In my radical days back in the Sixties during the Vietnam War, one of the big debates was over the question of whether American could sustain supporting both guns and butter. Son of a gun, if the debate hasn't been rekindled. America's economy was in fairly decent shape back then, so I never quite understood the debate, even though I insisted we couldn't have both (I opted for butter).Unlike the mid-Sixties, the economy today is in dreadful shape, so the guns and butter debate seems much more interesting to me, and much more critical than it was lo those many years ago. Forty-plus years of family, businesses, and budgets have made me a lot more savvy about how money works, but I was still in the "America can afford anything" mode until the issue started popping up all over the net and the print world in modern dress.
It seems to me that the relevant question is not whether we can presently support both guns and butter, but more accurately, can we continue for long to maintain our defense responsibilities while at the same time supporting the welter of Bush and Obama entitlement and social programs? I say no, and if I'm right, then as they say, "something's gotta give." For the Obamists, that's the military (and I am fully aware that Obama said the opposite in the State of the Union address, but you all know my opinion of Obama's truthfulness). For conservatives, it's the social and welfare programs that have to go. Would that it were actually that simple.
A huge portion of the federal budget (perhaps as much as 60%) is already going to programs that long pre-date both Obama and Bush. Even if Social Security and Medicare were to be completely restructured or eliminated tomorrow, the need to protect those already stuck in the system would not change appreciably. Obama's suggestion (I certainly am nowhere near ready to call it a policy) of cutting expenditures across-the-boards while exempting the military defense budget is a good, if modest idea, but it barely scratches the surface. Furthermore, the liberal-progressive wing of the Democratic Party has already gone into open rebellion over the idea of "favoring the military."
Our foreign policy and economic policy are both in disastrous shape at the current time. Don't think of the two policies as separate issues. Those two are inextricably intertwined, and Obama's policies have only made them worse. Both directly affect our military capabilities. We are deep in debt to our so-called trading partner China. We have recognized the need to assist Taiwan militarily to protect itself from the Mainland. See the connection? Our resultant foreign policy is to talk tough but cave in. And that one's obvious. China has many more interests in derailing America than just Taiwan. They laugh at any suggestion we make about meaningful action against the murderous regime in Iran. Meanwhile, the Russians are boldly proceeding with their support of Iran while inexorably bringing Ukraine and Georgia back into the Russian empire.
The portion of the federal budget set aside for discretionary military spending has been rather small for nearly four decades. Yet now we are engaged in two wars that are costing us huge sums of money (if you prefer, you can call it one war with two fronts). We can handle that now, but two years from now, that is certainly not such a sure bet. Even a loyal and realistic military expert such as General Barry R. McCaffrey is unequivocal in his opinion that "we are unlikely to achieve our political and military goals in eighteen months." So even if there are no cuts to the current military budget at all, it will be insufficient to support future operations. The options are to put more money from a weak economy into the military, or "cut and run." Neither alternative is particularly attractive.
We are now at a crossroads. Simple "freezes" on domestic social programs are a band-aid on a quickly-spreading cancer. Massive government spending on government-run and government-owned enterprises are totally counterproductive from an economics standpoint. Green energy jobs have already proven to be disastrous to employment in Spain (9 jobs lost for every 2 jobs created). Current plans for health care from the administration, however toned down and unpopular, still loom. Dependence on foreign energy supplies while preventing domestic production of readily-available resources is another foreign policy/economic policy double-whammy directly affecting our ability to pay for military expenses. This horrible confluence of guns and butter programs is grossly exacerbating the creation of a basic and structural imbalance that will lead directly to fiscal hell.
Conservative economic historian Niall Ferguson says that "if the United States succumbs to a fiscal crisis, as an increasing number of economic experts fear it may, then the entire balance of global economic power could shift." Make no mistake, that includes military power, unless "volunteer army" means the soldiers are going to work for free.
Ferguson goes on: "We are, it seems, having the fiscal policy of a world war, without the war (the current deficit is only slightly larger in relative terms than the deficit in 1942). Total debt held by the public, excluding government agencies, but including foreigners, will rise from $5.8 trillion in 2008 to $14.3 trillion in 2019--from 41% of GDP to 68%. Projecting to 2039, the federal debt held by the public will reach 91% of GDP in the low-end estimates and 215% in the Congressional Budget Office's high-end one, more than double the annual output of the entire U. S. economy." Unsustainable is hardly the word for it.
If we continue on our present course, that inevitably leads to the conclusion that the relative share of national security in the federal budget is already built into the future actions of the federal government. Given the current military "real spending" estimates, it means that our military budget will drop from the current 4% of the total to 3.2% by 2015 and to 2.6% by 2029. That future is impossibly bleak, and would make the U.S. military forces about as effective as a counter-balance to worldwide terror and empire-builders as those of Belgium.
And so Obama and the progressives get their wish. We become more like Europe. The Wall Street Journal sums it up as follows: "Among the Western Europeans, only France and the U.K. spend more than 2% of GDP on defense, supposedly the NATO-mandated minimum. Nearly everyone else is below that. Germany, the continent's largest economy, stands at 1.3%. U.S. defense spending has been above 4% of GDP since 2004, having fallen to 3% after the Cold War ended. No amount of shaming has worked on the continentals." If America's military becomes a part-time, unionized, show-army, who will protect us from the Russians, the Chinese and the Islamofascists? Europe?
The American economy is not a sidenote to military and foreign policy. It is an integral part of them. G. Tracy Mehan III, an official in the Environmental Protection Agency during the administrations of both Presidents Bush, sums it up: "Something has got to give (sound familiar?). If you fail to rein in entitlements and other federal spending, you will either have to raise taxes, squeeze out military and other discretionary spending (no more EPA?), or pile up the debt on future generations. There are a number of alternative scenarios that can play themselves out. But, absent a turnaround on spending, both mandatory as well as discretionary, it is hard to see how military preparedness comes out the winner."
I agree. Give up the butter. Switch to Brand-X margarine. The military is critical to our foreign policy, and the economy fuels them both. We have to get our financial house back in order. We must protect military readiness expenditures and get them back to a reasonable 4% to 6% of our national budget, and I don't care if that means scrapping every single new social program from now until the year 2050. There are perfectly valid arguments at the fringes of how long we should stay in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what our military policy toward them and the entire Middle East should actually be. But the simple fact remains that our military is crucial to our future and we have no way of knowing what future 9-11s are already in the offing.
Social Security reform, Medicare reform, government giveaway programs, and all the plethora of social programs and government-owned and government-run schemes must be put on the line in order to protect our ability to defend our national security and to fight future wars. Otherwise, nothing matters, and you need to start polishing up your Chinese, Russian and Arabic language skills and sweeping out your cave.
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