The Cost of Empire IV-Imperial Overstretch
This is the final post of a four part series. For those of you who want to read it in one piece, you can find it here.
In September of 2000, at the height of the Presidential election campaign, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released a report entitled, Rebuilding America’s Defenses. PNAC was comprised of the major neoconservatives including Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, William Kristol, John Bolton and Richard Perle. They were not interested in letting the end of the Cold War slow down America’s military buildup.
At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible…At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals.The challenge for the coming century is to preserve and enhance this “American peace.”
Underlying the failed strategic and defense reviews of the past decade is the idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union had created a “strategic pause.” In other words, until another great power challenger emerges, the United States can enjoy a respite from the demands of international leadership. Like a boxer between championship bouts, America can afford to relax and live the good life, certain that there would be enough time to shape up for the next big challenge. Thus the United States could afford to reduce its military forces, close bases overseas, halt major weapons programs and reap the financial benefits of the “peace dividend.” But as we have seen over the past decade, there has been no shortage of powers around the world who have taken the collapse of the Soviet empire as an opportunity to expand their own influence and challenge the American-led security order.
In sum, the 1990s have been a “decade of defense neglect.” This leaves the next president of the United States with an enormous challenge: he must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership, or he must pull back from the security commitments that are the measure of America’s position as the world’s sole superpower and the final guarantee of security, democratic freedoms and individual political rights.
This is the “Pax Americana”– laid out in stark terms. Four months later, the authors of this document took over the National Security Strategy of the United States and immediately began to implement the “American Peace”. Their formula was based around four core missions.
- defend the American homeland;
- fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
- perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
- transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”
As clear as their vision was for the future of American force projection, the neoconservatives were not unrealistic about the power of domestic politics to slow down their transformational strategy. The first year of the Bush Administration met with considerable resistance both inside and outside the Pentagon to the strategy of “The Vulcans” , as Wolfowitz and Feith’s team were called. Buried deep on page 63 of the 90 page PNAC document was an acknowledgement of the need for a catalyst.
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
Conspiracy theorists have seized upon these two lines to show that Cheney and his teams knew that 9/11 
was being planned and they let it happen to provide the catalyst. But it is not necessary to buy into this line of thinking to understand that the planning to overthrow Saddam Hussein had been in Wolfowitz’s head since probably 1976. Because they had studied Leo Strauss, Walter Lippman and the “manufacturing of consent”, they were well prepared to use the public’s hysterical reaction to 9/11 to move the country behind the Iraq War. Our task here is not to review the propaganda mission of the Bush Regime or its egregious strategic blunders, but rather now to turn to the economic effects of a $2 trillion “war of choice”. The reality of Bush’s huge military buildup began to put more stresses on the debt markets.
Fourteen months after the 9/11 attacks, Ben Bernanke, then a Fed Governor, gave a speech to the National Economists Club in Washington entitled, “Deflation: Making Sure “It” Doesn’t Happen Here”. The combined shocks of the Dot Com crash and 9/11 had drastically weakened demand and the Fed had studied the ten year Japanese battle with deflation as a cautionary tale. Bernanke, also a student of the punishing deflation of our Great Depression, was genuinely worried that corporations were losing all pricing power. Bernanke laid out the dangers of deflation.
Suppose that deflation is proceeding at a clip of 10 percent per year. Then someone who borrows for a year at a nominal interest rate of zero actually faces a 10 percent real cost of funds, as the loan must be repaid in dollars whose purchasing power is 10 percent greater than that of the dollars borrowed originally. In a period of sufficiently severe deflation, the real cost of borrowing becomes prohibitive. Capital investment, purchases of new homes, and other types of spending decline accordingly, worsening the economic downturn.
For Bernanke, this situation was a central banker’s worse nightmare, and he urged the Fed to get out ahead of this disaster by drastically cutting rates. His boss Alan Greenspan bought into the argument. Although rates were already historically low, the Fed continued to cut, ending at a 1% Fed Funds rate in June of 2003. As James Grant pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, this deliberate “reflation” of the economy had a number of effects.
The central bank pushed the interest rate it controls, the so-called federal funds rate, all the way down to 1% and held it there for the 12 months ended June 2004. House prices levitated as mortgage underwriting standards collapsed. The credit markets went into speculative orbit, and an idea took hold. Risk, the bankers and brokers and professional investors decided, was yesteryear’s problem.
The historically low rates in 2003 and 2004 were also very helpful for George Bush in that they made financing the Iraq War relatively cheap by historical standards. On May 15, 2003, The New York Times noted 
that the 10 Year T Bill had fallen to a 45 year low yield of only 3.52%. But as the war moved into its second full year and the Treasury borrowing continued to mount the once mighty dollar began to fall. From an economic point of view it was first noticed in the oil market as Mid East oil traders kept raising prices to make up for the dollar’s fall. As 2005 began the fall of the dollar accelerated. Warren Buffet disclosed he had a major short position in the dollar on global currency markets and the price of oil continued its relentless climb, especially if you were buying it with dollars. The continuing fall of the global reserve currency posed an especially tricky problem for the governments of China, Japan, Korea and Saudi Arabia. They were all selling a huge amount of goods and commodities to the U.S. and thus were taking in far more dollars than they needed for domestic uses. The Chinese and the Saudis were essentially pegging their own currencies to the dollar in order to keep prices stable and U.S. demand strong. But as the value of their dollar reserves was being marked down on a daily basis, they began to contemplate spreading their reserve holdings into Euros. But they were caught in a trap. If they sold a lot of dollars their remaining reserves would plummet, U.S. interest rates would rise rapidly and a global recession might start, thereby harming their export industries. All through 2006 they tried to avoid this problem, but by mid 2007, they had no choice. This relatively benign diversification of risk on the part of sovereign wealth funds could have easily been absorbed in a global market with oceans of liquidity, except for one problem. The four year long housing bubble was rapidly deflating.
The world financial markets might have been able to handle the effect of yet a second bubble bursting in 6 years except for the fact that most Wall Street firms had been more profligate in their borrowing than their hapless sub-prime mortgage holders. As James Grant explains, they were leveraged to the gills.
For every dollar of equity capital, a well-financed regional bank holds perhaps $10 in loans or securities. Wall Street’s biggest broker-dealers could hardly bear to look themselves in the mirror if they didn’t extend themselves three times further. At the end of 2007, Goldman Sachs had $26 of assets for every dollar of equity. Merrill Lynch had $32, Bear Stearns $34, Morgan Stanley $33 and Lehman Brothers $31. On average, then, about $3 in equity capital per $100 of assets. “Leverage,” as the laying-on of debt is known in the trade, is the Hamburger Helper of finance. It makes a little capital go a long way, often much farther than it safely should. Managing balance sheets as highly leveraged as Wall Street’s requires a keen eye and superb judgment. The rub is that human beings err.
So we had the perfect storm: A U.S. Government needing to borrow $50 billion a month; a banking system needing to replace perhaps $1.2 trillion in capital losses;rapidly rising delinquencies in consumer mortgages, credit cards and auto loans. This could not end well.
The British economist Baron Robbins wrote that “economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” In a sense, politics is the process by which we decide which alternatives we will dedicate our ”means” to. Dick Cheney’s idea of a “Pax Americana” has brought us to this perfect storm. The chart on the left, of the 2007 discretionary budget, could not make our priorities more clear. In an era of global liquidity and easy money, we might, like the condo-flipper of 2006, have been able to avoid the hard choices between guns and butter. But the next two years and beyond will not afford us that luxury. As our country’s most important bond manager, Bill Gross has pointed out, the only exit strategy from our current economic nightmare is an old fashioned Keynesian stimulus plan.
To provide a stable recovery path, government spending needs to fill the gap – not consumption. Public works programs, badly needed infrastructure repairs, as well as spending on research and development projects should form the heart of our path to recovery.
But that stimulus will not be possible as long as the Military continues to hog 56% of our discretionary budget. Yesterday in Jordan, Barack Obama noted that the President must make hard choices that go beyond the responsibility of regional military commanders, including,
“what’s adequate for our security interests, factoring in the fact that not only do we have Afghanistan, which I believe is the central front on terror, but also the fact that if we’re spending $10 billion a month over the next two, four, five years, then that’s $10 billion a month that we’re not using to rebuild the United States.”
This is a start in the right direction, but the ultimate question of where the source of America’s power resides is yet to be addressed in the current Presidential campaign. The answer for the neoconservatives that make up John McCain’s National Security brain trust are clear. They all were members of the Project for the New American Century and the “constabulary duties” they see for American forces are endless. But a new vision of American power that resides in its economic, cultural and technological power has yet to be clearly defined by the Democrats. Perhaps a Presidential campaign is not the place to introduce America to the notion that spending more on the military than all our rivals and allies combined is folly. But at some point in the not too distant future this is a conversation we must have. I say this not because of some idealistic notion of peace, but rather from the hard bitten realism that comes to anyone who circulates in the world’s capitals. We are engaged in a global commercial competition of such scale that unless we are able to rebuild our schools, our health care system, our energy system, our transportation and digital networks we will surely become a second class power.
In 1997 the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of Great Powers
The United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of Great Powers, of what might be called ‘imperial overstretch’: that is to say, decision-makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the total of the United States’s global interests and obligations is nowadays far too large for the country to be able to defend them all simultaneously.
Saying this less than eight years after the fall of communism brought ridicule from the Conservatives then planning their return to power. How ironic that a mere ten years later it all came true. But this story does not have to end like some sad tale of Nero-like decadence at the fall of Rome. Those of us that have spent our life in business know that “creative destuction” can unleash the powers of imagination. It will be our task to imagine a way to free our country from the grip of a permanent war economy.
It will not be easy, but it must be done.
A great set of articles thankyou jon.
there are plenty of examples of empires falling in history. But what about creative destruction bringing about massive positive change?
A great set of articles thankyou jon.
there are plenty of examples of empires falling in history. But what about creative destruction bringing about massive positive change?
Bravo! Now we need to think about what you have written. I hope Obama has people perusing the blogs, looking for questions, ideas, and solutions. And I hope he sees this, if not now, at least within his first few months in office, as a fundamental challenge he must address.
Bravo! Now we need to think about what you have written. I hope Obama has people perusing the blogs, looking for questions, ideas, and solutions. And I hope he sees this, if not now, at least within his first few months in office, as a fundamental challenge he must address.
Jeepers John, how do you do it? how do you chew through so much information and are still able to arrive at clear and meditated conclusions by the end? (I tend to lose my way half-way there). Good god, this was a good read. I’ve taken a break from reading blogs lately and return only to find that you’re constructing these masterpieces. Part IV…, I’ve got some catching up to do.
I have a good feeling about Barack of late. There have been numerous challenges to his character and otherwise, and nothing seems to even phase him. McCain does as much as to serve him accolades (well, it was the NAACP). Like , it is now finally our time, all of ours time, to bootstrap up out of where we have been, even if we are foisting our hopes and wishes onto a person, who better than him? He thinks on his feet, and is unconventional in that his path is separate from the dogma that has governed every politician from time immemorial, and he can and will win. This is our time, man. I’m gearing up to change the world, myself.
Jeepers John, how do you do it? how do you chew through so much information and are still able to arrive at clear and meditated conclusions by the end? (I tend to lose my way half-way there). Good god, this was a good read. I’ve taken a break from reading blogs lately and return only to find that you’re constructing these masterpieces. Part IV…, I’ve got some catching up to do.
I have a good feeling about Barack of late. There have been numerous challenges to his character and otherwise, and nothing seems to even phase him. McCain does as much as to serve him accolades (well, it was the NAACP). Like , it is now finally our time, all of ours time, to bootstrap up out of where we have been, even if we are foisting our hopes and wishes onto a person, who better than him? He thinks on his feet, and is unconventional in that his path is separate from the dogma that has governed every politician from time immemorial, and he can and will win. This is our time, man. I’m gearing up to change the world, myself.
Um, Jon, you are just flat wrong:
“Conventional wisdom holds that non-defense discretionary spending has been cut to make room for defense spending increases. Conventional wisdom is wrong. According to OMB Historical Table 8.2, non-defense discretionary outlays – adjusted for inflation –surged by 34 percent between 1999 and 2005. That is the largest six-year expansion since the 1970s.
One way to compare current discretionary spending trends is by presidential administration:
Overall discretionary outlays rose 2.3 percent annually under President Clinton, compared to 9.7 percent annually under President Bush. Defense was virtually frozen in nominal dollars under President Clinton, and has averaged 12 percent annual growth under President Bush. Non-defense discretionary outlays rose 4 percent annually under President Clinton, versus 8 percent annually under President Bush.
Let me re-emphasize that last point: Non-defense discretionary spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton.”
http://www.heritage.org/Research/budget/tst021606a.cfm
SO, non-defense spending has gone up. Kinda takes the wind out of your sails.
But what could be the REAL issue? Hmm…
“The real reason for concern comes from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, whose steep growth will likely crowd out all other spending.
The math is simple. Annual spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – what I call the “big three entitlements” – is projected to leap by 10.5 percent of GDP between now and 2050. That money will have to come from somewhere. The entire 7.9 percent of GDP currently spent on discretionary programs will be at risk.”
—–
Jon seriously please STOP pretending! It is an outright lie to go further without actually REALLY dealing with this point.
We are being squeezed MORE every year because YOUR generation is getting old and there are TOO MANY OF YOU.
The subtitle of your series should be, “Or Caring For Old Baby Boomer Hippies Is More Important Than Protecting American Interests.”
Jon, you generation is kinda well DONE, we can’t keep taking care of you. You can scream to cut military all you want – but REALLY solving for budget issues is 100% about CAPING baby boomer payments. There are too many of you!! Do the noble thing, go gently into the good night.
Um, Jon, you are just flat wrong:
“Conventional wisdom holds that non-defense discretionary spending has been cut to make room for defense spending increases. Conventional wisdom is wrong. According to OMB Historical Table 8.2, non-defense discretionary outlays – adjusted for inflation –surged by 34 percent between 1999 and 2005. That is the largest six-year expansion since the 1970s.
One way to compare current discretionary spending trends is by presidential administration:
Overall discretionary outlays rose 2.3 percent annually under President Clinton, compared to 9.7 percent annually under President Bush. Defense was virtually frozen in nominal dollars under President Clinton, and has averaged 12 percent annual growth under President Bush. Non-defense discretionary outlays rose 4 percent annually under President Clinton, versus 8 percent annually under President Bush.
Let me re-emphasize that last point: Non-defense discretionary spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton.”
http://www.heritage.org/Research/budget/tst021606a.cfm
SO, non-defense spending has gone up. Kinda takes the wind out of your sails.
But what could be the REAL issue? Hmm…
“The real reason for concern comes from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, whose steep growth will likely crowd out all other spending.
The math is simple. Annual spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – what I call the “big three entitlements” – is projected to leap by 10.5 percent of GDP between now and 2050. That money will have to come from somewhere. The entire 7.9 percent of GDP currently spent on discretionary programs will be at risk.”
—–
Jon seriously please STOP pretending! It is an outright lie to go further without actually REALLY dealing with this point.
We are being squeezed MORE every year because YOUR generation is getting old and there are TOO MANY OF YOU.
The subtitle of your series should be, “Or Caring For Old Baby Boomer Hippies Is More Important Than Protecting American Interests.”
Jon, you generation is kinda well DONE, we can’t keep taking care of you. You can scream to cut military all you want – but REALLY solving for budget issues is 100% about CAPING baby boomer payments. There are too many of you!! Do the noble thing, go gently into the good night.
Great series, especially Part IV.
I think drastically reducing our military spending, as much sense as it may make and as necessary as it may be, is the most difficult political challenge we face, greater than health care, energy security and global warming.
One reason for this is that almost none of the political groundwork has been laid yet for this change. This groundwork takes time. Look how long it has taken to build public support for health care reform and fighting global warming, and neither issue has been seriously tackled yet.
This series of articles is a wonderful first step, but I think we are many, many years from seeing a significant reduction in defense spending, if it happens at all. Security and safety are such powerful emotional drives that it is difficult for most people to look at defense spending through the lens of a cost/benefit analysis.
I have high hopes for Obama, but I don’t see him tackling this issue in his first term, if ever.
Great series, especially Part IV.
I think drastically reducing our military spending, as much sense as it may make and as necessary as it may be, is the most difficult political challenge we face, greater than health care, energy security and global warming.
One reason for this is that almost none of the political groundwork has been laid yet for this change. This groundwork takes time. Look how long it has taken to build public support for health care reform and fighting global warming, and neither issue has been seriously tackled yet.
This series of articles is a wonderful first step, but I think we are many, many years from seeing a significant reduction in defense spending, if it happens at all. Security and safety are such powerful emotional drives that it is difficult for most people to look at defense spending through the lens of a cost/benefit analysis.
I have high hopes for Obama, but I don’t see him tackling this issue in his first term, if ever.
Jason,
I think you hit on two especially salient points. The first is that a direct assault on the military-industrial complex (again, apologies for the expression) is untenable without major cultural groundwork in place.
In the same way that the United States could not have staged a proper rebellion against Britain without first establishing a strong and free-standing domestic economy, it will be very difficult to dislodge the current beast without a strong and well-ordered offset already in place.
And that’s where your second point comes in, about the gut-level demand for security. At one point, individual security meant protection from invading hordes, and later, bellicose would-be empires. Now, it’s much more complex. We worry about the security of our jobs, our health, our investments, even our identity. What we don’t worry about at all is foreign invasion. It’s just not an issue. Even terrorism isn’t, statistically speaking, that big a threat. After all as many people died in traffic accidents during September 2001 as died on 9/11. The difference is that just as many people have been dying on the roads every months since then (roughly 100 times the WTC death toll at this point) without any disruption to normal life – at least on the national level (condolences to those who have a more personal relationship with these statistics.)
Our lack of concern with invasion is due, in part, to investments we’ve made in our military. But when every other industrialized nation can achieve the same result at 1/10th the price, it’s clear that we’re wildly over-insured in one area, and horrifically unprotected in others.
In terms of the cultural shift that needs to presage military de-escalation, what’s needed is a focus on individual security, integrity, privacy, dignity, and self-determination. The stronger these strains become, the more resistant the culture will be to the shrill, fear-based propaganda that the military-industrial complex uses to maintain its grossly overbearing position.
Jason,
I think you hit on two especially salient points. The first is that a direct assault on the military-industrial complex (again, apologies for the expression) is untenable without major cultural groundwork in place.
In the same way that the United States could not have staged a proper rebellion against Britain without first establishing a strong and free-standing domestic economy, it will be very difficult to dislodge the current beast without a strong and well-ordered offset already in place.
And that’s where your second point comes in, about the gut-level demand for security. At one point, individual security meant protection from invading hordes, and later, bellicose would-be empires. Now, it’s much more complex. We worry about the security of our jobs, our health, our investments, even our identity. What we don’t worry about at all is foreign invasion. It’s just not an issue. Even terrorism isn’t, statistically speaking, that big a threat. After all as many people died in traffic accidents during September 2001 as died on 9/11. The difference is that just as many people have been dying on the roads every months since then (roughly 100 times the WTC death toll at this point) without any disruption to normal life – at least on the national level (condolences to those who have a more personal relationship with these statistics.)
Our lack of concern with invasion is due, in part, to investments we’ve made in our military. But when every other industrialized nation can achieve the same result at 1/10th the price, it’s clear that we’re wildly over-insured in one area, and horrifically unprotected in others.
In terms of the cultural shift that needs to presage military de-escalation, what’s needed is a focus on individual security, integrity, privacy, dignity, and self-determination. The stronger these strains become, the more resistant the culture will be to the shrill, fear-based propaganda that the military-industrial complex uses to maintain its grossly overbearing position.
Morgan-Don’t quote me factoids from the Heritage Institute. They have no credibility on this issue. The fact remains that even before the “War supplemental” the DOD took 56% of 2007 discretionary spending speaks for itself. I didn’t even try to calculate all the other knock on costs to the War the Joe Stiglitz has outlined.
I know you want us boomers to shut up and go quietly, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Morgan-Don’t quote me factoids from the Heritage Institute. They have no credibility on this issue. The fact remains that even before the “War supplemental” the DOD took 56% of 2007 discretionary spending speaks for itself. I didn’t even try to calculate all the other knock on costs to the War the Joe Stiglitz has outlined.
I know you want us boomers to shut up and go quietly, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Jason and Alex-You are both right in that this is a long education process. How we knit together the cultural shift (individual security, integrity, privacy, dignity, and self-determination) with the political will is the problem before us.
Jason and Alex-You are both right in that this is a long education process. How we knit together the cultural shift (individual security, integrity, privacy, dignity, and self-determination) with the political will is the problem before us.
Well it is now official… “it is now gonna happen.”
You won’t own up. Your generation is too big to support. To be truly fair, you have to split what we can afford to spend on you and and be happy with a smaller share for each of you.
You owe it to this country to use LESS resources – but you don’t care. Just another ME Generation thing, huh? You personally want more resources and will sacrafice the security of the next generation to have it.
For you this is 110% about continuing to increase Medicare and Medicaid. Everything else you talk about is virtually meaningless if you don’t focus on splitting Medicare and Medicaid amongst a larger group of peolpe. Wonder why you won’t do that?
Greedy. It is just plain greedy. You need to be more introspective. It is time for some sacrifice.
Well it is now official… “it is now gonna happen.”
You won’t own up. Your generation is too big to support. To be truly fair, you have to split what we can afford to spend on you and and be happy with a smaller share for each of you.
You owe it to this country to use LESS resources – but you don’t care. Just another ME Generation thing, huh? You personally want more resources and will sacrafice the security of the next generation to have it.
For you this is 110% about continuing to increase Medicare and Medicaid. Everything else you talk about is virtually meaningless if you don’t focus on splitting Medicare and Medicaid amongst a larger group of peolpe. Wonder why you won’t do that?
Greedy. It is just plain greedy. You need to be more introspective. It is time for some sacrifice.
Morgan-WTF- Quit trying to change the subject. We are not talking about Social Security and Medicare here. We are talking about the desire of your partisans to continue to fund a bloated military far in excess of what we need to defend our country
Morgan-WTF- Quit trying to change the subject. We are not talking about Social Security and Medicare here. We are talking about the desire of your partisans to continue to fund a bloated military far in excess of what we need to defend our country
Bravo. A tour de force.
Jon has accomplished a historical review and critical analysis of American economic and military history from Wilson to Bush. It’s relatively short, well-organized and written with style and grace. His analysis contains no hyperbole. It has the authentic ring of truth.
The information is presented so that people who are not economic or military experts (for instance, me) can understand it clearly.
Must reading for Barack Obama, John McCain, and every American who intends to vote.
Jon, I hope you will be able to publish this someplace where it will reach the widest possible audience — maybe the NY Times Magazine, or the Wash Post Outlook section. I hope you can also get it into print in the form of a short book. It deserves a major publisher. — Bernie Hayden
Bravo. A tour de force.
Jon has accomplished a historical review and critical analysis of American economic and military history from Wilson to Bush. It’s relatively short, well-organized and written with style and grace. His analysis contains no hyperbole. It has the authentic ring of truth.
The information is presented so that people who are not economic or military experts (for instance, me) can understand it clearly.
Must reading for Barack Obama, John McCain, and every American who intends to vote.
Jon, I hope you will be able to publish this someplace where it will reach the widest possible audience — maybe the NY Times Magazine, or the Wash Post Outlook section. I hope you can also get it into print in the form of a short book. It deserves a major publisher. — Bernie Hayden
The only rational way to size a military force is through a thorough and objective assessment of the threats we are likely to face over the next years and decades. The military services claim to do just that, and they do produce documents that superficially meet that requirement. I have been witness to some force-sizing attempts, however, for the Air Force. Interestingly, most of the participants in the meetings and conferences I attended were budget people, not war fighters. That is because, whatever the threat may be, it is the budget, and projected budgets, that define the size and strength of military forces. Then, whenever a real threat should arise (rapid, aggressive growth of the Chinese Navy, for instance) the services will treat that as a new threat, requiring new money. Never mind that the early detection of such threats is the primary purpose of our mammoth intelligence-gathering force; and the leaders of our military forces are charged with the responsibility to respond early on to such threats.
There are at least five segments of our society who will be involved in any attempt to right-size our military structure. First of all, of course, is the military itself. The services are constantly involved in internecine warfare, battling over budgets, manpower limitations, and pitting one major weapon system against another. But they are quite capable of joining forces whenever they perceive any threat to their long-term interests. Then there is the Congress. With a military plum in most Congressional districts, few members do not have a vested interest in the size of military forces and/or the development and building of major weapon systems. Almost all members also have a vested interest in re-election, and the money from the industrial side of the MIC is very welcome. The enormous corporations have all the money they need for lobbying, outright bribery, and even advertising. Note that the Washington Post often carries full-page ads for new weapon systems, as if the families who subscribe are often in need of a new fighter or artillery piece. The fourth piece of the puzzle is, of course, the American people, the voters. We have proven time and again to be utterly susceptible to alarms and cries for patriotism and defense, especially when American soldiers are in harm’s way. Finally, the conservative, especially neo-conservative establishment can never be discounted. At the moment, their influence seems to be waning, but they will be back. And every attempt to even address the issue of military strength will be met with howls of outrage and accusations of treason by every terrifying pinstriped warrior (envision Paul Wolfowitz in full cry) within reach of a microphone or tv camera.
So, Jon, you have set us a challenging task. Given the scope of the challenge, perhaps the best we can do is try to understand the nature of the beast and generate a few ideas for addressing the need for a rational defense policy. We will ultimately need a strong leader, unafraid of the shouting and fist-waving sure to follow any attempt to address the issue at a national level. That leader probably would be unable to complete the job in even eight years, but it is possible that he could set us on a more reasonable course, especially as it becomes more obvious how tenuous our grasp on empire becomes.
The only rational way to size a military force is through a thorough and objective assessment of the threats we are likely to face over the next years and decades. The military services claim to do just that, and they do produce documents that superficially meet that requirement. I have been witness to some force-sizing attempts, however, for the Air Force. Interestingly, most of the participants in the meetings and conferences I attended were budget people, not war fighters. That is because, whatever the threat may be, it is the budget, and projected budgets, that define the size and strength of military forces. Then, whenever a real threat should arise (rapid, aggressive growth of the Chinese Navy, for instance) the services will treat that as a new threat, requiring new money. Never mind that the early detection of such threats is the primary purpose of our mammoth intelligence-gathering force; and the leaders of our military forces are charged with the responsibility to respond early on to such threats.
There are at least five segments of our society who will be involved in any attempt to right-size our military structure. First of all, of course, is the military itself. The services are constantly involved in internecine warfare, battling over budgets, manpower limitations, and pitting one major weapon system against another. But they are quite capable of joining forces whenever they perceive any threat to their long-term interests. Then there is the Congress. With a military plum in most Congressional districts, few members do not have a vested interest in the size of military forces and/or the development and building of major weapon systems. Almost all members also have a vested interest in re-election, and the money from the industrial side of the MIC is very welcome. The enormous corporations have all the money they need for lobbying, outright bribery, and even advertising. Note that the Washington Post often carries full-page ads for new weapon systems, as if the families who subscribe are often in need of a new fighter or artillery piece. The fourth piece of the puzzle is, of course, the American people, the voters. We have proven time and again to be utterly susceptible to alarms and cries for patriotism and defense, especially when American soldiers are in harm’s way. Finally, the conservative, especially neo-conservative establishment can never be discounted. At the moment, their influence seems to be waning, but they will be back. And every attempt to even address the issue of military strength will be met with howls of outrage and accusations of treason by every terrifying pinstriped warrior (envision Paul Wolfowitz in full cry) within reach of a microphone or tv camera.
So, Jon, you have set us a challenging task. Given the scope of the challenge, perhaps the best we can do is try to understand the nature of the beast and generate a few ideas for addressing the need for a rational defense policy. We will ultimately need a strong leader, unafraid of the shouting and fist-waving sure to follow any attempt to address the issue at a national level. That leader probably would be unable to complete the job in even eight years, but it is possible that he could set us on a more reasonable course, especially as it becomes more obvious how tenuous our grasp on empire becomes.
Morgan, it is with great effort to comment on your post politely, so I’ll leave it to this:
re: “Or Caring For Old Baby Boomer Hippies Is More Important Than Protecting American Interests.”
Please explain how caring for Americans is not an American interest.
I am neither of that generation, nor American, by the way. As an outsider I often see American society boil things down to “us” vs. “them” – (liberals vs conservatives, just for one example). You have taken it to absurdity delineating yourself generationally from your countrymen, and declaring boomers, or hippies or whatever, “them”.
The world will be a better place when we realize that it is in everyone’s best self-interest to see that we’re all in this together. At the moment we’re heading to tragedy of the commons on a global scale.
Morgan, it is with great effort to comment on your post politely, so I’ll leave it to this:
re: “Or Caring For Old Baby Boomer Hippies Is More Important Than Protecting American Interests.”
Please explain how caring for Americans is not an American interest.
I am neither of that generation, nor American, by the way. As an outsider I often see American society boil things down to “us” vs. “them” – (liberals vs conservatives, just for one example). You have taken it to absurdity delineating yourself generationally from your countrymen, and declaring boomers, or hippies or whatever, “them”.
The world will be a better place when we realize that it is in everyone’s best self-interest to see that we’re all in this together. At the moment we’re heading to tragedy of the commons on a global scale.
AV, you aren’t understanding the issue.
There are too many baby boomers to determine what we think is “good enough” care, and then grant them all that level of support. Infact in history of social services, we never think that way. We first ask? HOW MANY of them are there? And in this case the answer is: too many to take care of as projected.
The “crisis” we have coming on the horizon is 100% tied to the aging boomer population. “Boom” as in – there was a baby boom… and they didn’t have enough children and grandchildren to take care of them. We don’t have enough workers to support them.
Discretionary spending is a DROP inthe bucket compared to entitlements. And while entitlements for the young make total sense, entitlements for the old need to be rationed.
Now do you weaken your military’s future, to care for the elderly? No. Do you remember what huge wasteful program Jon isn’t cutting while he weakens our defenses? Yes.
If this was about entitlements for education, for pre-natal healthcare, for higher education, for infrastructure, or for technology – that would be a noble conversation.
But unfortunately thats not the issue.
Jon is pretending that the bulk of $ is being spent on military and thats not true, the true BULK is to be spent on old people – one of which is Jon.
I’d urge you to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Boomsday-Christopher-Buckley/dp/0446579815
AV, you aren’t understanding the issue.
There are too many baby boomers to determine what we think is “good enough” care, and then grant them all that level of support. Infact in history of social services, we never think that way. We first ask? HOW MANY of them are there? And in this case the answer is: too many to take care of as projected.
The “crisis” we have coming on the horizon is 100% tied to the aging boomer population. “Boom” as in – there was a baby boom… and they didn’t have enough children and grandchildren to take care of them. We don’t have enough workers to support them.
Discretionary spending is a DROP inthe bucket compared to entitlements. And while entitlements for the young make total sense, entitlements for the old need to be rationed.
Now do you weaken your military’s future, to care for the elderly? No. Do you remember what huge wasteful program Jon isn’t cutting while he weakens our defenses? Yes.
If this was about entitlements for education, for pre-natal healthcare, for higher education, for infrastructure, or for technology – that would be a noble conversation.
But unfortunately thats not the issue.
Jon is pretending that the bulk of $ is being spent on military and thats not true, the true BULK is to be spent on old people – one of which is Jon.
I’d urge you to read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Boomsday-Christopher-Buckley/dp/0446579815
This entire series is incredibly informative, thank you! It’s amazing to me that Dick Cheney and the neocons were planning this from the beginning and were handed a perfect opportunity in the form of a national tragedy.
I wonder how long we’ll have to pay for their “Pax Americana” strategy.
This entire series is incredibly informative, thank you! It’s amazing to me that Dick Cheney and the neocons were planning this from the beginning and were handed a perfect opportunity in the form of a national tragedy.
I wonder how long we’ll have to pay for their “Pax Americana” strategy.
Thank you Jon for this demystifying series. I keep wondering about one important part of the equation to our military spending, which is the billions wasted by contractors in this war. No one seems to be concerned with all the gross neglegence and waste that went through these guys and all the foreign relations disasters they caused and are still causing.
Watching only Sen. Byrd trying to muster the up enough breath to ask all the difficult questions on cspan only to hear a General say “The Army Contracting Command has recently filled leadership posts and is seeking to create more in hopes of addressing the problems.” and “we’ll get back to you with information on where the money went that was taken from our reserves.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/23/contractor.hearing/index.html
Its ridiculous that we are not seeing serious reprimands for these crimes and that we are even debating that the whole Iraq war was nothing more than a money laundering scheme by our top brass, that the whole world saw right through before it even happened…
As significant as military over-reach may be, it still seems symptomatic of two very fundamental problems with our government in general, and Congress in particular.
1. Gerrymandering so chronic that Congress can achieve a 9% approval rating (making 43 look like Abe Lincoln) while 94% of seats remain safe. No meaningful change will take place when a body as incompetent and corrupt maintains a choke hold like this on public life – and the public purse.
2. The fact that the US Government – a multi-trillion dollar operation – still handles its accounts on a cash basis. Operating like this in the private sphere (for-profit or otherwise) is illegal for any organization with revenues greater than $1 million per year.
In other words, not only is the government unaccountable to the people, it’s not even accountable to itself – at least not in any generally accepted sense. No wonder the Empire Builders have had such an easy time moving in and setting up shop.
Alex– Thanks for connecting the military spending problem and our economic crisis to democracy.
We’ve got to fix our gerrymandered, rigged, political system and salvage our economy, and we have to do both fast. — Bernie
Alex, excellent point. I agree that accountability is a major step forward in any move for change.
Many countries have effective national electoral commissions that determine the boundaries of electoral wards/divisions, and are independent from parliament or the executive. I often hear it said that one reason the US can’t do this is because the body would be stacked with cronies and be corrupted, but it seems to work well elsewhere (eg the UK, Canada), and while not perfect it certainly couldn’t result in worse gerrymandering than currently occurs.
Is the inability of the US to get this right symptomatic of the broader recent breakdown in civic trust that Obama has been going on about for a while now? Or something that’s a more fundamental part of the national psyche? It seems odd – fatally so – that people can’t trust one another enough to come up with a fair system for elections.
Rachel,
The argument you’ve heard has got to be the original straw man. It’s about as ridiculous as saying ‘because it’s possible for a police force to be corrupted, we won’t have a police force’. The fact that it gets even halfway serious consideration is testament to how obscure the gerrymandering issue really is. If folks had any idea how aggressively and systematically our representatives have worked to distort and devalue the vote, you’d see a second American revolution.
Your point about civic trust is also a good one. The information revolution has turned the art of gerrymandering into a science. And this new-found level of precision and efficiency has changed the game into a bloodsport. The practice itself has a long and sordid history, but only recently (like, in the last two decades) has it become the monstrosity we’re now contending with. Its like a cancer that’s finally metastasized. And yes, there’s is a direct connection between this historical event, and the polarization of civic life that’s come to define our contemporary politics.
Which, I suspect, is highly convenient for the more parasitic organizations that thrive in the current climate. When the political right and left come to view each other as pure evil (godless baby killers vs. unreformed fascists) it’s safe to say that the governing institutions where these two sides cross paths (and swords) will be rendered completely useless.
And that’s just fine, if you’re the MIC. Gangsters like nothing more than infighting among the police.
i was sat here thinking about recent disasters that had happened to my family and thought i should go read on our economy some. im a 24 year old drop out with only a ged, but even with that said i have enough knowledge to realize that our country if the direction isn’t changed is doomed. we have been heading in a downward spiral since the whole enron disaster. then which the medie didn’t conver much but was hugely bigger was the mci worldcom merger that went horribly bad, which my family is a victim of. since then i have noticed a ripple effect going all the way down to the little people. i totally agree the country needs to redirect its funds towards the people but also i think that unless the people stop sitting around and crying about the recession and start putting their foot down to their local senators and delegates and speaking their opinions then it wont happen as fast as it needs to be done. we are the people of this country and bottom line is without our votes these officials and political parties don’t go into office. if we use our voices together and demand that this country do something then maybe it will get done. who knows maybe we need an old fash revolt against the goverment. they want to control how we spend our money and not give us a damn decision in it and when we do try to put our two cents in our president or someone veto’s it and knocks it right back out. honestly i think we are doomed to fall before we ever get back up but lets hope something changes and we can become united again.
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