There’s a big behind-the-scenes fight inside Republican circles about the military budget. GOP hawks are so concerned about the possibility of a sequester (automatic reductions in projected spending) that some of them are willing to capitulate to a tax hike.
Others are pursuing a more productive approach, as explained in this story. They want to cancel the defense sequester and replace the savings by restraining pay levels for federal bureaucrats.
This is an excellent idea since domestic programs are overwhelmingly to blame for America’s fiscal problems, and those programs employ hundreds of thousands of unnecessary and over-compensated bureaucrats.
Regardless of how that effort plays out, though, George Will explains in a new column that Republicans hawks can ease up on the overheated rhetoric. Simply stated, there is no risk to America’s military supremacy.
The U.S. defense budget is about 43 percent of the world’s total military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense budget is cut 8 percent from projections over the next decade? In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined. Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain? …GOP critics say that Obama’s proposed defense cuts will limit America’s ability to engage in troop-intensive nation-building. Most Americans probably say: Good. …Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is still open, so Republicans can hardly say that Obama has implemented dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism. …even with his proposed cuts, the defense budget would increase at about the rate of inflation through the next decade.
The last point is similar to something I wrote last year. Even with a sequester, defense outlays will climb by about $100 billion over the next 10 years.
And I very much agree with Will’s point about defending Germany, which is part of the broader discussion of why NATO still exists about 20 years after the Warsaw Pact dissolved.
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[…] George Will has explained that the defense budget could be pruned, “In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined. Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?” […]
[…] George Will has explained that the defense budget could be pruned, “In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined. Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?” […]
Well, as much as love your site, Dan, I have to call you on this one. You are repeating the canard of the Left that simply looks at Defense spending in pure dollar terms and compares that with other countries’ defense spending.
You are absolutely correct that the U.S. spends more than any, other country on defense. (Although China seems to be catching up, though it’s hard to tell because China keeps the vast majority of their spending “off the books”).
Nonetheless, if we look at *capabilities* versus total spending, we get a much different picture. Let’s agree for the sake of argument that the Pentagon pays too much for its ships, tanks, troops and planes and that savings through more efficient procurement and eliminating fraud and waste could yield some savings. Even so, at the end of the day,, regardless of how many more dollars the U.S. spends on defense than other nations, we still need those ships, tanks, troops and planes. Those things cost real dollars. As a global power that derives enormous benefits from our presence around the globe and the security guarantees we are able to provide, our interests need global protection. Naturally, people like Ron Paul will say, “Fine, let’s withdraw from our global presence and to hell with the rest of the world.” That’s certainly one, shortsighted approach. But even if we withdrew as Rep. Paul suggess, the savings are nowhere near enough to make a dent in the yearly budget deficit or the National Debt. Because the dirty secret that George Will and, seemingly you, Dan, will not say is that Defense spending, as a percentage of U.S. G.D.P. has actually gone *down* over the last 10 years. The U.S. spends so many billions of dollars on Defense because the U.S. has by far the largest economy in the world and so, of course, the dollars spent will be huge compared to all the other, smaller economies in the world. (Heck, there are several STATES in the U.S. that have larger GDP’s than most nations in the world.
The bottom line is that the U.S. Navy is shrinking to its smallest size since the 1900’s. The Air Force is shrinking, too, along with the Army and Marine Corps. Recently Obama announced a dramatic change in U.S. defense strategy that settles for a vastly smaller military that will no longer be able to respond to more than one military crisis at a time. Sounds nice as long as the rest of the dictators and militant Islamists in the world will agree.
So, Dan, please stick to the real culprit: entitlement spending. It is eating up over 70% of the federal budget right now and it is only going to get worse. Defense is not the problem and you know it.
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These people just have to on the take from the defense industry. That’s why the so desperately fight any hint of slowing of defense budget growth, much less an actual cut. Cronies and crooks.