CleverBomb
On Space Out
The United States spends a disproportionate amount on Defense relative to the rest of the world, and certainly has the largest and most powerful military ever assembled. Getting it right -- whether in terms of the across-the-board cuts from the last debt ceiling fight, changing our global role, the evolving nature of war, or even just the economic implications of defense spending -- is a profoundly complex problem.
It's being discussed in another thread, but I was hoping to break it out into its own topic to allow that conversation to continue on its own track.
Some things to consider:
- We're going to be dependent on foreign resources (notably, oil) for the foreseeable future. How far are we prepared to go to preserve our access to them, and what military forces will be needed to do so?
- We're dependent on a vast flow of imported goods. What military capabilities do we need to defend the flow of trade? Could we even sustain our military if trade was shut down -- and, if not, what do we do about that?
- For good and/or ill, we're the world's policeman. What consequences would result from our stepping back from that role?
- Every war is fought with the equipment, organization, and strategy that won the previous war, whether or not they're already obsolete. We've gotten very good at counterinsurgency of late, by necessity. Is this what our next war is going to look like, though?
- Defense spending is probably the only government economic stimulus program that can draw bipartisan support. However, the very dispersal of procurement that makes the spending invulnerable, also makes it rather inefficient.
There's a lot more to all this, and I'll expand on it later.
It's being discussed in another thread, but I was hoping to break it out into its own topic to allow that conversation to continue on its own track.
Some things to consider:
- We're going to be dependent on foreign resources (notably, oil) for the foreseeable future. How far are we prepared to go to preserve our access to them, and what military forces will be needed to do so?
- We're dependent on a vast flow of imported goods. What military capabilities do we need to defend the flow of trade? Could we even sustain our military if trade was shut down -- and, if not, what do we do about that?
- For good and/or ill, we're the world's policeman. What consequences would result from our stepping back from that role?
- Every war is fought with the equipment, organization, and strategy that won the previous war, whether or not they're already obsolete. We've gotten very good at counterinsurgency of late, by necessity. Is this what our next war is going to look like, though?
- Defense spending is probably the only government economic stimulus program that can draw bipartisan support. However, the very dispersal of procurement that makes the spending invulnerable, also makes it rather inefficient.
There's a lot more to all this, and I'll expand on it later.
