Military spending by country, 2008
Here’s a truth for you. No one, and I mean no one, can invade the US. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 nations combined, and more naval tonnage than the next 13 navies combined. For this the US gets an army which, sorry American jingoists, is bloody awful at brushfire wars.
The US army should be cut in three quarters, at the very least. The air force should be disbanded, since it refuses to do its job anymore (it hates doing close support of troops and its planes are too expensive to be used in most circumstances, which is one main reason for the rise of drones) and the army and navy can pick up the necessary pieces.
The navy should be America’s main arm, but even it needs some cuts, and the carrier flotillas need a serious rethink, they’re nothing but big targets in the case of a war against a real enemy.. The army should be a much smaller expeditionary force, designed so it can be ramped up in the case of the sort of war that requires a mobilization.
The US cannot afford its current military. The budget should be cut in half, at a minimum. That budget, and the huge distortions that the military industrial complex is inflicting on America, are a large part of what is destroying America as an economic power. The best and smartest techies are flooding into the military industrial complex as fast as they can get security clearances, because post dot-com bubble it pays far better and has far better salaries than any other part of the economy except the financial industry. Certainly the military industry isn’t the only thing destroy America’s economy (who needs them when you have the banks) but in the long term, they’re doing more than their fair share.
With a much smaller expeditionary force the US will stick to bombing and shelling, and occasionally kick over small Caribbean countries, which is as it should be, because even the large army has proved radically bloody incompetent at very great cost for almost zero results (what, exactly, is the benefit to the US of the Iraq war? An Iraq aligned with Iran?)
And Americans need to stop talking about being invaded. No one can, no one will. You’re a continental power with a huge nuclear arsenal, even if they could get to your borders, the idea of invading a continental mass the size of the US is insane: there is no one who can do it.
Go back to a pre-WWII army, with a relatively large navy (though not as large as what you have, which is over 50% of the entire world’s naval tonnage). You’ll be fine. Honest. And so will the world. The world is not being made safer by US brushfire wars and neither is America.
And hey, maybe you can take the money and give yourselves real universal healthcare as opposed to some garbage bill that forces you to buy insurance you can’t afford to use.
Ian Welsh
Deleted someone’s comment on this post caught in the spam filter. Deveray I believe. Sorry about that, been under a coordinated spam attack the last few days and my spam trigger finger has become overly itchy.
B Schram
Ian, thanks again for poking that elephant sleeping in the living room. The US military is simply wrong. It is not being used for what it was designed for and is ineffective in what it is being used for. It is amazing to me how the military budget is so sacred despite it’s multiple failures, but schools and other similar domestic budgets are being slashed with a real vengeance. As the old adage goes, wouldn’t it be nice if schools were fully funded and the military had to have bake sales for bombers
tjfxh
No one, and I mean no one, can invade the US.
While I agree with everything you say, Ian, and by implication that the US economy is based on miliatary Keyensianism, which is why it is so difficult to change.
There is also the dimension of 4th and 5th gen warfare, involving network attack. The US can be successfully attacked with a small force that disrupts it economically. Al Qaeda knows this and so do domestic extremists. Having the largest military in the world has no effect on network warfare/economic warfare.
Ten Rules for 5G Warfare
So most of US military spending is military Keynesianism, pure and simple — what Ike warned against as the military-industrial-governmental complex.
Ian Welsh
Oh, Russian bot nets could crash the entire US’s internet tomorrow if they wanted to, but they have no reason to do so.
Suspenders
Hi Ian.
You mention disbanding the airforce, as it isn`t doing its` job, which in your eyes is essentially close air support if I understand you correctly (you`re an army aviation kind of guy I take it ;)).
I`ve always thought of the air forces primary role as air superiority, which helps to account partly for the huge cost of the planes. I suppose you could disband the air force and stick with the naval air arm, although you also mention a rethink of the carrier flotilla, so I`m a bit curious as to where you were going with that one……
P.S. If you`re in Toronto this labour day weekend, don`t miss the airshow 🙂 http://www.cias.org/content/view/37/52/
Ian Welsh
Suspenders,
thing is, the army and navy could do air superiority. They understand that it’s needed, but they don’t think it’s the only thing. The air force wants to do air superiority and strategic bombing, and not much else. They don’t want to do close support and withdrew from the drone program, don’t put enough money into close support planes like the A-10, and so on. They’re also very bad at close air support when they do do it.
And most of their planes are so expensive the only time you can use them is in a real war, because you can’t afford to lose billion dollar (or more) plans attacking some insurgent, which is one reason why drones get used (they’re cheap, and if you lose one, it doesn’t matter).
They’ve also been completely capture by the fundies, and politics aside, that hasn’t been good for their performance.
In short, air superiority can be handled by the army and navy, close support the air force sucks at and doesn’t want to do, and as for strategic bombing, it mostly doesn’t work. And the air force mis-spends its money on overly expensive weapons that would only be really useful in the case of a major war with China or Russia, and in that case, they have far more overkill than they need.
Suspenders
Those are all good points. The most important of which is the Air Forces propensity for grandiose schemes that cost an enormous amount of money, with limited utility. Still, even with its failings I’d still be hesitant to disband the whole service. Certainly, a reallocation of some of their assets which are specific to supporting the other branches ( e.g. air-to-ground aircraft to the army ) would be a good idea, but I still think there is value in having a separate air service with a competency specialising in air superiority, long range bombing, recon, space/satellites, ICBMs, etc. I think there’s still enough there for them to justify a separate force.
From the perspective of allocating resources properly, which the States badly needs (and where I think the thrust of your argument is coming from) eliminting the service entirely and merging it with the others might be the best way to better match spending with military priorities, and get more co-operation amungst the services. However, the only country I`m aware of that`s merged its` services is Canada, in 1968, and we ended up effectively splitting them up again (eg: Canadian Forces Air Command, …. Land Command etc).
Cujo359
I think the Army’s incompetence in Iraq had more to do with its civilian leadership than with the Army. It was sent there with a clear mission, which it did very well – invade Iraq and destroy its military. Unfortunately, no one at the SecDef level or above wanted to think about what to do once Iraq was ours. Rumsfeld actually told his senior military staff to STFU when they broached the topic. After that, they were left to improvise as they went along. Combine that with the tendency Rumsfeld had to promote people who were fool enough to go along with him, and you had a recipe for trouble.
How well they could have performed that mission is anyone’s guess, but as they used to say in the Army before the rules on cursing changed, PPPPPP – prior planning prevents piss poor performance. Yet another bit of wisdom Rumsfeld ignored.
I think a better question is – why do we need to have what amounts to an expeditionary force large enough to defeat a regional power like Iraq? We’re clearly not going to use it to defend ourselves. Other than Europe, Taiwan, and Korea, I can’t think of anyplace where a force of that size would come in handy, and it’s pretty unlikely there will be a war in any of those places in the next few years at least. Yet we continue to fund a force that we can quickly move anywhere to fight anybody. All we ever are likely to do is get into more situations like Iraq.
When you try to figure out how large an army should be, or a navy for that matter, you first have to know what you’re likely to do with it. I don’t think that kind of thinking goes on in government. If it does, then the parameters need to change.
Cujo359
As someone who has had to make the opposite transition, I think you have cause and effect reversed here. Plenty of technical folks would be glad to work in the civilian world, if the civilian world didn’t tend to treat its workers like shit. They’d also be more likely to work there if there were jobs. There haven’t been, for a long time, and for a lot of reasons. “Offshoring” (moving manufacturing operations to other countries) would be one reason. So would stupid, shortsighted American management that put short term profit ahead of long term viability. That link’s about the news business in particular, but as I noted, it was a pretty general trend.
The vast amounts of money we spend on military R & D distort the economy, but if the rest of the economy were better, this particular point wouldn’t be valid. The rest of the economy hasn’t been that good since the early ’90s, at least, except in very narrow segments. Unless, of course, you want to be a short-order cook.
Lex
Ian, i realize that this post is old, but i assume that you’ll see this comment. I have a feeling that my words elsewhere provoked this post…which, btw, i agree with from start to finish.
I just want to make clear that i don’t think the US will be invaded (i don’t even fear those evil bogeymen from Al Quaeda). When i sketched my model for reforming the military, the point was to keep political leadership from deploying the largest contingent of armed forces. To my mind, using an invasion of the US as the trigger is the most reliable way to do that…while mollifying the lunatic fringe (90+% of DC) who think that we’re surrounded by enemies and making it possible for presidents to continue their blather about how well we’re defended from foreign aggression.
Lex
Ian Welsh
Lex,
I think I deleted your comment on how to reform by mistake when I was under a spam attack and being overly delete-ish. If you want to repost it, please do, it wasn’t deleted because I didn’t agree with it or anything (in fact, I don’t even know what was in it.)
Ian Welsh
Oh, reading comprehension FTW. No, acutally, this was provoked by something someone said on a foreign affairs list I was on.
Lex
Ian,
I think it was me who said it on the list to which you refer (in a discussion about the draft). I proposed universal service, but limited the use of universal service inductees to declarations of major war and/or an invasion of the US.
Lex
Ian Welsh
Oh, I didn’t make the connection between this name and your list name. D’oh.
Lex
That would be my fault. I forget that the email addy shows my full name, though i sign with “Lex”. My only point is that i agree with you; i just didn’t want my thoughts to be misconstrued. (Generally i don’t even care, but that’s what respect gets you.)
Ian Welsh
Ah cool, no worries, and thanks for clearing it up. You’re one of the people on the list whose opinions I respect (actually, I respect most, though not all…)