Exposed: The Real Purpose of Defense Spending

Hint:  It is Not For National Defense

Spending on National Defense, particularly spending on hardware (planes, missiles, helicopters etc) is huge in the United States.  It also huge in the rest of the world.  It is even huge in places that don’t have the money or don’t have the need for a large amount of defense hardware.

The problem is that national governments do not have a lot of money.  In the U. S. and Europe, battered by The Great Recession and The Great Stall governments are being forced to cut back.  Furthermore, in the U. S. where anti-tax fever is strong, financing new defense spending by raising taxes is something that will just not happen.  Not now, not for the foreseeable future.

Even worse for those who propose greater government spending on defense is that the need for defense expenditures has changed dramatically.  World War II with its requirements for massive armies is not going to happen again.  Really, it’s not.  Russia is not going to invade Europe.  France is not going to war with England.  Spain will not attack the Netherlands.  Neither Canada nor Mexico nor China nor North Korea are going to send troops into the United States.

Moreover, the nature of warfare has changed.  Large armies, large ships and large concentrations of defense weapons are vulnerable to remote guided missiles.  Unmanned drones can easily sink an aircraft carrier.  The threats to the developed nations are terrorism and technology.  Disruption of the internet, energy distribution and transportation are the real concerns, not an invading army.

So what is the reason for spending more on defense hardware?  This explains it.

Thomas de Maizière, the German defense minister, is expected to present the program of radical cuts to the government’s budget committee on Oct. 26. But according to a confidential document that has been leaked to news organizations in recent days, the ministry hopes to sharply reduce its commitments to purchase a range of flying hardware, including A400M transporters, Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, as well as NH-90 transport and Tiger attack helicopters.

“This is another sad chapter in the saga of shrinking European budgets — with major industrial and political implications,” said Alexandra Ashbourne, an aerospace and defense industry consultant in London. “This is going to be very difficult for the industry to absorb, on the one hand, while on the other you will see the British, the Spanish and everyone else once again questioning Germany’s commitment to European defense.”

Notice the “major industrial implications” aspect of the German decision.  See the main purpose of these programs is not “European defense”.  Exactly what and who is Europe defending itself against that it needs all this equipment?  The major purpose is economics, the support of manufacturing industries and employment.  Defense spending in politically sacrosanct, so public officials of all political philosophy can spend government money to prop up the economy if it spent on defense.

In the U. S. this means that the Obama administration is using the wrong rationale to get its jobs program through the Congress.  It needs to look back at the success of the Interstate Highway System.  That huge government project was enacted as a national defense program.  The U. S., it was said, needed a way to move troops quickly after a Soviet invasion.  (One can imagine battalions boarding Greyhound buses to ride up I95 to defend Washington).  Aid to education was done under the auspices of a national defense act.

So if the President will just transfer the spending in the jobs program to the Pentagon, and not change any of the actual programs, and call it national defense then he would have no problem getting approval from Congress.  No Republican wants to be known as soft on defense spending.