Posted on 05/13/2005 6:42:23 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The national defense budget could be cut by nearly a quarter and still leave the United States military in shape to take on all likely threats and fulfill its role in the war on terrorism, says Charles Pena, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Furthermore, the United States is outspending the rest of the world at an astounding rate. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in 2003:
Total U.S. defense expenditures were $404.9 billion, an amount exceeding the combined defense expenditures of the next 13 countries and more than double the combined defense spending of the remaining 158 countries in the world. The countries closest in defense spending to the United States were Russia at $65.2 billion and China at $55.9 billion. The United States outspent its NATO allies nearly two to one ($404.9 billion vs. $221.1 billion). The combined defense spending of the remaining “axis of evil” nations (North Korea and Iran) was about $8.5 billion, or 2 percent of U.S. defense expenditures. Although it is impossible to accurately predict future defense expenditures, Pena says the United States is on track to outspend the rest of the world combined sometime during the next 10 to 20 years.
Pena says there are no threats from nation-states that warrant the United States maintaining a large, forward-deployed military presence around the world. A better approach to maintaining U.S. security would be to eschew unnecessary interventions abroad and to reduce overseas Cold War-era military commitments.
Source: Charles Pena, “The War on Terrorism Does Not Require a Burgeoning Defense Budget,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 539, March 28, 2005.
For text:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa539.pdf
For more on Security/Defense: Arms Budget:
LOL. I think they should finance the next ABBA album.
From this article it sounds like their current navy and air force could very likely defeat the PRC without any US help:
http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2005512213835.asp
Of course, their constitutional emphasis upon "self-defense" means they would be very unlikely at present to help defend Taiwan or South Korea, but if the threat from the PRC keeps growing (and it will) that may change perceptions and politics in Japan quite a bit.
"The Chinese are on a big upswing. It would be very painful at this point economically to cut their funding off, because we have engrained our own economy so much into theirs...but that pain will pale compared to what may well eventually come in terms of open conflict...anbother World War"
That's why I thought it was insane for us to embrace the PRC's economy as we have in the past 15 years - we never should have allowed them to move toward greater economic integration (MFN, WTO, etc.) without fundamental political change there first. The rationale (in addition to drooling greed) seems to be that opening up their economy would change their politics over time. But that was always implausible in less than a 30-50 year time frame, and we do not live a half century from now - we have to survive the next couple of decades first!
Amen...well said.
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