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Monday, April 20, 2015

Dan Froomkin — US Military Spending Still Up 45% Over Pre-9/11 Levels; More Than Next 7 Countries Combined


Converting currencies to USD as a measure of actual military expansion may be misleading, owing to differences in relative prices and relative costs. While Chinese tech is not yet up to US standards, China can produce most military equipment at a far lower cost, since even though material cost is about same, the labor cost is far less in China and Chinese military-industrial complex is 100% state owned enterprise. The Chinese strategy is and has been swarming. Throwing so much at an enemy so fast as to overwhelm defenses. The PLA is the world's largest army (~2,285,000), which is still less that 2% of the population.

What is perhaps as significant in the arm industry. The US has been and is in first place, with Russia in second place. China has just acceded to third place. These countries are competing with each other in terms of value. The US produces the most advanced weapons. 

While Russia is closing the technology gap with the US after lagging for several decades, China's military equipment offered for sale in the arms market is not a par with the US and Russia, But it is ten times less expensive than comparable US products, making Chinese military goods attractive to many countries who want the most bang for the buck based on quantity rather than quality. Based on competition in the arms market, the US, Russia and China are definitely engaged in an arms race. Again, follow the money.

Russia and China have also set as policy the goal of competing with and surpassing the US technologically as soon as possible, owing to increased US bellicosity directed toward them with NATO expansion in Europe and the Asian pivot in the Pacific. This is not going to dampen down anytime soon and portends to continue for the foreseeable future, or until the situation culminates in war.

The so-called peace dividend after the disintegration of the USSR is over. Ramping up the military generally puts pressure on social spending.
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4 comments:

  1. JohnApril 20, 2015 at 9:55 PM

    These figures will never truly capture the true scale of US military spending.

    Once you factor in US military spending that's surreptitiously done by other departments (e.g. nuclear weapons by the department of energy, various space based military technology by Nasa, biotech "research" by the departments of agriculture, CFDC, National Institutes of Health, etc), the percentage is probably well over 50% of global spending.

    That is, US military spending is more than the rest of the world combined.

    And this probably does not factor in the civilian spy agencies like the NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, etc.

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  2. Tom HickeyApril 20, 2015 at 11:28 PM

    Right, but the same goes for other countries.

    It's very difficult to get a handle on military spending, let alone actual military expansion, because it is secret. No country wants others to be able to find out what it is really doing so they bury it as deeply as possible.

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  3. JohnApril 21, 2015 at 9:43 AM

    Tom,

    You're absolutely right. No country wants to be honest about the true nature of their military spending.

    But no other country has anything resembling the scale and reach of the US departments I mentioned (all those libertarians who want to close down the departments of energy, agriculture, health, etc are in for a nasty surprise if they ever get remotely close to power). China, Russia, India, Japan, UK, France, Germany, South Korea, etc are all certainly involved in this creative military accounting, but they're all small potatoes.

    And you rather wonder what would happen to the US economy if this military spending ceased. The Pentagon and its "Mini-Me" departments are the beating heart of the US economy. Moving away from this military Keynesianism would require some mind-boggling reorientation of the US economy to save the US from falling into the depression to end all depressions. It has to be done, but how is another matter. It's truly frightening.

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  4. Tom HickeyApril 21, 2015 at 11:43 AM

    Moving away from this military Keynesianism would require some mind-boggling reorientation of the US economy to save the US from falling into the depression to end all depressions. It has to be done, but how is another matter. It's truly frightening.

    Exactly. Now the horses are driving the carnage and they are running away with it. Theres' no way to rein this thing in without crashing the economy other than an offsetting expansion of the welfare state and massive funding of public investment, which is, of course, jus what the US needs to stay competitive economically. Now we are funding the military through infrastructure depreciation and social dysfunction.

    Of course, the US could fund both military expansion and huge public investment and a massive welfare state simultaneously, but that would lead to galloping inflation.

    Military spending in inherently inflationary since it is putting income into the economy, increasing effective demand without expanding supply domestically.

    So this has to be compensated for though controlling other spending or increasing taxes. Traditionally, taxes are increased to offset increased military spending, but that's a political taboo in the US presently.

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