6/29/2023 0 Comments Nervus belli pecunia infinita![]() Navy remains larger than the next largest 13 foreign fleets combined (11 of which are U.S. The reductionists also decry diversions from essential social spending and point out that the defense budget has doubled over the last decade-instead of decreasing as it did after the first Gulf War and the wars in Vietnam and Korea.Ĭontemporary critics of defense spending also cite facts that suggest the United States could downsize even more drastically: America still spends more on its defense than do the next 20 nations combined, accounting for roughly 40 percent of annual world defense expenditure. Citing a history of such gyrations, critics of current spending levels assert that the United States can easily ramp up military expenditure in war proponents lament that past wars were the result of not maintaining adequate levels of preparedness in peacetime. ![]() military allotments have swung dramatically, from a low of 1 percent of GDP in 1929 to a high of 45 percent at the height of World War II in 1944, just 15 years later. The crux of the controversy is just how much smaller-and at what risk? Over the past century, U.S. No one argues that the budget of the U.S. troops were not at war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. If one were to measure what was actually spent rather than what had been congressionally approved, the real defense budget might be considered to have dipped to 3.6 percent of GDP, nearing the 50-year low last seen a year before 9/11-a time when more than 80,000 U.S. Yet even before those automatic cuts take place, this year’s projected defense budget of $645 billion was already lower than it had been only two years ago, by about $45 billion. ![]() Perhaps 1 million jobs in defense-related industries would vanish. The Defense Department would lose thousands of employees, as the civilian work force devolved into the smallest in the department’s history. The fleet would shrink to 230 ships, the lowest number since World War I. Army, we would find ourselves with the smallest number of ground forces since the end of World War II. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that will force the Marine Corps to reduce troop levels quickly by 10 percent. In total, then, about $1 trillion in current defense outlays will vanish over the next decade, roughly at the rate of $100 billion a year. This so-called sequestration will result in additional automatic reductions in defense of about $500 billion. That federal statute established huge fallback cuts-$1.2 trillion over 10 years, to be split evenly between defense and domestic programs-should the Obama administration and the Congress fail to agree on priorities for reducing the deficit. But of more immediate concern is the congressional Budget Control Act that kicks in on January 2, 2013. Whereas Ronald Reagan was caricatured for “starving the beast”-attempting to cut taxes to reduce federal expenditure for unnecessary programs-Barack Obama seems intent on “gorging the beast”: ensuring that the rate of increase in domestic spending is so huge that either tax hikes or defense cuts, or both, become inevitable.Īs part of the 2011 agreement to raise the debt ceiling, the Obama administration has proposed a 10-year agenda of slashing $487 billion from the military. ![]() As the limits of borrowing become clear even to devoted Keynesians, massive budget cuts across the board loom for the foreseeable future. In the last four years alone, the Obama administration has added almost $5 trillion to the national debt, which now is on its way to an aggregate of $17 trillion. Since 2008 the United States has been running serial annual budget deficits of over $1 trillion. Much of America’s success in its wars of the 20th century-and its concurrent ability to deter conflicts-has rested on the nearly “endless” supply of cash created by the vast U.S. He then reminded his audience of senators that nervi belli pecunia infinita: “the sinews of war are endless money.” Cicero knew what he was talking about. ![]() In his fifth Philippic-an invective aimed at rival Marc Antony in January 43 b.c.e.-the Roman statesman Cicero famously lamented the growing size of the subversive Antony’s war chest. ![]()
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