National Review‘s headline (11/17/18) wrongly suggests that the magazine thinks there’s ever a right time to cut military spending.
It is a sign of our times that our media attempt to decipher future government policy by analyzing the president’s tweets, like some bizarre game of telephone. Throughout November, there was speculation of a coming reduction in military spending, and when Donald Trump took to Twitter (12/3/18) to describe the $716 billion budget as “crazy,” media took this as confirmation.
The prospect of a cut to the military elicited a storm of condemnation across the media landscape. The National Review (11/17/18) wrote that “cutting the resources available to the Pentagon is a bad idea,” noting that, “for decades, America has short-changed defense” meaning “America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt.” In an article headlined “Don’t Cut Military Spending Mr. President” (Wall Street Journal, 11/29/18), Senate and House Armed Services committee chairs James Inhofe and Mac Thornberry claimed the military is in “crisis” after “inadequate budgets for nearly a decade,” and that “any cut in the Defense budget would be a senseless step backward.”
More centrist outlets concurred. Forbes Magazine (11/26/18) began its article with the words, “The security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades,” recommending a “sensible and consistent increase” to the budget. Bloomberg (19/11/18) recommended a consistent increase in military spending of 3 percent above inflation for five to ten years, while Reuters (12/4/18) noted the increased “risk” of a lower military budget.
Max Boot (Washington Post, 12/12/18) argues that the US needs to both raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare in order to ensure its military’s ability to invade Lithuania.
What exactly was this “risk” that media were so worried about? Max Boot, neo-con fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations—who apparently still supports the Iraq War and demanded ones in Syria and Libya, while arguing that America should become a world empire—articulated the risk in the Washington Post (12/12/18). Describing a reduction in military spending as “suicide,” and claiming the US is in a “full-blown national security crisis,” he cited the work of a blue-ribbon panel that called for continuous hikes in military spending:
“If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan, Americans could face a decisive military defeat,” the report warns. “These two nations possess precision-strike capabilities, integrated air defenses, cruise and ballistic missiles, advanced cyberwarfare and anti-satellite capabilities, significant air and naval forces, and nuclear weapons—a suite of advanced capabilities heretofore possessed only by the United States.”… So we’re in deep trouble. We are losing the military edge that has underpinned our security and prosperity since 1945.
Thus, the crisis is that the US could not be assured of destroying the Russian military in a Baltic war or the Chinese in the South China Sea. It is important to note that these necessary wars of defense would not be happening in Maine or California, but thousands of miles away, on the doorsteps of our geopolitical rivals. Boot presents these wars on the other side of the world as impossible to avoid—“if the US had to fight”—continuing a tradition of presenting the US as stumbling or being reluctantly dragged into wars against its will, that we at FAIR (6/22/17) have cataloged.
Bloomberg (19/11/18) suggests giving the Pentagon an additional $1.3 trillion over ten years would “restore sanity to military spending.”
In reality, more than half of all US discretionary spending goes to the military, and its war-related spending is a much larger percentage of its budget than in comparable countries—3–5 times as much as Canada, Germany or Japan. In fact, the US spends almost as much on its military as all other countries in the world put together, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and has around 800 (official) foreign military bases, placed on every inhabited continent of the world.
Even these figures do not include military pensions and veterans’ healthcare, or nuclear weapons, and therefore the true total is possibly greater than all other countries combined. Military spending is approaching the highest in recorded history of any country, and the increase in military spending Trump approved last year alone would be enough to make public colleges and universities across the US free to all.
Considering the problems of unemployment, poverty, climate change and infrastructure in the US, perhaps tooling up for an intercontinental war against two nuclear-armed superpowers is not the most effective use of trillions of dollars. That reducing a $716 billion war budget can be presented as a threat to the nation, and that “defense” can refer to wars in Taiwan or the Baltic, illustrates the depth of the media’s imperial mindset, and goes to show President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the power of the military industrial complex went unheeded.
The media needn’t have worried, as the military industrial complex usually gets its way. President Trump, “with the help of Senator Inhofe and Chairman Thornberry,” according to the Defense Department (London Independent, 12/10/18), agreed to increase the military budget after all, to $750 billion. A lot of people are going to get rich—not least of all Senator Inhofe, who quietly purchased tens of thousands of dollars in Raytheon stock after he met with Trump (CNN, 12/13/18). Raytheon is the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, and is sure to reap a huge windfall from the spending boom.
This whole affair illustrates the important and worrying links between the media, “defense” contractors and politicians. But at least the terrible risk to the United States has been avoided. Those defenseless Air Force Generals and Defense contractors can finally sleep easy at night.
Dear Politicians:
I think its time for Americans to not only look at the obscene amount of money going into wars that never end, but also we need to look at those Congress people who profit greatly from wars. Who votes for peace when they make such a killing with war?
Wondering Woman, you have cut right to the root of the matter. It has often been pointed out that the US government is by no means a democracy or a republic, but a militarized oligarchy. What’s more, it always has been – at least since Thomas Jefferson left the White House.
Presidents, Senators and Representatives – not to mention mayors, judges, prosecutors and other officials – are not elected by the people in any real sense. They are chosen by those who can give them the money they need to run successful campaigns. (This, I believe, is the greatest grievance that the establishment has against Donald Trump: he defeated the system and became President by appealing to the people, rather than by truckling to the rich and powerful).
Washington has been accurately described as a market, in which every single aspect of government is up for sale – usually, but not quite always, to the highest bidder. To complain of corruption, or foreign influence on elections and legislation, is completely to miss the point: those things are normal, everyday, default, institutionalized.
Your first two sentences are correct. Donald Trump didn’t win because he appealed to the people. He won because the MIC manufactured his win. He was not elected, he was placed by forces hostile to democracy. It’s time the people take back their government from the MIC, and Trump is NOT part of that solution, he’s part of the problem. Trump is a symptom of the disease that has been infecting politics for decades, he is not the cause.
Currently, defense takes 60% of the budget. If I were elected President – I would cut defense spending by 25% immediately, by closing most of our overseas bases. You don’t need THEM as well as Carrier Task Groups – & we have 11 of those. I would tell the Military Industrial Complex to prepare to have the budget cut ANOTHER 25% over the next decade. We are too strong, too meddlesome, too wasteful & too in need of repair within our own borders to allow this to continue. Besides, look at the chart – at HALF our current level – we’d STILL BE OUTSPENDING RUSSIA & CHINA COMBINED!
This is a veteran of the cold war telling you this – believe it.
David, I agree with you that the overseas bases should be closed – all of them. As George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many others declared, the USA should have friendly commercial relations with all countries, while calling none permanent allies or enemies. If American merchants were to deal fairly with foreigners on equal terms, governed only by law, there would be no need for immense armed forces to terrorize foreigners and bend them to America’s will.
The only slight disagreement I have is that the carrier task groups should also be disbanded. They are the quintessence of naval bullying – Captain Mahan’s clever idea of copying Great Britain.
Not only are they immoral; today they are suicidal. Against any first-rate military opponent they would be sunk within minutes. By scrapping them, the USA could recover the scrap value of the vast amounts of metal in their hulls, without sacrificing the thousands of brave men and women who crew them.
Sometimes FAIR doesn’t always practice what it preaches. Take this statement from near the end of the article: McLeod said “…the increase in military spending Trump approved last year alone would be enough to make public colleges and universities across the US free to all.”
I’m in favor of free or low-cost college tuition, but I need more evidence. How much money was that Military budget increase exactly? Would it make college free for one year, or if not, for how long could the funds be stretched? What would schools and students after it all is disbursed? Does it include tuition only or other costs as well? Is it assumed to replace or be in addition to all other financial aid students might receive? What’s the source that came up with this statistic, FAIR? Did you check those facts?
As it stands, this statement is on par with a Trump tweet. And in any case, we all know that such a trade-off is no more than a thought experiment. The MIX wouldn’t abide it.
And lastly, why hasn’t the MSM had a field day with Sen. Inhofe’s apparent insider trading and shouldn’t the SEC be obliged to investigate it?
Don’t call it defense spending since its really offensive. Call it military. Calling it defense implies it is imperative since everybody wants to be protected from real threats. The moment you call it defense you lose the argument.
Good point, especially when (as the article alluded to) a lot of these expenditures are really OFFENSE spending —- traveling to literally the other side of the world to provoke something that can be then twisted into some sort of rationale to do another ‘humanitarian intervention’ where we can frivolously utilize unnecessary military hardware and the media can get real smarmy pretending it’s a ‘real war’ and not just us bombing and shooting a lot of dark- skinned people in foreign countries in some sort of perverse turkey-shoot.
God bless America..?
I tried to do this in the article but it is amazing how language kind of forces you to use it! A very subtle form of thought control!
When it was called the War Department, it was mostly the Department of Defense. When it changed to the Department of Defense it mostly became the Department of War.
FoonTheElder
Exactly!
A couple of commenters point out that much of our grotesquely bloated military budget has nothing to do with “defense.” From 1789 to 1947, our military establishment operated as the Department of War. The War Department oversaw the nation’s defense as well as the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II and all our other wars and military actions between. For over 150 years Americans fought and died under the War Department aegis.
Harry Truman changed that designation in 1947 and, in 1949 (chillingly, within months of Orwell publishing “1984”) Truman made it the Department of Defense — which has as much to do with defense as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth has to do with truth.
As Owell knew, labels matter. Words matter. They frame the issue, determining how we think about things. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff similarly said it in his book “Don’t Think of an Elephant.”
Truman’s name change was a stroke of genius. After all, who could be against us “defending” ourselves? Anyone against defense must be a commie traitor.
Thus began 70+ years of the US stamping its bloody boots across the globe. No wonder a 2013 Gallup survey of 65,000 people in 60 countries found that folks beyond our blessed shores believe America is the greatest threat to world peace. We got triple the votes of second-place Pakistan. No one else came close.
To cut the military budget, I propose that several things must change. These include (but are not limited to):
1. RENAMING. Change the label that determines how we think about the military. Revert our military establishment to its accurate, traditional, historic name: the Department of Wat, overseen by a Secretary of War and funded by a war budget. It was good enough for 150+ years of our most sacred, courageous American leaders and heroes. It will be fine for us.
2. REALLOCATION. Reframe certain major domestic spending programs as truly for “defense”. Reallocate hundreds of billions of dollars for domestic “defense” projects. There’s major historical precedent: Dwight Eisenhower sold Congress and the American people on the need for an interstate highway system by adding a thinly disguised “defense” rationale. The most expensive public works project in American history to that time, Congress enacted it as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.
Today, a federal initiative to deploy solar rooftops and microgrids across America could take the same path. It could be funded entirely with “defense” dollars. The “defense” rationale: widely disributed electric generation would replace many , perhaps most, centralized power stations — vulnerable “soft targets” dotting the landscape from coast to coast. What, then, could our future enemies do? Bomb millions of rooftops?
Pentagon strategists could never argue with a straight face that centralized points of failure are militarily superior to an all-but-invulnerable, resilient, vastly distributed network.
Certain other major initiatives, including public infrastructure repair, could also be framed around defense necessity and reallocated from what is currently the “defense” budget. America really would become less vulnerable to disruption and chaos resulting from attack or sabotage — while we gain the economic prosperity and social benefits these projects would bring. compliments of the “defense” budget (which incidentally could be split off from the uniformed-military “war budget”).
3. REVITALIZATION. Politicians and military profiteers have long since learned that the way to win popular support is to spread “defense” jobs throughout all 50 states. Arms factories, army camps, naval bases, air fields and facilities — you’ll find them strategically distributed across America. Not for military reasons, but for political ones. It creates the need to protect jobs, jobs, jobs everywhere.
How to break this vast political bribe machine? A careful strategy will need to replace specific numbers of decent-paying jobs where they are currently located.
There won’t be a 1:1 correspondence, but we can do the best we can. It will blunt a major political weapon of war profiteers and their lobbyists.
At the same time, it will help reduce economic and social disruption as unneeded war factories and facilities are shuttered. Much of this military pork can be replaced by Green New Deal jobs and other true “domestic defense” initiatives.
A version of this comment will soon appear as a blog at FairNow (dot) org.
A quote for you from Henry Miller, 1934: ” I see America {Governments} spreading disaster, I see America {Governments} as a black curse upon this world. I see a long,dark night setting in and that mushroom which has so poisoned this planet, withering at it’s roots.” The Governments are my addition, as I see most of them as equal in evil to America….
Thank you Macleod, I wonder if it was you Fair Folks, or the Guardian that just ran a long expose on the impossibility of Auditing the Dept. of Defense, we spent 900 million bucks on auditors and they could not make heads or tails of where 25 trillion bucks over the last 25 or 30 years went to it just sort of disappeared down the same rat hole that all Gov’t spending goes down. Anytime I see a program that is Gov’t guaranteed I look to make sure I still have my wallet. Like Gov’t guaranteed Student Loans, Like Gov’t guaranteed home loans, like the S & L Gov’t guarantee, what that says to me is License to steal, because that is what always happens, yet our Con men congress keeps right on rewarding the thieves, like the trillion buck bailout of wall st. using our children’s and our grandchildren’s money. Of course not a penny to the busted homeowners…We need more of those 10-20 million dollar drones armed with 2-3 million buck Hellfire missiles so as to kill some more innocent civilians. By the way all weapons are Chemical Weapons, what else is used in those two thousand lb. bombs, those rifle cartridges? We have only ourselves to blame as we keep re-electing the same greed heads and expecting a different outcome…
Cutting the military industrial comples down to size is easier done then said. It’s just a matter of having the right leverage to do the job. You’ll find that leverage here. http://www.energon.org.uk
There is nothing “centrist” about protecting the military budget. According to these sources there would NEVER be a good time to cut the US defense budget, because the vast majority of them are owned and controlled by the MIC. The needs of the people are held hostage by the MIC. It’s not only time to cut the defense budget, it’s way past time to hold the MIC accountable for the money that has been given to them.
America is not a country.
America is a global empire.
The USA’s warped definition of “National Security” is in reality US Imperial Security–that is, the God-given right for America to dominate the entire world far beyond its nominal national borders.
Any nation, government, or non-state actor that resists America’s global domination is by definition a threat or rival that must be contained, if not annihilated.
This is the unhinged logic of an American Empire that is increasingly off the rails in terms of its militarism and aggressive wars, which the vast majority of Proud Amuricans are largely oblivious to or indeed supportive of.
The Roman Empire, British Empire, and Nazi Third Reich were pathetic amateurs compared to the American Empire and its planetary war machine.
Every dollar that the Imperialist States of Amerikastan spends on “defence” – in other words, gives to corrupt politicians and military industrial complex corporate capitalists – helps degrade Amerikastani infrastructure, education, healthcare, and wrecks the world’s most utterly evil country from within. As such, I strongly support more Amerikastani spending on its military industrial complex; especially since it, with all the wonder weapons it is supposedly developing, can’t even beat illiterate Afghan farmers in turbans armed with 50 year old AK47s.
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