, which spawned fascism and WWII, it could recast the world at a fundamental level. As such, it may soon represent our biggest security challenge in over 50 years. Here's what a global depression means:
Unfortunately, the U.S. will be forced to navigate this dangerous environment with a small fraction of its former resources. The endless defense budgets of the last century are gone. Which means the development of the new strategies -- not new gear -- to fight this chaotic and complex panoply of non-state foes will become the seminal security challenge of our time.
Can it be accomplished? It remains to be seen whether a transition from the legacy mindset of 20th Century defense to the new environment can be accomplished. The array of financial incentives, political interests, and bureaucratic inertia arrayed against it are staggering.
Signs that we are on the right track include:
What does a flexible military platform mean? Due to budget constraints, we are going to see a much greater reliance on civilian hardware, software, and standards of interconnectivity. To prevent chaos from the influx of off the shelf hardware and software, the military will need to develop platforms that enable all of this externally derived hardware/software to interconnect and act synergistically. Further, with this platform in place, these technologies can be rapidly and inexpensively stitched together through ad hoc systems design to precisely meets the needs of the emerging situation to generate success.
Here's an example of ad hoc systems design. Let's say there's a perceived need by a deployed unit to track interactions with local militias (dozens are operating in its area). Rather than wait years for a centralized solution, the unit builds a simple Web application that operates in a way similar to a civilian sales tracking application (in fact, many of the components used are from the civilian sector). This new system is quick to deploy and it allows the unit to capture data on every interaction with militia members and track progress. If the system used simple Internet standards for data sharing, the system can be updated, connected, extended, and shared very easily. In an age of scarcity, that's the approach we have to take.
