Rantle

By Eric Anschutz, July 14, 2010

America needs to engage in a “Guns versus Butter” debate. We have never had a comprehensive national dialogue on the trade-offs between military spending and economic investment. Ever since the 1950’s, it has been simply assumed in our ongoing national discourse that national security requires our military to be more powerful than that of all other nations combined, and to be deployed worldwide.

But, since every dollar spent on military force is a dollar subtracted from cities and states and corporations and from the income of every citizen, it follows that excessive spending on our military can lead to economic weakness. Too much military spending is therefore as great a danger to national viability and global reach and influence as would be depletion of our military to the point of vulnerability to predators.

To that end, we need to ask ourselves whether it makes any sense for us to maintain large contingents of US military in places like Germany and South Korea and Japan, when each of these countries has a strong economy and is capable of defending itself? We need to question whether it makes sense to leave the projected large contingents of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan for the foreseeable future to assure “stability and security.” The dollar cost of these deployments is large, yet there is little if any debate among us as to whether these vast expenditures are the best way to allocate precious US resources.

US troops are everywhere, with bases in more than 100 countries (including such places as Ethiopia and Iceland), at least some of which would prefer for us to leave. Indeed, the Prime Minister of Japan was recently ousted from office because of his support, over the strong objections of all Okinawans and many on the Japanese mainland, of the very large US base in Okinawa.

US military spending is more than 4% of GNP (20% of our entire federal budget). Our military spending totals more than Social Security and the costs of Medicare and Medicaid combined. The Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion, more than all other discretionary spending combined, and more than the combined military budgets of every other country in the world. And those vast sums do not include the CIA and VA or the very substantial defense-related costs of Homeland Security, NASA and DOE. We need to take special note of the fact that VA costs will be high for decades to come as the nation tends to the many profoundly wounded veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A sure applause line for Red State politicians is to assert that the best way to preserve the peace is to possess unchallenged military superiority. Yet, much of this military spending goes to weapons we do not need. America has 11 aircraft carriers, twice as many as the rest of the world combined. No other nation has more than one, yet our Admirals petition for more and bigger carriers with a projected cost of $9 billion each. For what purpose?

Our Air Force Generals, supported by the military-industrial complex, whose influence President Eisenhower so wisely and presciently warned against, and despite strong opposition from the Secretary of Defense, seek to goad Congress into footing the bill for a next generation of fighter aircraft, despite the fact that our current planes are said to be far superior to and several generations more advanced than those of any other country. In debating the wisdom of these and other new weapons programs, Congress is concerned only with the effect on jobs in their districts, not at all on whether the programs make sense, and certainly not at all about whether the nation would be better served by spending these sums on such things as US infrastructure or education or alternative fuels.

Perhaps the greatest irrationality in the endless quest for new weaponry is the debate about a next generation of nuclear weapons, when our far-too-large and entirely useless nuclear arsenal sits in silos and submarines and bunkers as nothing more than a cold-war relic. Arguably, we need ten or so highly secure nuclear weapons for deterrence, anything more is waste. Not only is it a waste of money to increase or enhance our nuclear arsenal – doing so works directly against our efforts to stem nuclear proliferation.

Opposition to the war in Afghanistan is wide and increasingly deep. Though we are assured daily that progress is being made, evidence of progress is sparse to none. The same doubt applies to our stated purpose in that rock-strewn and mountainous place. Denial to al Qaeda of a staging area and sanctuary is said to be the reason for the war, yet they and other terrorist groups have morphed into Pakistan and Somalia and elsewhere. We seem to be continuing this fight not because it has a purpose, but rather because we are there and cannot devise an exit strategy that can be labeled as anything but a vast mistake.

But, to get back to the Guns versus Butter debate: our purpose in dealing with the rest of the world is to influence the outcome of global events in ways favorable to our interests. Having guns does help. But having a powerful economy, one that enables us to grant or withhold cooperation or largesse, also helps; in some cases economic power is more important than military power. Moral leadership, too, is important.

When we read news accounts of our construction of schools and roads and water supplies in Afghanistan, often destroyed by local insurgents as soon as work on them is completed, our thoughts turn to the need for schools and roads and water and electricity and so much else here in America. We waste there when we should be building here.

The Guns versus Butter debate needs to focus on bringing into better balance the various elements of national strength. An America seen globally as “the shining city on the hill” would be more likely to influence favorably the outcome of world events. An America endlessly and futilely involved in military conflict is less likely to command affection and emulation and support.

By Eric Anschutz, December 23, 2009

Many of us who voted for Barack Obama a year ago were motivated in part by the speech he gave in 2002 warning against going to war with Iraq. Here it is again: “I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

I ask you now to contrast the wisdom in that 2002 speech to the unwise and unworthy speech our President gave in Oslo just days ago at the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Again, I quote: “ (As President) I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict…”

Some have said that the difference between the two speeches reflects Obama’s transition from candidate to President. Obama, in his Oslo speech, put it this way: “(I am) mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: ‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by (King’s and Gandhi’s and Mandela’s) examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Most would agree that the war against Nazism was a just war; Hitler needed to be stopped by military force. But, Obama, then went on to say: “The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” This latter statement has won plaudits from Sarah Palin, Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich – though the right wing crowd is building on Obama’s statement by calling again for Obama to undertake vigorous military confrontation with North Korea and Iran.

It was of course necessary for President Obama, in accepting the Peace Prize, to speak to the war in Afghanistan, and to his responsibilities as Commander in Chief of our armed forces, and to the confrontation with al-Qaida and the Taliban. The problem is, however, that he chose to speak as a political leader, one who deemed it necessary not only to justify our ongoing war, but to go on with the questionable assertion that the global reach of our military had underwritten world security for six decades. All-time hawk President Bush 43 could have given that same speech.

Obama had the opportunity, in Oslo, at a moment when he had the rapt attention of a hopeful world, to speak as a world leader, one worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, he spoke as a very ordinary politician, one not worthy of the Nobel Award, not even worthy of the votes and the hopes invested in him by those to whom he promised change.

Here in brief is what he might have said. Instead of claiming that America’s military strength has helped underwrite global security for six decades, he should have spoken to the two truly meaningful contributions America has made to global security: the first was the Marshall Plan, and the second was détente with and containment of the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War and the Iraq War were not contributions to global security; they were insults to it; those two wars contributed nothing but distress to a war-weary world, the killing of 60,000 young Americans, maiming of so many more, and depletion of both our treasure and our moral stature.

By contrast, the Marshall Plan saved democracy and brought economic enrichment to Western Europe; détente with the USSR, coupled with patient and steady containment, not bombs, resulted in the demise of the Soviet Union and the ultimate restoration of democracy to Eastern Europe.

A Nobel Prize-worthy Obama would have said that what we see as evil in today’s world is the product of injustice, religious zeal and poverty. He might then have quoted our own Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who has frequently spoken out on the futility of war as a means of bringing peace, noting that the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not end what Gates calls the “Long War” against violent extremism. Our best course, he says, is to use the “soft power” of diplomacy, development assistance, and cultural exchange to eliminate the conditions that foster terrorism. Gates has also wisely called for partnering with China and Russia to blunt their rise as potential adversaries. General McChrystal too emphasizes repeatedly the need to win hearts and minds through construction, not destruction. Paradoxically, though Gates and McChrystal support the surge in Afghanistan, they (like Obama) know that in the end violence fosters violence and only soft power can bring cross-cultural understanding and a peaceful outcome.

A Nobel-worthy Obama would have made the case for alternative policies to “confront” Islamic terrorism by announcing gradual withdrawal of our troops, and spelling out the merits of an Afghanistan strategy centered on the twin policies of containment and a Middle East Marshall Plan. He might have announced at the same time withdrawal of our troops from Germany and Korea – which would save another $70 billion yearly. Obama did say that rebuilding America was the “nation building” most important to him; he might have added that an economically and socially successful and peaceful America would do more to win global support than the futile effort to kill or pacify the religious crazies lurking in Afghanistan’s mountain caves or hiding in the eighth century villages that abound in that unhappy country.

Mankind has tried from its beginning to solve political and geographical and cultural differences with war. We have learned that violence begets more violence. The time has come, a Nobel-worthy Obama could have said, to try something different.