When are we ever between wars anymore?

Unfortunately, the current system has so many vested interests (especially defense contractors) it would take a herculean task merely to start a proper debate in the country.

I think any change would require, at its heart, a restoration of the militia system and an isolationist reorientation in foreign policy.

I don't know how to square that with the military commitments we have made around the world unless re end up repudiating them.

None of this would be a problem if the media & general public knew anything about the modern military.

Tommy Franks seems to have been one of the few Army generals who fully appreciated that joint operations are the future. The next generation of leaders is sure to be on board, but hopefully there are a few more old Army generals (and the Army is the main problem, since they will suffer most in the Rumsfeld/Bush transformation) who get it.

Chris: Your comment doesn't make any sense. The military bureaucrat-types WANT to be isolationist. Going on foreign adventures risks failure.

With the WoT nearly over a drawdown is easy enough to effect. Bush was doing it in the '90s, but Clinton lacked the credibility to lower Defense from 3% to 1% of GDP as he should have.

Brandon:

from 89 to 01, which is why Defense spending could be cut in half. And soon we'll have another opportunity.

Only the dead have seen the last of war.

If you are not ready for war, war you will have.

The military infrastrucure and the warrior class must be maintained during time of peace just so there might be a time of peace. It is only fear of the power of the World Government that allows such peace as he have.

The next generation of weapons and the weapons beyond those most be raised.

We fare best by not being ready--we then build the most modern force from scratch and have a huge advantage.

Rumsfeld's enemies are Rumsfeld's best allies. As long as they are carping on him, he'll not be fired. As long as the anti-war machine hyperventilates against the war, he'll stay. Bush cannot risk a confirmation fight for a new SecDef. Bush'll not let the Democrats postulate on his expense. In normal times, Rummy would have retired a couple of years ago. But he won't as long as his enemies are distorting his records. Rummy will last until Jan. 19, 2009. Mark my word.

OJ:

The pattern seems to be that we lay off after yet again defeating another "unbeatable" foe, only to tempt our enemies into thinking we are weak and precipitating another attack. A huge amount of military spending is totally wasted but at least it's for legitimate purposes.

I say keep military spending ratcheted up. Even if my thesis is wrong, doing so sure seems to irritate all the right people.

Wow, two excellent points in here.

OJ's about how good we are at creating armies from scratch. See WWII and WWI.

And ic's insight that Bush won't subject the country to a SecDef confirmation.

Lots to think about.

Matt:

But cutting not only clears the weeds but triggers economic bloom--that's all the Clinton economy was, cutting Defense in half.

OJ:

I've always been unclear on the mechanism of how exactly decreases in defense spending are supposed to create ideal economic conditions (didn't WWII get us out of the Depression?). Economists seem to think that the prosperity of the Clinton years had a great deal to do with thriving technological innovation and the continuing advance of a service-based economy.

Considering that we're spending a comparatively puny percentage of GDP on defense at the moment I'm surprised you want to reduce it further.

Matt:

Because you're not building anything useful with all that money. How many billions have been squandered since 1945 on nuclear weapons we don't use? Military spending is a sinkhole that diverts you from productive investments. Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall is actually quite good on the topic:

www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/176

That would be true if we were playing Civ, OJ, the problem you are having with your arguement is that most of us know in our bones that any money saved would go to other goverment programs. The peace divident seemed to lead straight to the horror of national health care. There seems to be a level of taxes people are willing to pay, and the military is the least harmful way for the goverment to spend that money on. I do understand your point(I've played a Lot of Civ) but until we bring back the draft(something I am not wanting) we do seem to need a group of men standing around for when we do 'something creative'.

Robert:

No, it didn't--that's why the budget balanced. It all came from the 3% of GDP cut in Defense.

OJ:

That sounds suspiciously like Homer Simpson's line asking Marge why they buy vaccines for diseases Maggie doesn't even have. The value of the nuclear arsenal is deterrence and the economic security provided by being reasonably certain that New York City won't be a hole in the ground when you wake up tomorrow.

Granted, that argument loses some of its effectiveness in dealing with millenarian Islamist fruitcakes like Ahmadinejad but it's worked quite well so far. Besides, as you've noted, we're not even spending that much right now.

I'm willing to trade small amounts of economic gain, assuming that's actually an issue, for extra defense and the naturally uncertain level of economic benefit that strong deterrence provides.

Matt:

By dropping a few on the Soviets we'd have saved trillions of dollars, not to mention the benefit to billions of people.

OJ:

Incidentally, Paul Kennedy believes that economic growth is a zero-sum game and, I trust, still believes that America's national decline is proceeding rapidly. I don't trust him on much of anything but especially not economics.

OJ:

I'd take the less controversial route and just say we should've elected a guy like Reagan 35 years earlier. If any of our presidents from FDR to Carter had understood that communism doesn't work and that true military competition would usher them into oblivion, we could've raised the jackboot from Eastern Europe's collective face in a much more timely fashion.

Yes, he's a good historian who doesn't understand America. That's not uncommon.

Thanks for your time OJ. You are correct that all the cuts came from Defense. Kind of my point. Nothing else got cut and we almost lost all the savings(and more) to National health care. Trading a nail for a headless nail does not make me warm and fuzzy......

No, we didn't. ClintonCare was not only defeated but returned Democrats to permanent minority status.

I agree, OJ, but I see the Republicans trying to shoot themselves in the foot with this immigration thing(As you have shown us here). They only have to be lucky once. We have to be lucky every time. I would feel a lot better if we saw State or the Department of the Interior purged. Until that time, it looks like Heads they win, Tails we lose.

Military spending is not a sinkhole. Contrary to what Al Gore claimed, the internet was actually created for the Defense Department. Satellites were originally for defense, now we have TV's, cell phones, GPS systems. Even the computers and nuclear energy were invented and improved for our military. The airplanes would not have advanced as much without the dare devil test pilots from our military. It is easy to complain the amount of money we have spent on the military, it's harder to figure out how much civilians benefit from such spending. The world is a much more exciting place with all those military spending. What other investments give us as much returns?

Matt Murphy:

The Great Depression was largely over by 1938, as real per capita GNP in 1937 was equal to that of 1929.

What WW II did do for America was to intensely stimulate the kind of development that ic writes about.
Whether that was worth the human cost is debatable.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 26, 2006 3:54 AM

ic:

Orville and Wilbur weren't Air Force. Edison wasn't Army.

It made sense to build military equipment to sell to the Nazis and Commies so they could waste it on each other.

One of the first things the Wrights did was to sell their invention to--the Army, the military applications of aviation having been in their minds all along.

As inventors will always sell new weapons to the military, which is why the military need not be spending the money to develop them.