Er, no, actually. No it’s not. Or at least it wasn’t.
Found a couple of interesting slides in a presentation I was reviewing (click on the slides for better resolution).
In case it’s not immediately obvious, what the charts show is that – despite the increased costs that went with prosecuting the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan – DoD outlays are very nearly at historic lows compared both to gross domestic product and the total federal budget, although that second statistic would be more interesting if 1) mandatory spending (i.e., spending on entitlements plus interest on the national debt) had not gone from roughly 30% of the federal budget in 1960 to over 70% in 2003, reducing discretionary spending proportionately and 2) the federal budget itself had not mushroomed 50% since 2001.
It’s too bad the data stops in FY04, because the increased OPTEMPO of multiple deployments also creates increased equipment usage rates and repair costs. There will be some currently hidden costs on replacing worn out equipment after this is all over.
Still, illuminating.
I guess this is what they meant by fighting “on the cheap.”
I read somewhere that what is needed right now for us to win the war is for us to double defense spending. After looking at these charts, I agree completely.
Jim C
Validates what I have been saying about the fact that the armed forces need to be bigger-the money is out there, Congress just needs to go get it.
Then again DOD could get a lot more value for its money than it has been getting lately in the things it buys.
There is still a train wreck coming in terms of people and equipment though. It can be avoided but only if resources are committed now. The train wreck will get worse if DOD does some of the stupid things it is talking about doing-particularly changing the way it pays people.
Standby – the “peace dividend” crowd is starting to gather again just as it did after Gulf War I (that in turn, put us in the position we’re in now). There is going to be one h*ll of a bill to pay in terms of recapitalization coming in a few short years.
-SJS
Is $500 billion in yearly DoD expenditures really “cheap”? A more meaningful analysis would compare of our defense spending to that of the rest of the world. That analysis reveals that we spend about as much as the rest of the world combined.
The drop in percentage illustrated in the post is driven by increases in GDP rather than decreases in defense spending. In fact, DoD expenditures have been rising for the last decade or so. To call US defense spending cheap based on two graphs, no context and zero opposing viewpoints is pretty disingenuous. (Although I admit that we used to show the captain a pretty graph and/or worn part out of the junk pile when we wanted to get some buy-in.)
If I want to determine whether something is cheap, I ask myself 1) How much it costs and 2) what I get out of it. There may be some day in the future when a democratic Iraq and a stable Middle East prove that the US really was getting a functioning military on the cheap in the early 2000s. Today, though, having lost hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives for the reward of a destabilized Middle East, a weakened Army/Marine Corps and plummeting standing in the international community, that “cheapness” is pretty damn hard to see.
Golly “anon”, you came in here with a bag of knots and a bad attitude. $500 billion sounds like a lot to you and me, but the point of the charts is that it isn’t much in the context of history, including a prolonged period when troops weren’t actually engaged in combat. You may not like the news, but it doesn’t make it untrue. Nor does it make it untrue that the force structure has continued to become smaller even as maintaining it has become more expensive. I could also show charts that show how much money (most of it) is spent on personnel costs and readiness rather than the small wedge reserved for R&D, but that probably wouldn’t make you happy either.
And as for your point that the US spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined, true but so what? We’re a unique country with global concerns, global reach and global responsibility. Europe has managed to maintain a tremendously expensive social system – one that will either collapse of its own weight as the continent ages, or fundamentally change the character of Europe as it imports more bottom tier labor to support it – by abdicating any responsibility for its own defense, or the ability to project power to the corners of an increasingly interconnected world.
“How much it costs” is an interesting metric. If you overspend on a candy bar by a hundred bucks you feel the sting, but most of us would pay another hundred bucks on a new car just to get the salesman out of our face. It’s the same hundred bucks, but you place it in context of what you’re buying. The PRC’s expenditure on defense – the transparent bit anyway – is nearly as high in a developing economy, and by some estimates defense spending in Russia – a purely regional power with a GDP behind Italy – continues to far outpace even the US as a function of both GDP and GDP per capita.
The experiment in Mesopotamia is indeed an expensive one, and is designed to discover whether Arabia can be induced to self-government rather than continued rule by tyrannies which survive by fanning the resentment of the West – and especially the US – to cover up their own inadequacies. It might be that we fail, but in my opinion the question was worth asking as these tyrannies continue to exhale murderous terrorists into our midst.
While I’m on that subject, I wouldn’t pay 25 cents for “increased standing in the international community” if that meant that we made the likes of Syria and Iran more pleased with us, and the EU less dyspeptic because Syria and Iran are more pleased. You can link hands and sing kumbaya with the “rest of the world” if you want, but what they’re chiefly after is a way to restrain American influence in the world.
Like it or not, globalization involves competition. It’s not surprising that competitors throughout the world are interested in shackling America. What is surprising is how many Americans are interested in facilitating them, all so they can feel better about themselves in Parisian salons.
Chacun a son gout, I suppose.
I wasn’t paying much attention at the time, but I seem to recall that the years after Vietnam and including during Carter were ones where we saw the end results of fighting a war on the cheap, and that in spite of the proposed 600-ship Navy during the defense build-up under Reagan we wound up spending more just to replace broken-down equipment and never quite found the dosh for all those ships.
That jibes with the comments on recapitalization, and if that era is any guide we’re looking at 10 years or so even with increased funding?
A few of you went through those times. Thoughts? Is there a lesson to be drawn from that era?
– Max
Why is it that trolls feel the need to be cowardly bast@$d$ and post as anon?
CoRev had been posting on this at both his site and getting into row over at Angry Bear. They do not agree either, but they appear to want to spend zilch on defense and permit the Chinese to rule the waves. I just wish we had more of the ships currently in service or designed ships that were not so expensive that it limits our force projection to multiple theatres. The carrier od course is excluded because it is able to project far beyond the horizon, and it just packs a mighty punch!!
“plummeting standing in the international community…” hehe…these type arguments always seem to close with something like: “and they don’t like us; we’d better pay some attention to what they think of us…”
That’s quite a “community”, that international one…and we all recall those gravy days when we were universally admired and imitated in international affairs, don’t we? Well, don’t we?
I agree Tom, if we have a plummeting standing in the international community you would think we would see a decline in the immigration rate. I also don’t see why they care about the standing in the international community, do they care that their neighbor 3 doors up believes they are a twit?
do they care that their neighbor 3 doors up believes they are a twit?
Actually, they do. And that is the problem.
Yep..but I should qualify my above. I’ve been fortunate to live and work on three continents outside CONUS and have had the distinct privilege on several occasions to receive sincere thanks from civilian foreign nationals for American military actions on each continent. It’s tremendously humbling and a source of great pride in our nation to receive spontaneous personal expressions of gratitude from an anonymous friend for past and present American efforts. These so-called “rubes” display a realism sorely lacking in their representative media and/or govts. But it’s that way all over, right? “No good deed goes unpunished”…(-*
The nearly $500 billion budgeted for the DoD can hardly be classified as “cheap” by any measure, even relative GDP historical ones. And not included is the burgeoning budget of Homeland Security budget that is actively involved in the War on Terror, but its costs are not accounted for as defense costs. Moreover, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have not been budgeted, but have been funded outside of the federal budget through “supplementary spending bills.”
But if it is not cheap, the real and more important question is, “is it too much, too little, or just about right?”
As the late Adm. Eugene Carroll, naval aviator and DCNO told us, “For 45 years of the Cold War we were in an arms race with the Soviet Union. Now it appears we’re in an arms race with ourselves.”
The reality is that large, conventional military operations are the exception rather than the rule in the war on terrorism. Asymmetric war renders a majority of our highly complex and ultra expensive military equipment and manpower irrelevant. Rather than incredibly and exorbitantly priced new warships, aircraft, and complex weapons systems, COIN and anti terror warfare relies on far less expensive and less complex, but much advanced intelligence, law enforcement, and smaller special operations forces.
As for more conventional, potential threats, in FY2004, the US spent over 7 times that of its next competitor, China, and 9 times that of Russia. Shouldn’t that suffice, or must we outspend them say 15 times? Nevertheless, our planned defense budgets will still likely fall well short of the services’ long-term force structure, readiness and modernization plans as currently envisioned. And large parts of the budget will continue to grow disproportionately, especially the Veterans Administration costs.
With the huge federal deficit, and the ever-growing entitlement costs of the ageing Baby Boomer generation, there will be many hard choices. A billion here and a billion there adds up. We are now spending about what we spent in inflation-adjusted dollars what we did in WWII. And we are not fighting the formidable German or Japanese war machines. We are fighting fanatics that spend a few dollars on explosives put in a stolen car.
There is not a limitless supply of money to fund defense, nor is there necessarily the need. The ability of the US military to meet future challenges effectively is likely to have more to do with how wisely we spend our defense dollars, than on how much we spend.
I’m perfectly happy and can be contacted through these comments for this discussion (my comment reflected a bad attitude? Is the YWCA?). I’ll feel bad about posting “anon” when I can pick up a phonebook and look up a number for “Therapist1″ or “neptunuslex”.
I’ll address points directly, in bullet format, because that seems to be more effective in communicating (sad, but it’s a PPT world).
Claim 1:
DoD expenditures are cheap because they represent a smaller fraction of US GDP than they did in years past.
Responses:
-They are not cheap because they have grown significantly while providing little benefit to American security.
-In fact, the vast majority of increases over the last 6 years or so have funded OIF, which has significantly *reduced* US security (weakened USA/USMC, increased middle east instability, increased Islamic radicalism).
-Expenditures/GDP is absolutely the wrong metric for determining whether the expenditures are “cheap” or “low”, because changes in that metric have been driven by increases in GDP. The main takeaway from those original graphs is: “US GDP grew as the US economy dominated the world”.
-Increases in GDP bear little relation to the security requirements of the US. Would you say $100 candy bar is cheap because your income suddenly rose 100x? Probably not. $/GDP or $/capita metrics have little to do with military requirements or capabilities.
Claim 2: The US is unique so comparisons of its defense spending to the rest of the world are irrelevant.
That’s pretty tangential, but I’ll bite:
-We should compare our spending to that of other nations, because spending reflects capacity to exert force. Superiority in military spending equals (roughly) superiority in military power. Do we really need to have more military power than the rest of the world combined? I’d say no. A couple hundred billion or so could do wonders for the education or health care systems in this country. It could also do pretty well sitting in your (and my) pocket.
If every other country in the world spent zero on defense, would it still be fine to spend $500 billion/yr on defense? Probably not.
Claim 3: The principal function of international dialog is to restrain US influence.
-The principal function of international dialog is to prevent escalation of economic and military conflict, which lead to failed economies and wars respectively.
-The UN (and WTO, and G8, and World Bank etc etc) certainly does cause some restraint in US actions, but it also allows the US to influence other nations through multilateral negotiations. As a concrete example, the prevalence of tariff wars has dropped dramatically since the inception of the GATT and (later) the WTO. This is good for everyone.
Globalizaton refers to the removal of barriers to transnational capital and labor flows, as well as their attendant cultural homogenization. It does not refer to some worldwide battle-royale for hegemony. That particular brand of “globalization” is nothing new and we’ve had experience with it already, on the receiving end, about 230 years ago.
We have fundamentally different views of the world it seems, so I despair of trying to change your point of view. But your assessment that our expenditures have done little to nothing for our security is merely an non-rebuttable assertion of faith. You are welcome to it, and I – with as much validity – can assert that “yes it has.”
Your assertion that OIF has reduced our security is a similar expression of faith. Were there no radicalized Islamists before? Have we never before suffered at their hands? What about all those attacks on the US since 2001? Well, never mind that last bit.
Yes the land forces are stressed, but they are stressed fighting and killing terrorists. I guess we could bring them home the better to rest them in preparation to kill terrorists but it seems to me an unnecessary extra step.
And if expenditures as a proportion of GDP is “absolutely the wrong metric” what do you counter-propose as the right one? Pick a date in history and inflation adjust from there? When your pay doubles, do you plan to stay in the same car, or maybe pay a bit for a newer, better one?
There are many streams at work in globalization, and it is one of the factors that brought “Westoxification” into the outraged Islamist living room. Their reaction to modernity is as much as anything what we’re up against in a war against violent extremism. The people who flew airliners into office buildings didn’t do so because we were occupying Iraq and liberating Afghanistan, and the plot was hatched while a previous administration slashed military spending and made nice with Paris. The hate won’t stop when we come home.
Europe prefers “soft power” – treaties and international organizations, etc. Soft power is fine as far as it goes, and so long as you are dealing with actual countries that have negotiable interests and if it’s the only tool in the toolbox, well you do the best you can with it.
But hard power is required too because not every actor on the international stage 1) represents an actual country and 2) has anything to offer us worthy of negotiation. Especially the Islamist terrorist threat.
Saving a “couple hundred billion” from DoD budgets means cutting them in half, or nearly – “education” by the way is a state expenditure, and I for one don’t feel over-taxed.
Since the US military is already strained meeting global commitments, what you’re really talking about is “coming home” from abroad. That will be a provocative power vacuum which other states will feel compelled to fill. Sharp regional military competitions have a way of getting out of hand, and in any case they don’t do much for a trading nation.
Lex said:
“… and I for one don?
Lex said:
“… and I for one don’t feel over-taxed”
Really??
Sorry, couldn’t resist…
Actually, no – we had a lovely series of tax cuts just a few years back. And, being as I’m on the federal anyways?
I look at it as an investment.
anon,
One thing you have to keep in mind is that when it comes to the security of our country most Americans don’t give a sh*t what the French think, nor do we give a sh*t what the Russians or Germans think about what we’re doing to keep our country safe.
fliterman,
You said: “…Asymmetric war renders a majority of our highly complex and ultra expensive military equipment and manpower irrelevant. Rather than incredibly and exorbitantly priced new warships, aircraft, and complex weapons systems, COIN and anti terror warfare relies on far less expensive and less complex, but much advanced intelligence, law enforcement, and smaller special operations forces…”
I disagree. What expensive military equipment has been rendered irrelevant? Just because the terrorists place some explosives in a stolen car, does that render an F-18 or Apache helicopter useless in combating those terrorists? I would say no, it doesn’t.
Furthermore, it amazes me that there are still those out there that see this as primarily a law enforcement matter. I’m sorry, but a couple of hundred new FBI agents, or a couple of hundred new cops on the street in our home towns WON’T DO ANYTHING to end Islamofacism or Islamic terrorism.
Yes, this is an asymetric war. But, it is a war. It’s a war that will cost us much in both blood and treasure, but it must be won.
Jim C
I’m not over taxed, but I am underpaid. My services are worth at least twice what the Federal Government pays for them. Are you listening Dr Chu?
I’m not very PC. Spend whatever it takes such that the Military is effective in detering any threat out there and then use it to smash those threats that evolve into actions that injure our intrests.
You know, here’s the other thing. People blow in and out of here with no more thought than a cokehead gives to wiping his nose, cop a ‘tude and then wonder when the regulars – or the host – chastise them for the “tone.”
If it were me, I’d think to look around a bit, scent the environment and swim in the pool a bit before laying on the full-force snark. We start here from the presumption of good faith, discuss things as though we were actual people together in a room rather than look at every post as a zero-sum game of keyboard-hidden winners and losers.
What’s so hard about that?
I once suggested to a friend with very …. liberal views that he stop by and check out the blog. He’s very intelligent and I knew he could hold his own without the tone resorting to f-bombs and personal attacks. And truth be told, I was kind of looking forward to seeing both sides of the argument(s) well laid-out for my own benefit.
But I made one request. That he not just see a post that caught his eye and jump right in. Kind of like Mr. Anon did. I asked that he hang around a bit and read for a while, follow some discussions, maybe even check out the archives a little. Then when he had a feel for the place and the tone, take on an issue. To the best of my knowledge he did check it out a little bit but he never commented. I don’t know why and won’t mention it to him again.
Anyway, my point was the same as Lex’s. If you really want to enter a meaningful discussion, what’s with the smash and destroy tactics? You’re certainly not going to get any respect or have a snowball’s chance in hell of anyone actually hearing what you’re trying to say. I don’t get it.
Oh well, to each their own I guess…
Wasn’t trying to SNARK. However as I obviously don’t belong here I will go back to the kids table. Thanks.
Michelle — what a good laugh you just gave me…. most of these trolls, even most lefties, are so opposed to the military and all that it does for the world.
But yet, when they arrive at blogs like this one, with their words spewing, disliking what our military does, you’re right, they use “smash and destroy tactics.” Isn’t that what our military does with our most blatant enemies? Aren’t our armed forces designed for “smash and destroy tactics?”
If you really want to enter a meaningful discussion, what’s with the smash and destroy tactics? In other words, a welcomed troll uses the tactics of his enemy (our fighting forces) to attach his enemies (us)…. using “smash and destroy” tactics. Just gotta love that!
Whenever I was in a debrief/group ass-chewing/critique or the like, I knew to stop talking and wait for quitting time when people started talking about the way to talk about the issue. I’m interested in talking about the issue, and that’s it. So to quickly answer lex’s points:
0) You’re right — there’s no way to prove now that OIF either worsened or improved American security. However, it definitely weakened the military and cost thousands of lives. Current events in Britain aren’t pushing in an optimistic direction going forward.
1)”Cheapness Metric”: Absolute dollars spending vs peer nations is a good place to start. The incremental benefit of each extra plane, tank or ship decreases as you have more and more of them. The next 180 F-22s (or 10 DD-Xs) are going to cost a lot of money for not much more military capability than we currently enjoy. Big outlays + not much extra influence in the world = expensive investment.
2) Table 8.2 says that National Defense spending dropped a max of 10% from 1992-2000. It’s a stretch to even obliquely attribute 9.11 to those budget cuts.
3) Soft power (multi party negotiations no less) seems to be working with North Korea right now. The first, failed breeder reactor shutdown came as a result of bilateral talks between the US and DPRK.
4) OIF was a recent example of poor appropriation of national resources. Finishing the job in Iraq is better than pulling out. Even better would have been to spend those OIF funds fighting the real sources of Islamic extremism with forces fit to the task. My larger point remains: money is being spent on military projects that do little to improve American global influence. Therefore, military spending today is a bad deal, and not cheap.
(BTW federal funding is about 10% of K-12 education spending, sent via transfer payments to states. Shift a few tens of billions of dollars and that figure could be much higher.)
And now for some meta-commentary:
I’m pretty disappointed by the level of responses to this thread. Lex has made an effort, but the majority of commenters have not. I’d wager that about 20% of people clicked through on the links I sent. No one made the effort to support counterpoints with reasoning or even 20 seconds of Google research. And then a bunch of wives jumped in with some non sequitur crap about military-haters and the hypocrisy of scorched-earth tactics in political debate. Not helpful.
One response to “international diplomacy prevents escalation of economic and military conflict” was “we don’t give a shit what the French think.” You guys have got to be capable of more than that.
No one debates with the intention of changing the opposing person’s mind. The function of debate is the explore opposing viewpoints and come to a more complete understanding of the truth. That’s not going to happen if the level of discussion stays where it is now.
But hey, the sea stories and pictures are cool, so I guess it’s all good for me.
Well, aren’t you an arrogant as!ho!e!
So, military wives bug you?
Take a walk pal because they are fighting this war as hard as anyone else, even if you want to degrade them…
Blood, meet boiling point…
Wow!!!!!
You know, I could challenge you on a few of your assumptions, especially the NoKos but, I am not even going to bother. After you took a slam at the military wives I realized that you aren’t even worth the pixels with wich to debate.
Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979;
Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983;
Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983 (241 dead Marines);
Lockerbie, Scotland, Pan Am flight to New York;
First New York World trade Center attack 1993;
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996;
Naiirobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998;
Dares Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998;
Aden, Yeman USS Cole 2000;
New York World Trade Center 2001;
Pentagon 2001;
…
Bali
PI
Thailand
Madrid
London
So, anon, fiterman, you post much huff and ask plenty of questions, but what are your solutions?
Better be careful when you talk about military wives..if you want to talk about some wasteful spending, just wait till you try to divorce one.
Talk about not getting value for your money……….
Skippy – you just didn’t manage your problem correctly. ;^)
I was divorced by one, and divorced another (hey, it matters to *me* whose idea it was) and I recieved my entire retirement check, complete. Not a penny after taxes goes anywhere but my bank and the VA.
You sir, are my hero…can I have the name of your lawyer?
anon
Sorry to disappoint but I’m not a “wife” or girfriend, family member or whatever…
There was one comment I had considered making during your little conversation with Lex and that was that if, as here, federal monies are given to states for education and other purposes, then the comment about eduation being a state expenditure was a little disingenuous. But you saved me the trouble.
Personally, I’m not arguing for or against because I’m reading and listening. To both sides. Last time I checked it worked as a fairly decent way to learn things. And I stand by my previous comments. And agree with Babs as to your arrogance. I suppose you think those throw-away comments you made were “helpful”. Or perhaps you’re just practicing to be a politician.
I think anon, that by largely ignoring you the regulars here have treated you somewhat better than you have deserved. Everyone is forced in their regular lives to associate with jerks, opinionated jerks and moderately clever opinionated jerks. Few people willingly go out in their spare time looking for more to engage with, no matter how clever they think themselves.
Speaking of clever, you certainly appear well-read enough to understand that the national security strategy is written by a duly elected executive supported by the national security bureaucracy, parsed by OMB for its underlying assumptions and debated and discussed line item by line item, yes F-22′s and DD-X’s too – by the duly elected legislature. This includes committees both for program authorization and appropriation before going before both chambers (after differences are ironed out in committee), approved and signed into law. Grown ups, in other words – and Hey! Anon even gets a vote in the process!
These are serious people who do serious work for a living, and they don’t generally go around thinking that “absolute dollars spending vs peer nations is a good place to start” since for one thing, em: We don’t really have any peer nations.
Japan’s GDP is number 2 in the world, and a little less than 1/3 of ours. It’s also a country with a suspect track record in a strategically important part of the world whose security therefore depends upon the forward engagement of US power. And that’s just in one theater of concern – our national strategy has us pretty much everywhere and for the most part, that’s worked out well for everyone concerned.
You might be interested in trimming ourselves down “self-defense force” status and then hoping to kick-off at the next coin toss in a fair fight on the home turf, but it’s not hard to see why other rational folks might disagree with you.
As far as “table 8.2″ and previous administrations, I decline to debate a rebuttal to a point I never made, no, not even “obliquely.” Straw men everywhere protest, I know, but there it is.
Re: North Korea and soft power, I’ll believe it if it lasts. But it won’t be the first time the Norks have played crawdad on international obligations, nor the last I suspect. In any case, North Korea is a unique case – no one is much interested in their ideology, and the regime’s chief interest is its own perpetuation. That’s a much different prospect than we were dealing with in Iraq after 12 years of soft-power UN Sanctions that did nothing to stop the tyrant from enriching himself on the backs of a brutalized population.
It’s easy to see why you think OIF was a poor appropriation of national resources. Many people who believe this appear to think that 1) The clock would would have stopped advancing on 19 Marcy 2003 if we hadn’t crossed the LOD, or 2) Even if history had kept moving, everything would have probably been just OK. Alternative history fiction can be interesting, but at the end of the day it adds up once again to a non-rebuttable expression of faith. We are where we are.
BTW, wrt to education, I bet most of the states would give those transfer payments back given the choice, so long as that meant they could get out from under the unfunded mandates that the feds impose upon local governments. You seem to imply that taking money from individuals within the states in the form of federal income tax and then re-disbursing it back to the states in the form of “largess” (after having taken a cut off the top to support to the federal bureaucracy) is a good way to run what has always been a local institution. Me, I’m feeling a lot of friction in that machine.
“And large parts of the budget will continue to grow disproportionately, especially the Veterans Administration costs.”
This is probably the biggest canard being pushed. Go down to a local VA Hospital…it isn’t filled with OIF Vets…it is filled with WWII, Korea and Vietnam Vets.
There are 26 million living veterans. The vast majority of VA expenditure is providing income qualified services. I know a WWII vet…took advantage of the GI bill and got a home loan in the ’50s…never had any further dealings with the VA until his doctor put him on some $300/month medications 3 or 4 years ago. The VA pays for his medications.
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