At a time where the world is getting more dangerous with Iran's potential acquisition of nuclear weapons as well as having missiles do deliver them and China's dramatic growth of their military, this does not seem to be the time when we make the military smaller. Yet that is what the US is doing. Does that make any sense to you? It does not to me.
While we agree that moving troops out of Serbia, Germany, England and Italy makes sense, we have to be judicious as to what countries of the 90 nations in which we have troops, should be allowed to defend themselves. Can you imagine the South Koreans facing the North without their big brother the US there to backstop them? The same goes for Formosa.
It is not the number of personnel we have in these places, it is the effect it has on the enemy. For example, North Korea knows that if they attacked the South, it would bring the United States into the battle very quickly. It would be an immediate loss if they were to attack. However, if we removed our combat personnel, not only would it take time to relocate them to the South, there could be pressure from the American people, Congress and maybe even the President not to to be involved in a Asian conflict.
Yes, we do have treaties that cover the mutual defense and that might win the day. However, if there was enough angst against the conflict, those treaties might be breached. No one can guarantee that we would follow through on our responsibilities as laid out on any piece of paper.
Adding to the personnel issue, there are major replacement systems, for example the F-22 Raptor and the F-35, have been cancelled. Fighters are only good for a certain number of years and then they must be replaced for a couple reasons. First, the planes, their systems, and their metal/composites become more brittle with age and become less reliable. Secondly, systems continue to advance. Would you want to be in a dogfight with a 1970's airplane against a 2000's airplane? We sure would not.
Cutting the military sounds like a great way to save money. We are the strongest in the world today and don't need all the systems and personnel to meet the challenges of today. However, if we start cutting and others gain parity, what will happen when our national interests are challenged? Do we really want to find out?
What do you think? We would like to hear your comments? Am I way off the reservation or do you agree that we need to maintain a superior force?
Conservative Tom
Pentagon chief: Smaller military means extra risk
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama vowed Thursday the United States will maintain the best-equipped military in history despite deep and looming defense budget cuts, but Pentagon leaders acknowledged the changes present additional risk."Our military will be leaner, but the world must know the United States is going to maintain our military superiority," Obama said in a rare appearance in the Pentagon briefing room.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and several top military brass lined up on the stage behind him, underscoring Pentagon support for cuts that Panetta and others said they know will be criticized as too drastic.
Obama said the emerging strategy overhaul is designed to contend with hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts and refocus the United States' national security priorities after a decade dominated by the post.-Sept. 11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The strategy, devised through a comprehensive review by civilian and military leaders, centered on the military the country needs after the "long wars of the last decade are over," Obama said.
Panetta said that smaller military budgets will mean some tradeoffs and that the U.S. will take on "some level of additional but acceptable risk." But Panetta said that at this point in history, in a changing world, the Pentagon would have been forced to make a strategy shift anyway. He says the money crisis merely forced the government's hand.
The president announced that the military will be reshaped over time with an emphasis on countering terrorism, maintaining a nuclear deterrent, protecting the U.S. homeland, and "deterring and defeating aggression by any potential adversary."
Those are not new military missions, and Obama announced no new capabilities or defense initiatives. He described a U.S. force that will retain much of its recent focus, with the exception of fighting a large-scale, prolonged conflict like the newly ended Iraq mission or the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
"As we end today's wars and reshape our armed forces, we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies," the president wrote in a preamble to the new strategy, entitled, "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense."
The strategy hints at a reduced U.S. military presence in Europe, notwithstanding a continuing close relationship with NATO, and says Asia will be a bigger priority. It also emphasizes improving U.S. capabilities in the areas of cyberwarfare and missile defense.
Obama's decision to announce the strategy himself underscores the political dimension of Washington's debate over defense cuts. The administration says smaller Pentagon budgets are a must but will not come at the cost of sapping the strength of a military in transition, even as it gets smaller.
In a presidential election year, the strategy gives Obama a rhetorical tool to defend his Pentagon budget-cutting choices. Republican contenders for the White House already have criticized him on a wide range of national security issues, including missile defense, Iran and planned reductions in ground forces.
The new strategy moves the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars - like the 1991 Gulf War to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait or a theoretical ground war in Korea - at the same time.
The document released Thursday made clear that while some current missions of the military will be curtailed, none will be scrapped entirely.
"Wholesale divestment of the capability to conduct any mission would be unwise, based on historical and projected uses of U.S. military forces and our inability to predict the future," the document said.
The administration and Congress already are slashing projected defense spending to reflect the closeout of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan. The massive $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.
The Pentagon announced no specifics on the size of expected troop reductions; the Army and Marine Corps already are set to shrink beginning in 2015. The document said the Pentagon will have to find savings in pay and health care benefits for members of the military, but it offered no specifics.
Panetta in recent months had previewed the main themes of the strategy by emphasizing a need to continue pressuring al-Qaida and paying more attention to Asian security challenges, including China and North Korea.
Factors guiding the Obama administration's approach to reducing the defense budget are not limited to war-fighting strategy. They also include judgments about how to contain the growing cost of military pay and health and retirement benefits. The administration is expected to form a commission to study the issue of retirement benefits, possibly led by a prominent retired military officer.
The administration is in the final stages of deciding specific cuts in the 2013 budget, which Obama will submit to Congress next month. The strategy to be announced by Panetta and Dempsey is meant to accommodate about $489 billion in defense cuts over the coming 10 years, as called for in a budget deal with Congress last summer. An additional $500 billion in cuts may be required starting in January 2013.
A prominent theme of the Pentagon's new strategy is what Panetta has called a renewed commitment to security in the Asia-Pacific region.
The administration is not anticipating military conflict in Asia, but Panetta believes the U.S. got so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 that it missed chances to improve its strategic position in other regions.
China is a particular worry because of its economic dynamism and rapid defense buildup. A more immediate concern is Iran, not only for its threats to disrupt the flow of international oil but also for its nuclear ambitions.
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Ben Feller and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report
Tom, here is a good data source for you…
ReplyDeletehttp://www.globalfirepower.com/
Go there and compare the military power of the U.S. to China on land, sea, and air.
I trust you will agree that we have an absolutely OVERWHELMING military advantage on them, and not only in the numbers but also in superior technology.
We spend TWICE as much money on defense as China. That is a fact. It is crazy. They are not going to start a war with us. It is not only because we would easily defeat them, but also because we are their largest trading partner and they own $800 billion of U.S. debt. They are competitors but we nonetheless have a symbiotic economic interdependence. That is something I have never heard you acknowledge.
Incidentally, South Korea, Japan, and Israel all have more military power than Iran. South Korea ranks #7 and North Korea ranks #22.
--David
Look at this article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/military-spending
ReplyDeleteIt talks about the 200% increase in defense spending that China has had since 2000.
China has:
1. 5X the men available and fit for service as the US.
2. Half the land weapons but they are growing that quickly.
3. Naval power is equal to the US, especially when you count their merchant marine.
4. They can build any amount of weapons as their budget increases.
5. They just launched their first carrier.
The biggest weakness we have against the Chinese is their 17 times greater reserves of foreign exchange and gold.
Another advantage they have is their troops (men and materiel) are all in-country. I do not believe they have troops anywhere else but mainland China. Where we have troops in 90 countries. We may have more and spend more but theirs is much more concentrated.
In the Korean War, Chinese inferior equipment overran our more sophisticated by using waves of humans. They have over 4x as many people, they can afford to lose half of them and they still would be overpopulated! This is a distinct advantage!
1. 5X the men available and fit for service as the US.
ReplyDeleteSo what? We can kill as many of them as they can produce. This isn't hand-to-hand feudal armies fighting. This is mega-ton bombs dropped on them from airplanes or fired from navy ships.
2. Half the land weapons but they are growing that quickly.
Their military budget is half of ours also. I asked you before, would you be satisfied if we just matched them in military spending? Right there, we can cut our spending in half and still stay ahead of them for the foreseeable future.
3. Naval power is equal to the US, especially when you count their merchant marine.
Merchant marine ships are not fighting ships. They would have no chance against the U.S. Navy. They are used to ship all the stuff that Wal-Mart imports from China.
4. They can build any amount of weapons as their budget increases.
Yes, they can, but their budget is nowhere near what the U.S. spends -- either in absolute terms or as a percentage of GDP. You are talking hypotheticals. I am talking reality.
5. They just launched their first carrier.
So now they have ONE. The U.S. has 11.
I guess you have to believe that we do not already have OVERWHELMING military superiority over China in order to justify your opposition to cuts in military spending.
The reason they have the 17 times more in foreign exchange and gold is that their government invests proportionately a lot higher percentage of GDP into their economy than into their military. From a return-on-investment standpoint, military spending is one of the worst forms of government spending compared to infrastructure, education, and other areas where the Chinese ARE getting ahead of us! Think about that.
--David
The major difference is the role the US plays in the world and the one that China plays. China is a carnivore, eating assets at an unprecented pace. It even moved an entire mountain from South America to China and relocated the village that was on the mountain into new buildings; all for the copper that made up the mountain.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile it supports countries (North Korea) that are not democratic.
On the other side, the United States is the one major power of the world with responsibilities to encourage democracy around the world. In that role we have troops around the world.
David, you are off target when you say "their government invests proportionately a lot higher percentage of GDP into their economy than into their military." The difference between China and the US is apples and oranges. If you want to make an accurate comparison, compare the US in 1920 and China today. Both countries were growing quickly and becoming the center of the world. You will find that China is spending a significantly more percentage wise than the US was at that time.
China is a growing threat and to ignore them is to be foolhardy.
Combining their population, their economic prowess, and their growing influence, China is not going away anytime soon. We will have to deal with them sometime in the future and we better be ready!
You wrote, David, you are off target when you say "their government invests proportionately a lot higher percentage of GDP into their economy than into their military."
ReplyDeleteNo, I can correct. China's military budget for 2011 is only 1.4% of GDP and only 6% of their federal budget. By contrast, the U.S. military budget is 4% of GDP ($725 billion). You are entitled to your own opinions, but not our own facts.
You set up a forced false dichotomy between "ignore" them on one hand vs. outspend them exponentially every year even though our military is already VASTLY superior to theirs on the other hand. Can you envision any possibilities between these two ridiculous extremes? Ron Paul can. So can I.
You talk about 1920 history. What history tells me is that in the long-run the empire with the strongest economy can build and sustain the largest military. I think the Chinese understand that, which is why they are putting more investment into their economy than into their military. If we don't do that, they are overtake our economy even sooner than projected.
--David
Fact-checking….
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "If you want to make an accurate comparison, compare the US in 1920 and China today. Both countries were growing quickly and becoming the center of the world. You will find that China is spending a significantly more percentage wise than the US was at that time."
So, I did the comparison. In 1920, 69% of the U.S. federal budget was on military. Well, I am sure you will say that was because of WWI, and that is true. But I also checked it for 1910 where it was at 46%, and 1925 where it as at 34%. China is not doing that. Not even close. They are spending only $600 billion yuan on defense, or only 1.4% of GDP. The alarmists such as yourself make a fuss over their year-over-year percentage increase in the number of yuan in their defense budget without regards to the their expanding GDP growth.
They are putting far more money into education (4% of GDP) than military or any other spending category. I wish we were doing the same. If you start losing internationally in education/science/technology, it is just a matter of time before you lose your "Superpower" military advantage over the rest of the world.
--David
David, please check out the following link. It will show you the information you missed in your comment and which equates to my statement regarding China spending more money now than did the US in the 1920s when the US was just starting to be the world leader.
ReplyDeletePrior to WWI we had a very small navy and army, during the war our spending increased to dramatic levels (just like in WWII) and then decreased to 1.25% which is less than what
China is spending.
The site is: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/past_spending
You are missing perspective. The size of Chinese government is tremendously larger in relation to China's GDP than the U.S. federal government was in relation to our GDP in the pre-WWI period. Even so, 1.25% is BARELY less than the 1.4%, and was achieved in 1925 only because the U.S. was putting 34% of the federal budget into military! China only puts about 6% of its federal budget into military. In other words, as a percentage of the federal budget spent on military, the U.S. percentage in 1925 was nearly 6 times more than China's budget in 2011 ($600 billion yuan in a $9.79 trillion budget). Their budget focus is on education and economic development, not military. Facts are facts.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, you are talking as if 1.25% or 1.4% of GDP is a large commitment to military spending. It is not. Many countries spend more than 2% (in fact, 36 countries in 2010). Saudi Arabia is by far the world leader at 10.4%.
--David
Fact-checking…
ReplyDeleteThe agreement with Panama stipulates that Panama is responsible to keep the canal open, and Panama grants the United States perpetual authority to intervene militarily to keep it open in case some dictator decides to close it.
Full diplomatic and trade relations between China and the U.S. was announced on Dec. 15, 1978 (my birthday!), and became effective Jan. 1, 1979.
--David