The Size Of Our Military

I'm bringing this post back to the top because of this news. We are coming off a Clinton era that saw the lowest defense spending as a percent of GDP in our history.

President Bush said today that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to meet the challenges of a long-term global war against terrorists, a response to warnings that sustained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the armed forces to near the breaking point.

Instapundit has a post up regarding the size of our military. There are multiple links to explore. Here are two links to give you some additional perspective.

Currently, the US ranks 47th in terms of the percent of GDP countries spend on the military. However, that still represents 37% of the world total.

But the really damning numbers are here. Scroll down for different measures. You can also click on the graph above to enlarge, or see it at the link.

During the Clinton years military spending dropped over ten percent in terms of discretionary spending and it hasn't come back. Even worse, we spent the lowest percent of GDP in our history under Clinton and that hasn't come back up completely, either.

Look at the Carter years versus the Reagan era with the transition eventually to Clinton. We won't be able to fight a global war against terrorism if that number doesn't continue to rise. And I don't foresee the incoming Congress being helpful in that cause.

Year  %GDP

1976  5.2
1977  4.9
1978  4.7
1979  4.6
1980  4.9
1981  5.1
1982  5.7
1983  6.1
1984  5.9
1985  6.1
1986  6.2
1987  6.1
1988  5.8
1989  5.6
1990  5.2
1991  4.6
1992  4.8
1993  4.4
1994  4.0
1995  3.7
1996  3.5
1997  3.3
1998  3.1
1999  3.0
2000  3.0
2001  3.0
2002  3.4
2003  3.7

The Political Pit Bull has more.

SmallTownVeteran has the Bush audio here.

Comments

[Robert Schwartz]

We need to to get back to the levels we were at in the late 70's and early 80's. A $2/gal increase in the gas tax would pay for it and reduce the use of oil at the same time.

[Purple Avenger]

Well...

...we could (finally) take the training wheels off Europe and the ROK. That would free up close to 100K people to do other things.

I find it curious the left wants to whine about the pace of Iraqi, yet has no particular issues with 50 year long indefinite deployments elsewhere.

[K]

I think we would know more about this if the CIA, NSA, and such were included in military costs. We also have large numbers of military retirees. So the real effect of military costs on the country are somewhat different than presentsd.

But an inadequate military obviously is worse than useless. And proper funding must be done.

Like others, I don't understand why we have combat troops in Europe and Korea; logistic arrangements do make sense. Or why we still need both land based and submarine based ICBMs plus heavy bombers. Or exactly what a better a main battle tank will do for us. Or why the services have virtually no Arabic language skills thirty years after the 1973 oil embargo made it clear how important the area is.

I don't understand why we remain in NATO since our views always differ from theirs and NATO nations do as they wish in every situation anyway.

Military spending should be stated in dollars adjusted for inflation. Using a percent of GDP has no more meaning than comparing military spending to panty hose sales.

[Purple Avenger]

A $2/gal increase in the gas tax would pay for it and...

...cause an instant recession.

[Jim Harrison]

I came in in the middle of this movie. Over and beyond dealing with the short term problem of Iraq, a problem we inflicted on ourselves, what is the rationale for spending a humungous amount of money on the military even if we can afford it? Do you guys just like to play with soldiers? After all, no practical level of military spending would make it feasible to attack China or Russia or even India; and it isn't obvious how more fancy hardware is supposed to defeat asymmetric threats like terrorism. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend millions on foreign language training instead of billions on new divisions or trillions on space war fantasies?

By the way, I probably would count as a liberal by your rather Manichean lights, but I've been asking for some time why we need to have a large garrison in Germany—Korea is a rather different problem. On the other hand, if I were a Republican, I'd certainly want to maintain our bases in Germany—as I understand the logistic issues involved, such bases are important because they make our adventures in Central Asia possible, not because Germany is itself under threat of attack.

[Dan Riehl]

JH - You make a hell of a lot of assumptions for someone looking to have a debate. Who said we should spend it on hardware, or not include language training? And the whole Star Wars bashing thing is played out. It seems pretty foolish to me to not develop such capabilities given the proliferation of ICBMs and nukes.

[Purple Avenger]

"and it isn't obvious how more fancy hardware is supposed to defeat asymmetric threats like terrorism"

A $.50 bullet will defeat a terrorist. All that other stuff is to try and keep the guy who fires it safer while doing it.

If you're willing to spend more bodies fighting terrorists, then we can cut a lot out of the budget. Seriously, who needs a standoff weapon when you can just charge their hide out with a hundred guys? Maybe 10 or twenty of ours get wasted in the process, but who cares right?

[Jim Harrison]

I'm just expression some opinions. I don't know where you stand on all the issues involved. I don't know why you'd expect us to spend money on serious opposition research and language training. We haven't done so yet, even though such measures are relatively cheap. On the other hand, maybe that's the reason. Where there isn't much money, there won't be much a lobby.

One note on the star wars business: I've been skeptical of the whole thing for a long time, not because I can claim to have any mysterious insider knowledge, but because the military is normally very closed mouth about feasible new technology. Stealth technology worked, for example, and precisely for that reason, nobody said a word about it until it was a reality. Star wars was politicized from the get go. If there is a prospect of a serious defense against ICBMs I have to wonder why I'm hearing about it. If I ran the zoo, I'd continue research on the q.t. rather than advertising to our enemies that they need to figure out ways of countering star wars.

In the interest of full disclosure: I'd be very worried if we actually developed a serious anti-ICBM capability because there have always been plenty of blowhards who would favor preventative war against China or Russia if they believed that there was a window during which we had a decisive advantage because of missile defense. There was a push for such a move under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy and not just by General Ripper types like Curtis LeMay. On recent evidence, there are plenty of folks around now with a similarly paranoid and homocidal outlook. The fact that an American administration been willing to kill a half a million people in the course of a small-scale preventative war doesn't inspire much confidence.

[Jim Harrison]

The Purple Avenger's point would be more impressive if we had enough strategic sense to attack the people who threaten us instead of starting a fresh fight against others. We already have a huge technological advantage. Too bad we don't have the smarts to use it very well If you're going to shoot yourself in the foot, having an especially big gun is not much help. The Brits didn't make that mistake in the heyday of their Empire; they made it a point to understand who they were trying to govern. Our politicians still don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'as. I wish I could say that this sort of proud ignorance was a Republican thing but the Democrats aren't much better informed. I guess it's a national tradition. Just as American tourists expect waitresses and hookers to learn English and our politicians seem to think that the terrorists have an obligation to learn it too.

[Purple Avenger]

"The fact that an American administration been willing to kill a half a million people in the course of a small-scale preventative war doesn't inspire much confidence."

That fact that you're pitching that discredited crap doesn't inspire much confidence either.

[Jim Harrison]

I want to congratulate the Purple Avenger on getting a head start on what's sure to be a sort of American holocaust denial--not that a convenient memory isn't a trait that this country shares with all the others. It's just human nature to go from "We don't want to believe that!" to "It never happened."

Fun example I came across today in David Hackett Fischer's book Liberty and Freedom. Fischer mentions in passing that the Texan Revolution of 1830 was inspired by Mexico's outlawing of slavery in 1829. I guess I knew that slavery was part of what they were fighting for at the Alamo, but I bet not one American in ten is aware of the fact. They certainly keep it quiet in the movie versions. (Memorable fantasy: a remake of the Alamo movie in which Mel Gibson, playing the part of Davie Crockett, rallies the troops with a memorable speech: "They may take our land! They may take our lives! But they'll never take our niggers!")

[Purple Avenger]

be a sort of American holocaust denial

Simple - show me enough fresh graves to justify your figures. You can't. If anyone could, Al-Jazeera would be pimping the pics all over the world. That they aren't speaks volumes about the veracity of those numbers.

[Purple Avenger]

BTW, you know you're claiming we've murdered 1:50 people in the country right? Do you realize how absolutely fucking retarded that sounds?

We also payoff on every accidental death and/or property destruction incident that can be documented. I'm sure the Army paymasters can tell you how many we've paid off on.

[Jim Harrison]

The Lancet study used a state-of-the-art methodology for estimating mortality and checked its work by examing death certificates. Anyhow, I don't understand why anybody is especially surprised that a nation bombed, invaded, and riven by civil strife over a long period should have casualties on this order of mangitude. By the way, nobody is claiming that Bush "murdered" half a mllion people, just that his policies and actions resulted in a half a million extra deaths. The distinction is worth making, even by a retard.

Holocaust deniers also use the "Do you realize how absolutely fucking retarted that sounds?" line when it is stated that something approaching six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. And compare the way that evolution deniers and global warming deniers make similar appeals to "common sense"—"I don't see how a tiny blob of goo can become an elephant," "I don't see how man's puny activities could change the climate." What these arguments show is not the unreasonableness of well-supported theories and statistical conclusions but the limitations of some people's imaginations.

[larry]

aaaaah, so now pompous professor harrison equates folks who doubt the lancet's bullshit, done-strictly-for-political-reasons "study", with..... holocaust deniers. wow! what a brilliant rhetorical maneuver! nobody's *ever* thought to call the other guy a nazi before!!!

do you realize how absolutely fucking retarded you sound, prof?

[Tom Blumer]

OMG Jim Harrison, the radicals at IraqBodyCount.org can't even abide by the Lancet crap. IBC has 51,000 - 57,000. I think even that might be high.

[Tom Blumer]

Dan, this is irritating to the max because we should have been doing this since early 2001. Six bleeping years and 5 budgets later, it's a little thin to be blaming Clinton, though he deserves all the blame for the steep cuts during the 1990s, because the GOP was too busy running up earmarks to focus on the real priorities.

[Purple Avenger]

"The Lancet study used a state-of-the-art methodology"

"state-of-the-art methodology" applied to pathetically tiny data sets produces garbage when extrapolated to the whole. You'te talking to a guy who's had a few college level stat courses, so I'm not a complete moron when it comes to this stuff.

I'm unimpressed with the Lancet's work. It was plainly concocted to fool the rubes like you.

[Bill Faith]

Thanks for the link, Dan. Busy doing some redesign on my site but I just added a link to your post to the post of mine that you linked to.

[seekeronos]

What it boils down to is that as much as people dislike the Curtis LeMays of America, their approach in times of war is what us as a free nation, and allowed us to win WW2.

What we need really, is another LeMay, and another Truman, to ruthlessly bomb the terrorist hotspots into oblivion, and destroy any nuclear infrastructure Iran is cooking up. Then pull out of there and let them have fun cleaning up their own mess. Keep the SLBMs and other naval assets on hand to punch them down whenever they get uppity; keep SEALs and other SPECOPs teams on hand to take out the Sadrs and the Badrs and their ilk whenever they rear their ugly heads.

If it were up to me, the US Army would be better used to secure our continental borders, and to march the millions of recalcitrant, unassimilating illegal immigrants back across a permanently sealed, mined, and manned border replete with anti vehicle and antipersonnel mines, and much concertina wire.

However, until we can get over our oil addiction and our refusal to source oil and oil shale from within our territories, we will be stuck policing backward Islamist states.

Would that the enviro-commies get over themselves, and that we would build a nuclear reactor for every town over 100,000 people. We have huge stockpiles of fissionable uranium, all decaying and going to waste over the follies of some unshaven hippies who want to keep us enslaved at the teats of Allah and his oil.

A Continental Army, Strong Blue-Water Navy, and Overwhelmingly Strong Aerospace power will protect our future.

[Captain Joe]

The draft is coming back next month.

[Phoenix]

I don't know the exact dates, but during the last draft, the military did a study of how to integrate lowlifes into a military unit and still keep the integrity of the unit. They found that putting 15% lowlifes into a group of 'good guys' kept the integrity of the group and raised the 15% to the level of the best. They experimented with many variables, and it turned out that if the percentage of lowlifes got close to 45% of the control group, the goal of raising the lowlifes up started to go askew as the tendency for the good guys to adapt to some lowlife behaviors manifested. Beyond 45% it all went to hell.

Why not take prisoners who are doing time for minor offenses and incorporate them into our now military? Talk about taking a load off.....

[EvilDoer]

"The draft is coming back next month."

Good.

It will get all you right wing goof-balls off the street.

10 bucks says most of you won't make it through basic.

[seekeronos]

@ Phoenix - that might not be a bad idea for the hordes of people in prison on minor drug charges and the like, if a successfully completed tour of duty results in a commutation on whatever remainsd of their sentence.

@ Evildoer - It might come as a surprise to some of you of the pinko-liberal fan club... that many of us "right wing goofballs" have served honorably in the US Military. Some of use are even retired military, and have served in combat.

The draft - IF - it came back is pretty impoartial to one's political affiliations... it would remove a lot of whacky lefty moon-bats from the street as well.

So then, what's your point?