Another President gave a very important farewell address, and in it President Eisenhower warned us about the growing influence of the military-industrial complex in our country.
Traditionally every time our nation had to fight a war, we would raise the funds and the army, do the job, and then just as quickly downsize our military and go back to business as usual. This pattern continued right up through World War I, but after World War II things changed and for good reason.
Modern warfare had changed so much that it was no longer practical to think you could realistically raise, equip, and train a fighting force in a short period of time. Having a standing military of some consequence was now a basic necessity. This necessity was even more important in light of how World War II resulted in us emerging as the leading nation of the free world and how we went right into the ideological Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Since the Cold War ended over 25 years ago, America has remained as the world’s only Superpower, and it isn’t even close, and we don’t want it to be close.
Just as I said early on about taxes that there isn’t a single human being ever born that really ever wants to pay a single cent of tax if they didn’t have to, I defy you to show me an American citizen who wouldn’t want us to be the world’s only Superpower and stay that way for many years, decades, and centuries to come. I mean, the Roman Empire lasted for hundreds of years, other empires have lasted for centuries, and we’ve only been a Superpower for less than 100 years….a mere hiccup in the timeline of human civilization.
As you could see from our spending priorities mentioned in the Federal Budget Overview, Defense takes up basically half of our discretionary spending. Did you know though that we spend more on our military in total dollars than the rest of the Top 10 countries of the world COMBINED?? Per Wikipedia and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, here are the total expenditures by country for the top 20 nations in the world:
| Rank | Country | Spending (Billions of USD) | % of GDP | % of Global Defense Spending |
| 1 | United States | $877 | 3.5 | 39 |
| 2 | China | $292 | 1.6 | 13 |
| 3 | Russia | $86.4 | 4.1 | 3.9 |
| 4 | India | $81.4 | 2.4 | 3.6 |
| 5 | Saudi Arabia | $75 | 7.4 | 3.3 |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $68.5 | 2.2 | 3.1 |
| 7 | Germany | $55.8 | 1.4 | 2.5 |
| 8 | France | $53.6 | 1.9 | 2.4 |
| 9 | South Korea | $46.4 | 2.7 | 2.1 |
| 10 | Japan | $46 | 1.1 | 2.1 |
| 11 | Ukraine | $44 | 34.0 | 2.0 |
| 12 | Italy | $33.5 | 1.7 | 1.5 |
| 13 | Australia | $32.3 | 1.9 | 1.4 |
| 14 | Canada | $26.9 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| 15 | Israel | $23.4 | 4.5 | 1.0 |
| 16 | Spain | $20.3 | 1.5 | 0.9 |
| 17 | Brazil | $20.2 | 1.1 | 0.9 |
| 18 | Poland | $16.6 | 2.4 | 0.7 |
| 19 | Netherlands | $15.6 | 1.6 | 0.7 |
| 20 | Qatar | $15.4 | 7.0 | 0.7 |
North Korea is not on the list, and neither is Iran, and while they are obviously both big issues due to their nuclear efforts, their total defense spending is not very much because they are at the end of the day impoverished nations whether they want to admit it or not.
Other than North Korea and Iran, the only potential adversaries on this list are China and Russia. To my earlier point, of course we want to keep a safe distance between ourselves and our next closest competitors, but doesn’t it make you scratch your head when you hear Republicans say that they want to strengthen our military, or drastically increase military spending, or somehow imply that the military was left to flounder and atrophy under the prior administration, when we spend almost THREE TIMES as much on military spending as China, our next closest competitor?
We have 11 nuclear super carriers in our navy. The Chinese and Russians each have one carrier, and neither of them are nuclear, and both are ancient technology. Both still rely heavily on diesel powered submarines when our entire sub fleet has been 100% nuclear powered for almost 50 years. Our aviation industry has been working on sixth generation fighter technology since 2011, and they are both still struggling to field viable 5th generation fighters, while we have been mass producing them since 2005 with the advent of the F-22 Raptor and more recently the F-35. Russia’s main strategic bomber is propeller driven and has been flying since 1952!
In short, we continue to do an excellent job making sure that our military fighting men and women have the best and latest toys to be the superior fighting force on the battlefield, whether it is in the air, sea, land, or internet (cyber warfare).
So at what point does our military spending become over kill, because we could theoretically cut defense spending from $611 billion to $216 billion, and save $395 billion dollars to spend on other priorities and still be outspending the Chinese by $1 billion. I’m not saying I want us to cut it that drastically in the slightest, especially since we have become the arsenal of democracy helping Ukraine the last 18 months, I’m just pointing out how grossly we are over-spending on our military.
How can we legitimately with a straight face look the American people in the eye and tell them we need to spend more and more money on the military when we have other serious problems that need addressing, from crumbling infrastructure (remember when the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis years ago) to ongoing poverty to crime in our cities?
The short answer is that we can’t, and any politician who is out there spouting off that we need to drastically increase defense spending is simply going for the cheap applause because it sounds good, and tough, and macho, and anyone who questions their belief for more defense spending is deemed to be unpatriotic and wanting to “weaken” our military, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am as much of a “hawk” as anyone and am supremely passionate about us having the best and most lethal and most feared fighting force on the planet.
One thing people don’t realize is that despite the high cost of all our modern, cutting edge weaponry, the Pentagon’s single largest expense just as with any government agency or business for that matter, is people.
Which doesn’t it make you smile when Republicans say they want to shrink the size of government and somehow make it out to be a great scandal of how many government employees there are (over 2.9 million), when the Dept of Defense is actually our single largest government employer in the nation (740,000 of that total)? Things that make you go “hmmmm”.
So what is my solution? It is very simply this. We need to re-focus on our traditional priority of being able to fight 2 hot wars at the same time in different parts of the globe.
We need to use our military sparingly in the war on terror and work more cooperatively with our Allies, NATO, and the regional powers near to where we are wanting military operations conducted and let them get some skin in the game and do some of the legwork.
We can be their eyes and ears, but we have got to stop being the ones sending our soldiers in harms’ way and solely using our own blood, sweat, tears, and treasure. The entire globe benefits from the removal of militant terrorists, and the entire globe should be helping as much as possible.
A few years ago several US military personnel were killed in Niger and Congress wasn’t even aware we had troops in Niger, and a US general stated that we actually had troops in 53 African countries helping those countries in the war on terror. How much do you think those host countries are helping to foot the bill for our presence there?
The great danger of the war on terror is that it is a slippery slope that leads us into being the world’s policeman, which we have all agreed for decades we do not want to become. I will discuss all of this further when it comes to international issues later on.
Lastly, when it comes to right-sizing our military we have got to be willing to stand up to those who are only thinking of their own monetary and political self-interest if we are wanting to cut expenses that they want us to keep on the books. Here I am talking about a) defense contractors, b) legislators whose home districts and states would be negatively impacted by defense cuts, and c) those negatively impacted by base closures should any be needed.
That is exactly where President Eisenhower’s words of warning must always be present in our minds. When we are outspending our nearest competitors 3 to 1, and our military is being asked to do so many things around the globe, we need to be willing to speak truth to power and say “wait a minute”, let’s stop and assess the situation, get back to basics of who our real threats are (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran), how we can best defend against those, and not allow ourselves to get over-extended either in terms of mission quantity, the nature of the missions, the size and scope of our forces, or our global footprint in terms of bases, while at the same time keeping our arsenal as cutting edge, lethal, and mobile as possible.
But make no mistake, the days of keeping factories open making tanks that the Pentagon says it doesn’t need simply to keep the trained workforce around must end and never come back. The opportunity cost of such expenses is incalculable, especially when you consider that it is estimated that 24 million American children go to bed every night without enough food to eat…..in America.
Perry Waag 