Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 360 Editor's Choice: 12
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That's just our point
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No it isn't. There are people in the world who are war with us. Talk about intellectual vacuity. As Trotsky said; you might not be interested war, but war is interested in you. We weren't occupying Afghanistan on Iraq on September 11th 2001.
Four percent of GDP is tiny in historical terms; it represents among the lowest level of military spending since World War II and America's birth as a superpower.
I'm noticing that a sense of history is also not a strong facet among commenters on this blog. Figures. Oh well. At least I'm here to call y'all out on it.
It's nice to see people making my points for me.
No there is nobody at war with us. A stateless radical's rantings don't constitute "war" anymore than burning a farmer's coca field constitutes "war."
The September 11th attack was not an act of war. It was an act of terrorism, meant to lead cowards and fools into precisely the reaction that this administration engaged in, wasting money and other resources, tying up men and materiel in an irrelevant response. It's still more disturbing because the immediate response--removing the government protecting bin Laden was effective and limited. Using that terrorist act as pretext for an imperialist war of choice has nothing to do with anybody who is war with us, and is not a scintilla of evidence in support of this bumper sticker foreign policy practice you advocate.
Amusingly enough, you call out to history, which, apparently, began in 1940. Historically, the US demobilized its armed forces at the end of a conflict. The historical anomaly is maintaining a war footing after the war is over, and all threats have been defeated. The rest of OECD, and even former "enemies" see no need for such expenditure levels. You and your cohort have yet to make a case for why the military expenditure should be set as a fraction of GDP, nor why this number is the right number, nor why it needs to maintained in the absence of the Soviet threat that justified such expenditures post WWII until 1989.
A terrorist attack mounted once a decade does not a war make. Nor is the defense against a "viral enemy" one that requires massive expenditures of money on arms and soldiers.
As I said, complete vacuity. Reasoning backwards from a conclusion seeking pretexts for wasting money and lives in ways that damage America at home and abroad.
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More "historical knowledge"
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is no reliable source for either Soviet GDP or for defense expenditures, from about 1970 onward. The CIA routinely overestimated both figures from at least the mid-60s forward. the Soviets overstated economic growth and understated expenditure levels on defense.
The Soviet threat was at its height in the 50s, not because of defense expenditures, but because the economy was growing extraordinarily quickly , under the rapid industrialization strategy.
Claims that the US military caused the Soviet collapse are extremely difficult to support. It's pretty clear that the failed Afghan adventure did the Soviets no good. But the Vietnam failure did the US no good either. The strength of the American economy permitted a recovery from that disastrous adventure. The Soviet economy had no leeway. Having not spent so much on the military* but on the private sector would have accelerated the Soviet collapse, which happened because of the divergence in living standards from the west rather than American ICBMs.
But, again, if spending a large fraction of your GDP on the military makes you stronger, then the soviets should have conquered all, shouldn't they? And Canada should be mewling under the crushing weight of a more powerful enemy willing to spend that money.
Feh. You're out of bogeymen; trying to prop up guys in caves and impoverished dictators is all you have left.
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*one should note, though, that some key military R&D is a foundation to our current economy, with the internet and satellite capabilty high on the list. This is something Chomsky likes to point out--that the military is actual an arm of the industrical R&D system, heavily subsidized. But whatever turns out to be worth something to the private sector, be it GPS receivers or HumVees, it makes its way out of the military sector.
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Soviet defense expenditures in the 80s
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In Frances FitzGerald's Way Out There in the Blue she writes:
Between 1985 and 1987 Gorbachev spent a great deal of efort trying to convince the Reagan administration to restrain the program, presumably because he thought his own military-industrial complex would eventaully force him to adopt a program of some sort to counter SDI, but by the end of 1987 the Soviet leadership did not regard SDI as a threat.
Then, too, the Soviets did not respond to the Reagan admnistration's miliary buildup.
As CIA analysts discovered in 1983, Soviet military spending had leved off in 1975 to a growth rate of 1.3 percent, with spending for weapons procurements virtually flat. It remained that way for a decade. According to later CIA estimates, Soviet military spending rose in 1985 as a result of decisions taken earlier, and great at a rate of 4.3 percent a year through 1987. Spending for procurements of offensive strategic weapons, however, increased by only 1.4 percent per year in that period. In 1988 Gorbachev began a round of budget cuts, bringing the defense budget back down to its 1980 level. In other words, while the US military budget was growing at an average of 8 percent per year, the Soviets did not attempt to keep up, and their military spending did not rise even as might have been expected given the war they were fighting in Afghanistan
the collapsing soviet economy was shutting down the military, not vice versa.