US Defense Spending Tops that of Next 32 Nations Combined

The United States of America is at war. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that it is spending a great deal on defense. However, a recent report suggests that America is not spending wisely. President Eisenhower warned the nation about the military-industrial complex, and peace activists latched onto the term to place blame for ill-conceived combat adventures. However, something far worse may be happening; the current political and economic arrangements of the US may be forcing the nation to spend more than it must on weapons it doesn’t need in the current fight.

Honesty demands that one acknowledge spending as a weak proxy for fighting effectiveness. While it is true that a nation that spends $2 billion might be better protected than one that spends $1 billion, that isn’t necessarily so. A couple of billion spend on cavalry will probably not be more effective than a billion spent on tanks and aircraft. The entire trend toward quantitative analysis in the social sciences is suspect, but especially in matters of defense, a few grains of salt should be kept nearby at all times.

In the wake of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to fix Africa, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [Sipri] has issued a report on aid and defense that shows the world’s arms bill last year hit $1 trillion for the first time ever (although adjusted for inflation it is still just below the Cold War peak in 1987-88). That’s $1,000,000,000,000 – enough to make a million millionaires. And of that, the US share was $455 billion, 45.5% of all weapons purchases, making America number 1. Numbers 2 through 33 combined don’t spend that much, says Sipri, which raises the question, against whom are Americans being defended?

The recent kerfuffle over base closings is a good example of stupid spending from which America cannot seem to wean itself. Among facilities slated for closure are naval reserve offices in Idaho and Nebraska – both landlocked states. The argument that reservists move as part of their civilian career to such places and need a local office to support their needs smells of pretext rather than reason. In the day of broadband internet access, very little face-to-face activity is needed. On a grander scale, just how do nuclear-powered submarines protect America from terrorists based in the deserts of Arabia, Africa and Asia?

Yet these facilities have their supporters, mostly politicians who understand that the jobs that would be lost by closing these bases would mean fewer votes next time around. That was the idea of the base closing commission – it took the heat off the politicians and forced an end to the deal making that kept too many needless bases open. What remains is a nation that is undermining its own economic future by spending unwisely on defense for political reasons against threats that don’t exist – at the expense of personnel and systems that target Al Qaeda and the other jihadists.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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