Panetta (& Obama) Wrong On Defense

Recently, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sided with the Republicans on the issue of the sequestration cuts to defense (military) spending. Panetta said the cuts proposed would cause a crisis in troop readiness, and even said that "instead of being a first-rate power in the world, we'd turn into a second-rate power". And a couple of days ago, President Obama agreed with Panetta saying the two parties must get together to prevent the cuts "for all these men and women in uniform".

But is that really true? Would the proposed cuts in the sequestration really make the United States a second rate power? No! That is not even close to being true. The sequestration has mandated $1.2 trillion dollars in cuts to defense spending over the next 10 years (or about $120 billion a year). That sounds like a big cut -- until you examine the figures on what the United States spends.

As the chart above shows (from The Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation), the United States spends nearly half of the world's entire spending on military and defense (44.3%). The next two largest spenders are Russia (at 5.47% of world spending) and China (at 5.31% of world spending). The United States could cut its spending in half and still be spending more than Russia and China combined (and a few other nations thrown in).

But how much of a cut is the sequestration to the military budget? The U.S. spends about $700 billion a year in defense spending. That means the cut from sequestration would be about a 17% cut to spending. The United States would still be spending at least $580 billion on the military each year. That would still be far more than any other nation spends, and actually would still be more than the next 16 biggest nations combined (whose combined total would be only about $546.1 billion).

Those numbers show that even after the sequestration cuts the United States would still be the biggest spender and have the most powerful military in the world -- by far. It is an outrageous lie to say those cuts would make the U.S. a second-rate power. Far larger cuts could be made before there is any danger of that happening.

Would it affect this nation's military readiness? Only if the government is too stupid to put those cuts in the right place. The cuts shouldn't affect the current military, since there are several areas that could be substantially cut without affecting readiness. Ending the Afghan War would be a good place to start, as would closing some of the 800 military bases the U.S. has around the world. That war does nothing for our national defense, and it is silly to think we really need 800 bases around the world to defend our nation.

But the biggest area where cuts could be made is in the military-industrial complex. We could start by cutting weapons systems that don't work, and systems that the military has said it doesn't need or want. Then other research and systems could be delayed until the economy is in better shape and they could be afforded. But don't expect any of that to happen. Congress is not about to cut the enormous amounts of money they are funneling into corporations in the military-industrial complex, because that might affect their corporate campaign contributions (and the pork they send back to their districts).

The truth, which no one in Congress (of either party) will admit, is that we are spending far more on defense than is necessary -- and most of it goes into corporate bank accounts, not military readiness. I agree that government spending must be cut. But it should not be on the backs of children, the poor, the unemployed, and the elderly. They have already borne too much of the government cuts. It is now time for cuts to come in corporate subsidies, and of course, in the huge amounts of government money funneled into the military-industrial complex.