Speaking as a fairly eager recipient of government funds myself, it's worth noting that not every military dollar we spend goes to waste: military salaries keep people employed and the defense industry afloat. Still, with a price tag for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq approaching $1 trillion, it's hard to attribute that to salary, and I think it's fair to say a decent bit of that money has gone to transporting people and stuff back and forth and blowing a lot of shit up, with little to show for in terms of infrastructure improvements in its wake, certainly not a rate of return with which we should be pleased. For comparison sake, this is more than the entire health-care bill at the moment, and that even pays for itself by most estimates. It is also sufficient to basically cure world hunger, or eliminate a handful of nasty diseases. And yet, if one suggests that perhaps these are reasonable goals, rather than hegemonic power, it's basically like shouting out that you are a crazed leftist.
It's now to the point where we are spending on toys that can only be really used against our toys, since no one else will ever be able to get in the game. As Matt Yglesias points out, we are designing laser cannons to use against enemy planes, but no one even attempts to challenge our Air Force with their own, since doing so is a quick way to eliminate one's Air Force as a useful fighting force.
Respected senators, or at least those like Lieberman who seem to have the respect of their peers for unknown reasons, call for us to consider attacking Yemen... but what exactly are we supposed to attack? One might think yet another desert conflict in a failing/failed state without a clearly defined objective might raise warning signs, but he wasn't exactly laughed off the set of Fox News Sunday. After Afghanistan, Iraq, blowback into the tribal areas of Pakistan, the collapse of Somalia, the ongoing collapse in Yemen, etc., one might think to reconsider the real gains from our hegemonic spending, but no, we're discussing whether to attack Iran and Yemen as a serious conversation. Quoting Matt Yglesias again, this isn't going to end well:
Today America is worried about chaos in Afghanistan, but there are also indications that al Qa’eda has found safe haven in Somalia and Yemen. Broken states, alas, are not all that rare. To suggest that the United States could succeed in its mission to vastly improve governance in Afghanistan, given enough time and money and manpower, hardly provides evidence that the task could be repeated in Sudan and Nigeria and Chad. If it’s true that the world’s security depends on eradicating every pocket of instability on Earth, then we really are doomed.Given all these problems, some of the cheaper options include not advertising quite so widely our overwhelming desire to torture people, since this really doesn't help our reputation overseas. It's been noted that the underpants bomber's father actually reported on him to US authorities, and that he might have had more qualms if he suspected we were going to torture his kid, seemingly just for the sake of inflicting pain given that it hasn't been reported that he's withholding important information from the authorities at the moment. Even cheaper, though, would be basically getting out of the game, or at least cutting back by about 75%, leaving us still hegemon but at least closer to the pack.
Consider Japan, if you will. Not perfect by any means, but they live longer than we do, spend considerably less on defense, and no one is attacking them on a regular basis! This includes al Qaeda, who currently rank between lightning strikes and roller skating accidents as a cause for death for Americans since 9/11, well behind falls in the bathroom and car crashes while texting. It also includes China, even though they are in the neighborhood and we spend 40% of the world's military budget defending against them.
The best test of an idea is often to bring it up out of context and ask if it stands in its own right or merely because it's always been the case. Imagine we were not the world's hegemon: how much would we as a nation wish to spend on the military? I have trouble that the answer is seven times as much as China and more than all the non-EU states in the world combined. The only reason it is considered reasonable is because we did it last year and the year before that and on backwards. It was almost certainly rather crazy back in the days of the Cold War, and it's only getting nuttier since.
Perhaps the problem is that we refer to it as the "defense" budget. Clue to those who haven't figured this one out: it doesn't cost this much to defend oneself. Many countries manage it for much cheaper. Who in the world is really going to attack us militarily at this point. The Navy and Air Force essntially own their respective domains, and the Army is unattackable. Why are we doing this? To the extent we are vulnerable, it is because of our hegemony, and the attackers are not states whom we can smash, but random people armed with explosives and hand-to-hand weapons. Throwing billions after billions isn't really getting us anywhere, maybe we could try spending a few billion less. After all, save a few billion here and a few billion there, and pretty soon we are talking real money...and healthcare...and an end to world hunger.
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