While the Democratic and Republican candidates for president blather on about non-issues like who will be meaner to immigrants, who will use the most water on torture victims, who wanted to be president at the youngest age, who’s the best Christian and other such nonsense, and while Congress and the president dance their meaningless dance of pretend conflict, let’s for a moment ponder something more momentous.
What if the US just packed up and left Iraq and Afghanistan, and brought the troops all home, shut down the 750-odd overseas bases we operate around the globe, and slashed our military budget by 75 percent?
That would be an instant savings of roughly $365 billion per year.
Now, the first thing we need to do is address the criticism that such an action would be abandoning the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, whose countries we have been systematically destroying for the last four to six years.
Okay. I agree we have an obligation here. So let’s allocate say $50 billion in annual aid to those two countries, to be funneled through international aid organizations, from the U.N. to CARE and the Red Cross/Red Crescent.
That still leaves $315 billion in funds to play with.
We also have to address those who will ask fearfully if we aren’t opening ourselves to attack from our many enemies abroad.
' But hold on a minute. If we cut the US military budget down to a paltry $115 billion a year, that would still leave us with by far the largest military budget in the entire world. The next biggest spender on its military is China, at $62.5 billion, followed by Russia, at $62 billion. That is to say, our military budget, if slashed by three quarters, would still be about equal to Russia’s and China’s military budgets combined. And that only tells part of the story. Most of China’s army is a repressive police force, required to keep order in what is a widely despised dictatorship, and would never be available for foreign adventures. (That’s why China, with a million or more soldiers, hasn’t ever invaded Taiwan, with a population of just 23 million. The army China could spare for an invasion would probably be no larger than the one little Taiwan could field to defend itself.) The same can be said for Russia, which is eternally in danger of splitting apart into myriad smaller states, and has to be held together by threat of force. Figuring that neither China nor Russia is likely to attack us anyway, given that one needs us to buy all the junk they make, and the other needs us to buy their oil, maybe we should look at those “axis of evil” states and their ilk, that might think we’re easy pickin’s if we were to slash our military spending.
Well, maybe not. It turns out if you add up all the military budgets of America’s other “major” enemies—those so-called “rogue” states like Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria—and throw in a few extra possible hostiles for good measure like Myanmar, Somalia and, oh, what the heck, Grenada (you never know when that troublesome little island might have another revolution!), it comes to a grand total of $15 billion spent on military stuff. That’s less than one-seventh of what we’d still be spending.
And of course we wouldn’t be alone. Our allies—Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Israel, Holland, Canada, Italy, Australia, South Korea and Spain for example, though there are surely more who would come to our aid in a crisis—collectively spend another $258 billion on their militaries (and yet even today we have our military based in many of those countries. Go figure!). So we would hardly be at anybody’s mercy.
We could even take a few billion of that $115 military budget and shift it productively from our huge and useless strategic nuclear program (you know, the one that just lost six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles for 36 hours, and flew them across the country, unprotected and unnoticed) over to operations like border patrol, satellite monitoring, and the Coast Guard, where it might actually help protect us, instead of just funding futuristic weapons that will never be used for anything but helping generals justify their stars by having units to command.
So here we would be with still, by a factor of two, the largest and most advanced military in the world, but at peace and with $315 billion a year suddenly freed up and at our disposal.
What might we do with all that money?
Well, for starters, if we accept for argument’s sake that the Social Security System is running at a deficit and will eventually be defunded (which, by the way, I do not for a minute believe), actuaries say that injecting about $130 billion a year into the fund (the equivalent of increasing everyone’s SSI payroll tax by 2 percent) would solve the alleged problem indefinitely, allowing all current and future Americans to count on an inflation-adjusted secure retirement forever. So let’s do that. Then there’s education. Currently, the federal government spends about $58 billion a year on education. That gives us classroom sizes in our cities of 30-35 kids (40 here in Philadelphia). That’s not education—that’s child abuse (and teacher abuse). So what say we boost that amount by 50 percent—a much better educational reform than a lot of stupid “No Child Left Behind” testing regimens. Then there’s healthcare, on which the government spends a paltry $52 billion, leaving us with declining life expectancies and infant mortality rates, particularly among our poorest citizens, that are a scandal. Let’s boost that spending by 50 percent, too.
Geez! We still have another $130 billion left!
The federal government right now only spends some $40 billion a year on science, energy and the environment. That includes nuclear power and waste containment, and the entire NASA budget. Given the global climate change disaster we’re facing, we should probably double that, with the added $40 billion going all to environmental research, don’t you think?
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
This is the "Mother of All Issues" -- but at the same time,
is "The Issue That Dare Not Speak Its Name" (to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde).
Just try to wrap your mind around this single idea: What does it say about our political system, that an issue this important, may simply not be spoken of, by any prominent political figure? All by itself, this tells you how f*cked our system is. All discussion of the "defense" budget has been declared "off the table" by both parties, and by the media. You just can't talk about it, not because it's unimportant, but because it's TOO important.
Anyone who suggests cutting the defense budget (even by a lousy 15%, let alone a more reasonable 75%) is called a "left wing wacko." You immediately get accused of "being soft on Communism" -- OOPS, I mean, "being soft on terrorism." You get accused of wanting the throw the US economy into depression.
And that latter point is no joke, either, because the US economy is indeed entirely dependent on constant arms sales, and on having a good reliable enemy, preferably one that can never be defeated (because once you defeat the enemy, the game is over, which is bad for business). The US economy is a constant war economy, so it needs a constant supply of enemies. That's part of the reason that we're such aggressive belligerent assh*les, on the world stage. It's smart pro-active business policy, putting more enemies "in the pipeline."
The best invention yet, though, is the creation of the "phantom" enemy. The problem with the Communists was that they existed, in a well-defined sense. True, they were never really in Central or South America, the way our lying government claimed. But at least there was such a thing as "Communists." And when the USSR dissolved, it was necessary for the US to acknowledge that the "enemy" was (alas) no more. // The War on Terror is a great improvement on that, because now we've got a phantom enemy. Now, the war can last forever, and if the US government says the phantoms are still out there, who are we mere mortals, to disagree? The existence of the enemy is entirely up to the US government. This is a brilliant innovation, in perfecting the politics of permanent war.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1211 comments)
on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 8:03:02 PM
Take money away from one super-wasteful and counterproductive bureaucratic monstrosity and dump it into another one. The Social Security part is understandable, as we don't want people out on the streets; but the others are an insane excercise in futility, bordering theoretically on state worship.
As latter economists of the Roman and Soviet empires might've said: "Brilliant!"
by
Dan Alba (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 52 comments)
on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 11:18:11 PM
Dr. Paul is the sole candidate who proposes your exact postion, and defends it pretty much the way you have (and which position I heartily support). Maybe we oughta get you as his running mate:)
by
wch (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 12:30:10 AM
No, Paul doesn't support what Lindorff is talking about.
He does support cutting the military budget -- but opposes almost all govt spending programs, including Medicare, most of government's role in public education, anything that's considered to be "welfare," and so on. Altogether, Paul is 50% opposed to the vision described in Lindorff's article.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1211 comments)
on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 9:04:14 AM
Thanks for this piece. I think this is one of the, if not the, most important issue. That's why I would not vote for a Clinton, Obama or Edwards. These folks actually favor increasing the military budget. I'd rather vote for a "nobody" like Joe Schriner than vote for a major party candidate who will not address this issue.
by
Bill Samuel (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 336 comments)
on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 5:47:08 AM
WCH, I've heard Ron Paul talk about cutting around half the military budget and using the unspent funds to defend the borders and tide SS and other dependents over; but I haven't heard him suggest doubling the size or budget of federal health or education bureaucracies. He's talked about making good on the promises to federal dependents and allowing people to opt out of the programs, but not putting in untold billions into the hands of the same bureaucrats who, all this time, have been divvying up the people's pie amonst themselves while running healthcare and education into the ground. Ron Paul does not vote in favor of central planning in the areas of health care or education, but he believes in making good on the promises made to the people by said federal bureaucracies.
by
Dan Alba (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 52 comments)
on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 9:00:40 AM
think of all the heart attacks and stress related illness you will cause among conservatives if we leave a military budget just slightly larger then Russia and China combined.And what about poor Dick Cheney if you cut billions from his stock options.How will he live on the paltry hundreds of millions he has and you might even kill him with a heart attack.Then funding social security when Republicans are trying to drain it dry will just make the sick and elderly weak,they should stand on their own to feet.Give more money to education,why,when we have testing to improve the quality of education.We don"t need to attract good teachers.No,i'm afraid your plan is hopelessly evil.What would God think if we try to live in peace with the heathens of the world
by
liberalsrock (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 126 comments)
on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 9:40:05 AM
8 comments
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