{"id":17529,"date":"2012-02-20T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=17529"},"modified":"2012-02-19T16:39:55","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T16:39:55","slug":"the-invincible-military-industrial-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/02\/the-invincible-military-industrial-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invincible Military-Industrial Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leon Panetta\u2019s Dream Is Eisenhower\u2019s Nightmare<\/em><\/p>\n

During his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned the American people that one of the greatest threats to freedom came not from enemies abroad but from \u201cthe conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry,\u201d which over time would lose sight of defending the United States and become devoted only to its own perpetuation. \u201cIn the councils of government,\u201d said the man who had commanded the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, \u201cwe must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today we are living Ike\u2019s nightmare.\u00a0 Defense spending is not just one of the most sacrosanct parts of the budget but also one of the largest and most inscrutable. Adjusting for inflation, military spending has grown for an unprecedented 13 consecutive years and is now higher than at any time since World War II. Even excluding war costs, the military baseline budget has grown by about 50 percent during the last decade.<\/p>\n

Yet the faintest suggestion of a plan to reduce the rate of the defense budget\u2019s growth inevitably triggers dire warnings that Americans will soon be speaking Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or the mother tongue of whoever is deemed the most powerful adversary of the moment. Consider the Pentagon\u2019s reaction to the recent threat of defense spending reductions following the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (popularly known as the \u201csupercommittee\u201d)\u00a0to find deficit savings of $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The lack of a deal triggered an alternative path to those savings: a sequestration that would cut projected overall spending by $1.2 trillion between 2013 and 2021. Half of those savings are to come from the defense budget\u2014an annual hit of about $54 billion compared to current administration plans.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t confuse that $54 billion with reductions from current spending levels. In August 2011, the Congressional Budget Office projected that discretionary national defense spending (96 percent of all military spending), excluding the wars, would cost $5.3 trillion between 2013 and 2021. After sequestration, that spending will instead total $4.8 trillion, or $500 billion less. That\u2019s 10 percent less than otherwise projected (see the chart)\u00a0but still 10 percent higher<\/em> than current defense spending.<\/p>\n

How did apologists for the military-industrial complex react to the possibility of an increase of just 10 percent rather than 18 percent? Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a November letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), warned that if \u201cmaximum sequestration\u201d goes into effect in 2013, \u201cthese cuts\u00a0would be devastating for the Department.\u201d One of Panetta\u2019s deputies colorfully described the cuts as a form of \u201cself-castration.\u201d Former Defense Secretary William Cohen characterized the possible cuts as \u201cdraconian\u201d and \u201ccalamitous,\u201d Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz fretted that his branch \u201cmay not be able to overcome dire consequences,\u201d and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declared that trimming the rate of military spending growth would do nothing less than \u201cdestroy the Department of Defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is no basis in reality for such hyperbole.\u00a0Adjusting for inflation, sequester cuts would freeze the military\u2019s budget at its level in 2007\u2014a year in which America was ably defended, and plenty of cash flowed to the armed forces.<\/p>\n

All these numbers underestimate the growth of defense spending. The data for 2013\u00ad\u00ad\u201321 exclude war spending, which will add roughly $400 billion during that period, even if the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan proceed as planned. It also excludes mandatory spending, which adds another $6 billion a year on things like military retirement benefits.<\/p>\n

When U.S. defense spending is placed in a global context, flipping out over \u201ccuts\u201d becomes even stranger. A country\u2019s defense budget should be a function of its security needs\u2014the cost to guard against the threats it faces. Secretary Panetta has noted that \u201cthreats to national security would not be reduced\u201d in the face of budget cuts. But it\u2019s far from clear that current spending is commensurate with the dangers the U.S. faces.<\/p>\n

Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute\u2019s military expenditure database show that the United States spent $728 billion on its military in 2010, or about 45 percent of the world\u2019s $1.6 trillion total, more than the next 14 largest military spenders combined and nearly six times more than the next biggest spender, China.\u00a0Most of the other countries at the top of the list are American allies.\u00a0With or without the automatic cuts to defense from the Budget Control Act of 2011, the United States will remain the biggest global military power for at least a generation.<\/p>\n

Defense hawks may have some legitimate gripes about sequestration: Since 42 percent of the cuts in the budget deal come from military spending, defense, which accounts for about 20 percent of annual spending, is being targeted disproportionately. Furthermore, Cato Institute research fellow Benjamin Friedman argues that sequestration is an inefficient method for resizing government.\u00a0When it comes to military spending, the\u00a0process doesn\u2019t allow for prioritization\u2014cutting less important missions and programs to fully fund more critical ones. As written, the law applies equally to all military accounts. The president can choose to exclude only personnel spending.<\/p>\n

Overreliance on across-the-board defense cuts was meant to maximize the pain of sequestration. The idea was to encourage each side of\u00a0the supercommittee to sacrifice in order to reach a deal, meaning tax increases for Republicans and domestic spending cuts for Democrats.\u00a0The committee\u2019s failure doesn\u2019t end those negotiations; it broadens and extends them.<\/p>\n

Defense hawks, however, should be careful what they wish for. Unless Congress changes current law, New Year\u2019s Day 2013 will bring both sequestration cuts and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, two outcomes Republicans wish to avoid. By exaggerating the impact of defense \u201ccuts,\u201d conservatives are giving President Obama important leverage to win revenue increases in exchange for overturning sequestration.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way, Friedman notes. Rather than bellyaching about a somewhat smaller spending increase, Panetta could offer an alternative that allows the Pentagon to choose more wisely among its priorities while bringing spending levels down to a level compatible with adequate national defense.\u00a0That option would relieve pressure for tax increases while allowing the American people to enjoy the dividends from winding down two expensive wars. But if Eisenhower was right about the military-industrial complex\u2019s insatiable need to keep increasing its budget, size, and influence, it is foolish to expect any defense secretary to propose wiser spending, let alone agree to spend less.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Contributing Editor Veronique de Rugy<\/a> is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 reason.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we are living Ike\u2019s nightmare. Defense spending is not just one of the most sacrosanct parts of the budget but also one of the largest and most inscrutable. Adjusting for inflation, military spending has grown for an unprecedented 13 consecutive years and is now higher than at any time since World War II. Even excluding war costs, the military baseline budget has grown by about 50 percent during the last decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}