RE: A challenge to those on the left
The whole idea of defense cuts needs to be discussed within the proper context. Yes, we spend more on defense than the next however many countries combined.
One, the biggest single cost component is personnel, and we pay our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines far better than most other countries. This is partly because we have an all-volunteer force, and it almost certainly means that ours are better quality--something that is extremely important in today's highly technical military world.
Two, we may be there now, but China and Russia and others are stepping up defense spending a lot faster than we are. If present trends continue, we won't be that far ahead of the pack, or even ahead of the pack at all, in several years.
Three, and this is not well understood, our military has a completely different--and more expensive--mission from any other military force in the world. Prior to WWI, the world was comprised of a number of competing imperial systems--British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, even Dutch, Portuguese, and Belgian among others. This started to fall apart in WWI with the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, and to some extent Russian empires. Between the wars, Japan grew as an imperial power and Russia re-established imperial control under the communists. Leftover tensions from WWI eventually sparked WWII, which brought about the end of the imperial era. Japan lost its empire, Germany abandoned imperial ambitions, Italy lost its colonies, and UK, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland began divesting theirs. The world was left with two powers--US and the Soviet Union. Except for the US, the developed world (including a big hunk of the other power, Russia) was pretty much destroyed in WWII.
So at Bretton Woods we made the other western countries a deal--we will help you recover economically, and in return you will follow our lead in fighting the Cold War. You don't need to keep your large navies to protect trade with your colonies. We will take the lead in freeing trade worldwide, and we will guarantee safe passage for that trade, as long as you do what we tell you to do militarily. The Dutch and Canadians and Australians eventually got rid of their aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers virtually disappeared from all navies except the US and Russian. Other countries cut way back on their defense spending, with no colonies to defend and with the US guaranteeing their trade routes. You had two dueling superpowers and a bunch of self-defense forces. Then a funny thing happened--we won. And we were totally unprepared for that to happen.
So here we are, almost 30 years later, still carrying out the Bretton Woods model. The problem is that we can't really abandon the military obligations we took away from all those other countries until they are willing to take them back. And the economic preferences we extended to them so they could rebuild their countries are starting to get past the point that we can continue to afford them.
But when Trump starts talking about other countries picking up their fair share of defense costs, he gets slammed for "destroying NATO." And when congress passes a tax bill that puts US corporations on more of a level playing field with the rest of the world, they get slammed for a "giveaway to the rich."
I don't think we can or should engage is the kinds of trade protectionist practices that Trump advocates. But what we can do to level the field in international trade even more is to implement a consumption tax. This could also balance our budget, which we need to do. It could also fund Bismarck health care and a universal basic income. With those things in place, we don't really need our current "poverty trap" welfare system. Let the states pick it up, if they want to, with what they are saving because Bismarck would make Medicaid redundant.
That would largely undo the economic half of Bretton Woods. To undo the military half, which is necessary if we are going to cut defense spending substantially, we are going to have to convince the rest off the world to pick up the slack. They already have, in operations like dealing with the Indian Ocean pirate threat. But it's going to take some negotiations to get there.
One interesting proposal I've seen, with Brexit leading UK to forge closer relations with the Commonwealth, and with UK getting two large VSTOL carriers and India building some STOBAR carriers, is for the Commonwealth countries to combine their defense forces. That would form a force somewhere around half the size of ours. I would also consider some sort of combined relationship between our armed forces and such a Commonwealth force. I would be open to taking it further in the form of some kind of associate membership with the Commonwealth. I can see significant advantages for trade and the economy. In that regard, there has also been some discussion about UK joining NAFTA once Brexit is done.
Of the places where I think we can cut defense spending, one big one is very simple--never fight a war that we don't intend to win. Under the Bretton Woods model, we got drawn into a number of "limited" conflicts like Vietnam and the current Mideast mess, where we didn't even know what victory was, much less how to attain it. If we are spending $100 billion a year on those efforts, we need to come home and save the money. The faster we quit meddling in the Middle East, the faster we will stop terrorist threats against us. We are trying to fight an idea by occupying territory, and that doesn't work.
Another one is our forward deployed troops. The way I see it, there are three potential world hot spots--China Sea, Mideast, and eastern Europe. It seems to me that our strategy should be contain each one within its geographic confines, and within those confines pass the torch to our allies to maintain the balance of power. Consistent with that, we don't need the numbers of personnel advance deployed in any of them. Pull back and replace many active duty slots with ready reservists, who are available if we need them but cost a fraction as much--the Israel/Switzerland/Sweden model. I'd actually favor growing end strength while cutting costs by replacing 400,000 actives with 1,000,000 reservists.
Another is procurement. Go back to the "high/low" mix that Elmo Zumwalt used to preserve nay strength in the drawdown after Vietnam, an approach the proved immensely valuable in Reagan's successful effort to break the back of the "evil empire." We need 12carriers to cary out our worldwide mission, the numbers just don't work otherwise. But we can't afford 12 Fords. So for what we plan to spend for 9 Fords. build 6 Fords and 6 like Kitty Hawk or the UK QEII class with catapults (possibly some catapults and a ski jump, for better interoperability with other navies). Same for our amphib forces, where the LHAs/LHDs are very capable ships, but also very expensive, and a larger number of smaller ships with more varied capabilities avoids problems like having one torpedo take out an entire invasion force, or not having enough hulls to have one standing off Benghazi when our ambassador was there. Same for cruisers/destroyers, where the Burkes are great, but we need something cheaper and more numerous for things like IO pirate patrol, or ASW (where we have really lost a lot of capability, and Burkes are not that well suited, just as Russia and China are building more subs). Similarly for the F-35, where trying to make one aircraft perform three distinct missions (fighter/interceptor, ground attack, and VSTOL multirole) has caused potentially harmful design compromises and drastically escalated costs). Have a top-of-line F-22, then three more strictly purpose-designed aircraft. And bring back "design to cost."
Another is to cut our boated defense admin/overhead. We have more people in the Pentagon today than it took us to win WWII. And depending on how you define ships, the Navy has more admirals than ships, or comes very close. We spend 9% on combat, 14% on combat support, and 77% on admin/overhead, compared with theres of OECD which spends 14%/23%/63% respectively. Getting our overhead in line with OECD norms could save up to $100 billion. There would be a real estate bust in Northern Virginia, but oh well. Now I would spend some portion of that savings on combat and combat support, because we are way overstretched in those areas right now--the number of multiple deployments to the Middle East and the collisions between warships and commercial vessels being two indicia.
These are things that could end up giving us a stronger defense force for maybe $100-150 billion less than we now spend.
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2017 04:51 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
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