The London-based Financial Times takes stock of President Obama’s defense pivot, and makes some recommendations to its European readership:
The Obama administration is right to make these cuts. After all, the economic crisis is arguably the biggest threat to western security today. Defence, like other budgets, must be pared back to boost fiscal credibility. The US must also learn from the Iraq and Afghan conflicts, moving away from fighting long counterinsurgency campaigns, and thinking more smartly about how to use air power, special forces and drones.
What this change in US policy must also do is prompt Europe to think harder about its own capabilities. For the past half century, Europe has assumed that the US will rush to its aid in any crisis. That assumption no longer holds. In Libya last year, the US warned that it expects European nations to take the lead when crises erupt in their own backyard. Yet Europe’s reaction to that warning – and to the US shift towards Asia – has thus far been disappointing.
Europe is failing on numerous fronts. Most European nations are slashing defence spending. Many still have forces that are not deployable. As Philip Hammond, Britain’s defence secretary, argued last week: “Too many countries are failing to meet their financial responsibilities to Nato, and so failing to maintain appropriate and proportionate capabilities.”
Whistling past the graveyard. As has been pointed out in these pages many times, the ongoing financial crisis is not defense driven – we are currently expending a historically low percentage of our Gross Domestic Product on DoD accounts. What has changed is that entitlement programs have mushroomed to hitherto unthinkable levels, and they show no signs of abating. Spending on social services has taken all the oxygen out of the federal budget, even as deficit spending has risen to giddying heights. Slashing defense spending is not the cure, but rather a palliative: The patient is bleeding out, and in response the doctors are surgically removing a leg. True, that will reduce the gross need for blood, at least for a little while. But it does nothing to stanch the bleeding.
They’re called “entitlements” because, once the public has been introduced to them, they feel entitled to equal or greater levels of dependency. Rolling them back requires massive expenditures in political capital, and virtually guarantees popular revolt. See also; Greece, Italy.
And the issue for the European contributors to NATO is that their own social safety nets are already far more interwoven into everyday life than is our own. They have arrived at the terminus of the benefactor/supplicant trail, or very nearly. Europe now maintains a military capability more for a sense of prestige than for any feeling of practical necessity, add a dash of foreign sales.
Just as some European countries maintain the vestiges of monarchy for decorative purposes, a march of soldats down the Champs Elysees stirs a vestigial sense of la Gloire de France. And the one European country that has slack capacity for increased military spending – Germany – carries the dual burdens of history and transfer payments to spendthrift southron partners. This is also why there are Eurofighters and Rafales in Europe but few aerial refueling tankers and next to no strategic airlift: Fighters are sexy, logistics, not so much, despite the fact that it’s airlift and tankers that get you to the fight before the fight gets to you.
The president and his colleagues desperately want to “help” people, not only because they feel that’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s damn good job security. The general sentiment towards taxation in this country means they have just about run out of other peoples’ money to spend, and our foreign creditors are looking at our debt rating with rational skepticism. If you can’t trim mandatory spending – or don’t want to – that leaves you with defense; people, retirement and health benefits, mostly. It makes good theater to tell Europe that it’s time to lift their share of the communal burden.
The problem is that Europe has landed where the president and his party is going. There’s no turning back.
Meanwhile: China, Iran and the man who isn’t there.
F-35s don’t vote. If our Dhimminicrat friends had their way, neither would our troops. With no reform of the entitlement programs, the brokest nation in history will collapse under the dryrot of indolence, theft & envy.
Hah! You’ll never see this guy getting into anything with a potential downside. It’s not how he plays.
And the middle east is ALL downside. He’ll avoid doing anything except mouthing sanctimonious platitudes.
Lex, you have it all wrong. At the end of the day-the US needs to make cuts-because it refuses to raise revenue which is available. Obama has recognized this and has rightly proposed tobalance the cuts where they are the biggest expenditures. Your earlier statement that the costs of Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable are flat out wrong. With structural changes and removal of the cap-Social Security can do just fine. Medicare reform has to be a part of overall health care reform, something the selfish pigs in our society refuse to recognize while they whine and whine about socialized medicine.
You really want smaller government? Then one has to realize that our addiction to overseas intervention has and useless wars for useless Arabs has grown our government. In that regard, Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate that has it right. If the US wants a smaller government then it must retrench from its overseas commitments. Otherwise, we have to make the choice to pay for the costs of being a superpower AND to have a decent society. We can afford to do both-the money is there, as is demonstrated repeatedly by the rampant greed and sloth of the richest Americans.
Plus-the Europeans have come to understand something we have yet to learn. The world has changed and the ability of the one nation to have global hegemony is diminished. The multi polar world is unstoppable now-primarily because of our delusion we could change the Arab world. They being Arabs, after all, were unable to make it work. Get over it.
If you were a decent host and allowed trackbacks-you would see a link to a much longer reply defacing your position. But you don’t. Nonetheless-I have properly taken you task for the lack of understanding, again.
Thanks for your characteristically gracious, topical and informational response. As for trackbacks, well.
Wow, Skippy got all of the leftist shibboleths in four paragraphs. Most uncharasteristicly brief, unlike his blog. Guess he was afraid of seeing the dreaded TLDR tag
de·face [dih-feys]
verb (used with object), -faced, -fac·ing.
1.
to mar the surface or appearance of; disfigure: to deface a wall by writing on it.
2.
to efface, obliterate, or injure the surface of, as to make illegible or invalid: to deface a bond.
So, your much longer post merely makes superficial arguments, not substantive ones. Thanks for adding to the discourse. That’s just what we need, superficial arguments.
“Available” revenue.
Just sitting in private bank accounts waiting for the government to take it and distribute it to those who didn’t earn it, so that the government-dependent class can be perpetuated and increased.
Available revenue. All we need is some more aggressive expropriation. Obama is just the guy.
Not like surgically removing the leg, lex. More like surgically removing the liver.
What’s infuriating is that Europe, in aggregate, has as much money and more people than the United States. Their total fighting power should be the same as ours.
Instead, they rely on the United States to prop everything up.
See Lex, this is why I habitually read your blog.
Not only do you tell amazing sea stories, you have a penchant for succinctly slicing to the heart of an issue. I’ll be using the bleeding patient analogy, if you don’t mind.
And you deal with your critics with dash and elan. Which is nice.
I think it’s a safe bet that their free ride on our military’s cottails is over. We’re imploding under the same weight that is dragging them down.
And Skippy-san, do you not understand demographics? Simple analysis of demographics will show you that the number of workers supporting each social security recipient with their tax dollars has decreased in the past 20 years. The population is aging. That is irrefutable. Take all of the illegal immigration out of the statistical picture and you’ll see that trend is even worse. Aging population with no children working high-paying jobs = unsustainable. Analysis so easy even a Coastie can do it. Social Security and Mediscare and Medicaid are beyond the point where a “few adjustments” will get their blighted houses in order. They have to be totally reformed. Or preferably gutted. Grandfather in the present retirees and torch the whole lot of it. Our safety net has become a big, fat hammock and the butcher’s bill has come due. Except the baby boomers and the numbskull politicians they keep electing decided to put off the fiscal day of reckoning until their children (and grandchildren) end up having to pay the bill.
Blaming entitlement payments for a reduction in the Defense Budget widely misses the point!
NATO is an anachronism, entitlements or not. That supposed “graveyard” that we are metaphorically whistling by is a false specter. Are we still to believe that a broken down Russia is still a threat after all these years? There are no ghosts in that old graveyard to worry about. Long buried and zombies do not exist. And why do we still remain our European brother’s keeper? Certainly not out of necessity. What military threat have they? Who is going to invade Western Europe, (at least militarily)? So why waste money there for no reason other than our own ego.
Our defense spending is wildly excessive while are social programs are not relative to many countries. Fact. It is more that all the other countries “defense” spending combined! We even spend seven or eight times more that even China! Even if we cut an absurd 50%, we still would spend 3 or 4 times as China. And with MAD, we never will go to war with China, anyway.
The planned defense cuts while significant, needed and justified; they really are not much when put into perspective. A budget cut of $472 billion would only take us back to the base DOD level of 2007! And if that $472 billion were maintained for 10 years, we still would be spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars more than we did in 2000. IOW, not a “cut”.
Entitlements, GDP, defense spending, and deficit spending have all risen tremendously while revenue has been static.
Between 2001 and 2012, the Navy’s combat fleet shrank from 316 ships and submarines to 287, a decline of 10 percent. The Air Force is worse off. Despite its “base” budget increases, during the same 2001-2012 period, the number of active and reserve fighter and bomber squadrons went from 142 to 72, a decline of 49 percent!
Instead of better-trained and equipped forces, since 2000 the Pentagon has added $1 trillion to the non-war budget for excessively costly weapon systems. This extra cost meant we acquired few weapons. We keep spending outrageous sums, and we keep getting less and less. Nothing to do with entitlements.
Our current problems loom large and are across the board. Pointing fingers and blaming one problem while ignoring others is not helpful.
Well put, Flit! But let’s say you go full Costa Rica and zero out the DoD budget (which includes retiree pensions and TRICARE, but that is for another post). Savings $700B.
Then, you tax the top .1% of taxpayers – cut off at $1.5M – at 100%. Take every penny of theirs. You get about $600B. Problem is, even before you get to the second and third order effects, you are $200B short. I’m betting that tactic is a one time shot, because those folks didn’t get that income by being stupid – yes, Matt Damon and Dez Bryant are in that category, do it isn’t 100%, but I’m betting most are smart enough to not let THAT happen again.
So, we are defenseless, potentially with our economy in shambles, and we are still out of round by $200B. What goes next?
Scott – And the alternative is?
Regardless, every little bit helps.
Well, unlike BHO, some people, in the face of grotesque vilification, have actually put a plan on the table.
And somehow, I don’t see dismantling our defense as a “little bit”.
Actually, Flit, I think this was the point where you were supposed to lay out the Unified Plan of Entitlement Spending, or at least explain where you’d come up with the extra $200B to balance the budget *after* you’d set the defense budget at zero and taxed away 100% of earnings for the top 0.1% of taxpayers.
Then there’s next year to consider after these one-time actions.
Maintaining non-discretionary spending is the Federal Kobayashi Maru, the unwinnable scenario.
Every little bit helps, true, but hope isn’t a plan. Even Custer had a plan. Imagine what he could have done had he only hope and change on his side?
– Max
And with MAD, we never will go to war with China, anyway.
Do you really think we would go nuclear if China were to invade Taiwan? Do you really think that they would use nukes to try to reign in the renegade province rather than use conventional forces? And if they did use conventional land and navy forces would we launch nukes, try to counter with conventional forces, or walk away leaving the Taiwanese to fend for themselves?
So there is one scenario in which we could and should go to war where MAD wouldn’t be relevant.
Daryle – Oh, I dunno.
But I do know that for years we were afraid to bomb North Vietnam, and would never land our troops there, for fear – rightly or not – of Chinese retaliation and possible nuclear escalation. I suspect the ChiComs might have the same trepidation. BWTFDIK
You fail to understand the strategy behind MAD. We wouldn’t have to use nukes to keep China from invading Taiwan. All we have to do is, upon detecting a military buildup across the straights, is position a few cruisers near Taiwan and make an announcement about how we are committed to a peaceful resolution to the dispute. Maybe allow a couple of Chinese submarines to discover they’re being shadowed by US boats.
MAD is chess, not boxing. In chess you never take the king.
Jeff, true, MAD is chess but the Chinese seem to be better at it than us. It seems to me that what you describe makes the likelihood of a conventional conflict more likely.
The whole reason MAD exists is that it is impossible for two nuclear nations to fight a purely conventional war. At some point one side is going to start losing and the pressure will grow to win in any way possible. Far better to launch at the outset than to let the enemy attrit your nuclear forces.
What happens if the nuke is launched at Tiawan, with about 5 minutes warning given? There’s nothing left to fight over, we’ll tie ourselves in knots to render aid, and we won’t retaliate by nuking Shanghai if there is only the one missile launch and we are warned.
MAD operates under the assumption that a first launch cannot win. If the first launch removes the goal of the war, doesn’t that scenario change? China won’t win the war, but they’ll remove the problem they were ready to go to war to solve. How is that actually losing in their eyes?
– Max
I find that scenario highly unlikely. A glassed Taiwan doesn’t get China anything, and would cost them quite a bit in cleanup and international goodwill. That being said I don’t think we’d go to war over a nuked Taiwan, sanctions maybe but no shooting, so MAD would still be successful in preventing war between the US and China. Sucks for the Taiwanese, and those of us who are fans of animated news.
We will fight the PRC one of these days. Sooner if we keep showing weakness.
Fifteen trillion in the hole and the Won wants to take it to seventeen. For what, so he can cover all of the favored people he waived from ObummerCare.
The only time he will ever care about the defense of this Republic is if they pulled his SS detail.
There once was a woman who weighed 1,000 pounds! She was the heaviest woman in the world. Nevertheless, her husband was kind, caring and forgiving – if not blind – about her excess. He did not worry about her excessive weight. Inexplicably he reveled in it.
Of course to weigh herself she needed an uncommon scale of very large proportions. Therefore she weighed herself on a 10,000-pound scale. Thus her 1,000 weight was only a mere 10% of the scale’s maximum scale limit.
But over time she unfortunately gained even more excessive weight! Doubling, she now weighs 2,000 pounds! Now she is 20% of the old scale!
But not to worry. Her sycophantic husband obscures her fatness. He goes out and buys a new scale. This new scale has a limit of 20,000 pounds, double the old scale’s 10,000-pound limit. Therefore, all is well, isn’t it?
The now beyond belief obese woman is once again only at 10% of the new scale. All is well, supposedly. Or is it?
Those who argue that our defense budget spending is justified by our increased GDP and proportional percentage are little different than the sycophantic husband attempting to sooth a world champion fat wife by buying a larger scale for her.
Well if the Prototype Kilogram were made of ice and thus constantly shrinking using an absolute weight would be pretty useless.
Pointing out that defense spending is near historic lows is a valid response to the claim that defense spending is unsustainably high. We have, after all, sustained far higher levels.
The fundamental issue is that defense is a Contitutional peer of the federal government. Health insurance and education are not. I’d be more than willing to discuss cutting defense spending to balance the budget once all non-Constitutional expenditures are zeroed out. Until then there’s still plenty of fat in the budget, leave the muscle alone.
Hey flit, what about the $2.2 TRILLION in entitlement spending? If you are going to use a parable about a fat woman and her sycophant husband, you ought to do it there.
The Defense budget will be about 17.6% of the Federal budget. Entitlements will be nearly 53%. And they have nearly doubled since 2001, without two wars or an “acquisition holiday” of almost a full decade to have to account for.
Wanna ‘splain that one?
Transfer payments ≠ DoD expenditures.
But both are a drain, despite their disparate accounting or need.
Huh. Interesting. Social security and welfare benefits, and now health insurance, for illegal aliens who contribute not a dime to the tax base. A raft of people drawing on accounts they never paid into, while others who have paid in their whole lives will never draw.
No, siree. No way that entitlements can be reduced. That would impact the guaranteed government-dependent Democratic voting block.
And the problem is not enough revenue and too much spending on Defense. Defense could be cut ENTIRELY from 2012 and we would still have a $1 TRILLION budget deficit. Nope, couldn’t be entitlement spending.
What was that again about the fat woman and the sycophant husband?
URR –
Actually those “undocumented” – sorry, you ain’t deemed “illegal” without due process (isn’t that in the Constitution?) , despite most employers illegally looking for cheap labor know it and exploit it –…. those undocumented do pay a lot in taxes!
The poor undocumented not only live in constant fear, but they actually pay a far greater portion of their meager income in tax than you or I do. And they pay a huge lot more than BofA. They pay sales tax; property, tax, and a large portion of them pay income tax. They obviously cannot have social security numbers. But very many have taxpayer IDs, and routinely file income taxes every year! And have for for years! The IRS knows, and they accept their taxes, no questions asked.
When talking about entitlements, which few undocumented receive, most people forget about the lucrative military pensions, the free health care, and the VA benefits many deserving individuals receive. Not to mention the 10% Lowes and Home Depot discounts, and multiple other benies. In fact many double dip – receiving both military retirement pay along with VA disability. I don’t begrudge them that. They earned it. But it is wildly expensive! And ever more so. Military pensions and health care for active and retired troops now cost the government about $100 billion a year! And VA costs are in addition.
Just like my friend Wareen B., I have no problem with raising my taxes and cutting my entitlements across the board, as long as it is done fairly and intelligently.
But please don’t blame the poor migrants who are employed by unscrupulous people, yet they pay their taxes, send money home, and spend more time in their church than I do. Sheesh!
If St. Peter grills you, don’t blame me.
flit/
Sorry, but to be an “alien” (a legal term of art under international law) found “undocumented” inside the borders of America makes one ipso facto “illegal.”
If the poor undocumented live in constant fear of being found to be, you know, undocumented and here illegally, I think I have a solution for that particular problem. Walk south. Am I supposed to feel pity for the bank robber because he is in a high-risk professional and lacks health care benefits and union representation?
Now granted, the illegals pay sales tax, but if they pay income tax under who’s SSN are they paying it? And if they pay property tax, how did they get on the property tax rolls under a fake SSN? Seems to be I ought to advertise my SSN and let every illegal use it — my social security and property tax contributions would be mighty, and at the end of the day I could deduct it from my federal tax.
You’d think that in a land where all of us are numbers in a database we ought to be able to set this tax argument to rest.
Military pensions and health care now cost the government $100 billion per year? So about ten times what the DoE hands out for green energy to one failing company. To put that into perspective, the Enron scandal cost the shareholders only $11 billion, and Enron’s total assets were just under $64 billion. In other words, we now loan to risky or at best questionable solar panel companies 10% of what we owe an army and yet that created or maintained only 4000 jobs. For most of a year. With no retirement. A typical US Army division is 15000 soldiers, maybe we can hire them back making solar water heaters and erase the deficit?
If St. Peter grills me, I’m not worried. I did all my sins under your SSN.
– Max
Flit, I am certain you actually believe the nonsense you spouted forth just then. But I am under no obligation to do so. An illegal alien’s tax burden is higher than mine?
Interview any Southern California hospital CFO and ask what the number one unrecovered cost is. Do so in a room where nobody can hear you. Each will tell you it is the treatment of illegal immigrants.
Ask the people of Sacramento if the Nortenos or Latin Kings or the Mexican Mafia live in fear, or of they do. Those poor undocumenteds of MS-13 and Barrio Pobres.
But hey, you missed the bigger point anyway, quite intentionally. That entitlement spending has grown to more than three times the Defense budget. So that we have a fourth, and larger than ever, generation of people dependent upon the government. Another generation who will vote for whomever promises them the most of my money. Compared to the cost of this massive handout of other peoples’ money, the cost of military retirement and health care is less than miniscule.
Not to mention the fact that the Federal Government has an obligation to provide for the common defense.
You want to give more? Go ahead. Your money, your choice. Demanding more of mine to hand to those who didn’t earn it is tyranny. And communist.
Flit reminds me of the expression: “If it walks like a duck…” This goes back to a series of exchanges that flit and I had some while ago.
Paul
Why not make cuts to other departments along with DOD? Surely those departments are not entitlements. With all the talk in the present regarding shared sacrifice and fairness, it is only right that other governmental agencies play along. Yes, I know this shall not come to pass.
I live in the upper Midwest, and according to the DoA I’m a farmer. I’m not, really, but if four people at the extension office want to fill out a hundred pages of paperwork for me to sign and afterwords I get that check from the USDA for $18, well, who am I to argue?
I mean, now Mom can have that operation!
I don’t know a real farmer who would quit if there were no USDA. I wonder how many teachers would quit if there were no USDE?
More importantly, I wonder how many unions would cease to exist without those Federal entities?
– Max
MaxD – Now granted, the illegals pay sales tax, but if they pay income tax under who’s SSN are they paying it?”
Federal and State law mandate that employers withhold taxes from all employee’s earnings.
It makes no difference if the employee is undocumented, they still have taxes withheld from their pay.
Obviously they do not and cannot obtain a Social Security number. Instead they have to have a Taxpayer ID number. In fact many undocumented independent contractors also obtain a taxpayer ID too and pay taxes. Talk to some; you will learn. The IRS cares not about their citizenship.
But what you forget, Flit, is that the illegals consume far more in government services (Medicaid, incarceration, visits to emergency rooms for bloody noses, WIC, Section 8, etc.) than they return in taxes. When you’re making minimum wage, they aren’t going to be taking out much in taxes.
Yep. Just like a lot of legal citizens do.
Documentation makes no difference.
Sorry Flit, but having worked “off the books” in HS and college I know for a fact that employers aren’t withholding taxes. They are paying cash to the illegal. There is a whole second economy that doesn’t pay taxes. A pick up truck pulls up to a Home Depot parking lot and and three illegals hop in and they get paid cash. No withholding. No employer portion contributed. Nada.
PS – The constitution says that a criminal can’t be convicted without due process. It doesn’t say that actions/status is legal until proven otherwise.
Also, the absence of documents isn’t the issue. The legality of their presence here is the issue.
Willfully ignorant of the abuses of SSN’s by illegals? Apparently.
If spending cuts are impossible and tax increases are unthinkable does that make double digit inflation inevitable?
Yes, and worse. Stock up.