THE U.S. MILITARY BUDGET– THE THREAT TO CHINA

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THE U.S. MILITARY BUDGET– THE THREAT TO CHINA

Oct. 26 (China Military Analysis cited from onlinejournal.com and written by Nicolas J S Davies) — Last January, Carl Conetta of the Commonwealth Institute’s Project for Defense Alternatives wrote a paper titled “An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending.” Conetta looked at the doubling of U.S. military spending since 1998, and concluded that only about half of the increase was linked to the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or to terrorism. Remarkably, this left over $1 trillion of extra U.S. military spending over the past 12 years unaccounted for — not justified by any policy or strategy that U.S. political leaders have explained to the American public or to the rest of the world.

Equally disturbing, Conetta explained that the surge in military spending between 1999 and 2010 differed qualitatively from the 43 percent spending surge of the 1960s (Vietnam) and the 57 percent surge in the 1980s (Reagan) in that this was not just a peak in a fluctuating historical cycle but rather an unprecedented new baseline for U.S. military spending. From 1951 to 2002, U.S. military spending averaged $425 billion per year (in 2010 dollars) and never fluctuated more than 25 percent above or below that figure. Now it’s 63 percent above it and rising, and the government has no plans to scale back to the “normal” level established during the previous 50 years of U.S. military dominance.

This dramatic increase in military spending contrasts sharply with what the taxpayers who are funding it say they want. A PIPA poll in 2005, when the US military budget was “only” $521 billion per year, found that the average American would choose to cut it by $163 billion. This would have brought the total military budget down to $358 billion, close to the 1998 level when adjusted for inflation, and well within the previous “normal” range. (http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/DefenseSpending/FedBudget_Mar05/FedBudget_Mar05_rpt.pdf) But of course that’s not what happened. Instead, military spending grew another 35 percent over the next 5 years to give the public double the military budget it said it wanted.

Conetta explained the spending splurge in terms of the conflicting dividends of the end of the Cold War: the peace dividend and the power dividend. Even as bases were closed and the numbers of personnel in the U.S. armed forces were reduced in the 1990s, U.S. leaders were at the same time determined to capitalize on the collapse of the U.S.S.R. to expand American power around the world. As we now know, our leaders squandered the peace dividend and their pursuit of the power dividend led us into unwinnable wars and unsustainable hostile military occupations, but the disastrous results of their megalomania have yet to lead to a more rational policy or a genuine recommitment to peace.

Other factors driving the “splurge” were the desire to obtain new weapons and technology without giving up “legacy” systems from the Cold War; and underlying confusion regarding overall U.S. goals and global resistance to them. These factors combined to result in “cover your ass” planning for virtually unlimited contingencies.

The title of Conetta’s paper, “An Undisciplined Defense,” emphasized his view of this whole problem as a huge waste of resources driven by powerful institutional interests and the failure of anyone in government to impose choices, priorities or discipline. In Conetta’s narrative, U.S. taxpayers are the victims, and the greatest risk is that unsustainable runaway military spending and the further militarization of the U.S. economy will turn the United States into something like the “suicide state” that Osama Bin Laden promised it would in 2001…..more here

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