The 2012 U.S. military budget

The House recently passed a $649 billion defense budget for 2012. The pentagon gets $530 billion and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq get $119 billion. The bill does not include spending for some items, e.g., nuclear weapons, that will also need funding. That is reported to add about another $33 billion, making defense spending for 2012 about $682 billion. For now.

Included in the House bill was, among other things, a provision requiring the pentagon to maintain some weapons it didn't want to maintain. That presumably comes from House members with at least some of that spending in their districts. There are other interesting provisions.

The M777 howitzer - my artillery favorite piece

Context

Military spending in 2010 for the top 8 defense spenders was about like this:

• U.S. - $687 billion - 4.7% of GDP
• China - $114 billion - 2.2%
• France - $61 billion - 2.5%
• UK - $57 billion - 2.7%
• Russia - $52 billion - 4.3%
• Japan - $51 billion - 1.0%
• Germany - $47 billion - 1.4%
• Saudi Arabia - $43 billion - 11.2%

From that short list, spending by the US and its 5 allies on the list amounted to about $946 billion while our top two military adversaries China and Russia spent about $166 billion. The next largest adversary spender on the list was Iran, coming in at 25th with a military budget of $7.0 billion, 1.8% of GDP. Other US allies on the list were Italy ($38 billion) and Canada ($20 billion). Neutral powers India and Brazil spent $37 and $28 billion respectively in 2010.

Questions

The questions are painfully obvious. Why do we spend so much, especially when no one else comes even close? Why do we spend so much when we are deep in debt and ready to make deep cuts in domestic programs? Is our continued military spending in Iraq or Afghanistan going to do any good in the long run? Did our overwhelming military advantages keep deter any wars anywhere or keep us out of wars? For the wars we did get into, how many of them did we win, whatever it means to win these days? Probably none, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why do we spend so much when there is no direct military threat* from anyone? If that is in error, then who is the direct military threat? Mexico ($5 billion) or its drug cartels (who knows how much in 'military' spending)? Is China going to attack with 100 infantry divisions backed by 10 heavy armor divisions? Are the Canadians going to send a hoard of irate lumberjacks and professional hockey players over the border to besiege Green Bay Wisconsin? Are China and Russia (who hate each other) going to pool their forces and attack us through Alaska?

* Military threats don't include terrorism threats. The two are fundamentally different. We spend billions for homeland security ($57 billion for 2012) and billions more on spies and spy technology ($26.7 in 1998; maybe $44 billion in 2005 for the CIA; $53.1 billion in 2010) to deal with terrorism. Spending on terrorism defense is a real growth industry.

If nothing else, it is arguably the case that our massive military advantages helped nudge us into wars, e.g., Iraq part 1 and Iraq part 2, instead of keeping us at peace. Nobody can reasonably argue that massive military spending has kept the U.S. out of war.

The M777 inflicting discipline on

unruly locals in Afghanistan

(from a distance of about 20 miles)

In short, what on Earth do we think we are doing and why are we doing it? Where is the rationale and what is the evidence of a commensurate payoff after decades of massive military spending? I can't see either. China and Russia still hate us and remain military adversaries. Pakistan is slipping away. Iran, Syria and North Korea aren't intimidated - they still do whatever they want. NATO isn't a source of much comfort.

What success?

Where exactly is the success from those trillions in U.S. military spending over the last three decades? What threat has been eliminated? What new friends have we made through all that military spending? What good has it all done? Where is the payoff? Was whatever good it did, if any, worth the awful cost? It looks like we are simply expected to just keep paying our taxes for all of this and keep quiet with no expectation of any benefit.

If nothing else, Republican calls for shrewd and meaningful spending cuts ring hollow. They spend like drunken fools on things they like regardless of actual need. As for the Democrats, they are not much different. President Obama asked for more than what the House approved so far.