Given the U.S. fiscal situation, should military spending change (how much?)

[stone]

Gumby, I frankly believe that in the wider world, the US military is unwanted and incapable of providing a  "Team America World Police" role. When you say globalization would be compromised I think that needs to be carefully scrutinized. Perhaps corporations might be less gung ho about off shoring jobs but the USA was integrated into global trade in the late 1800s/ early 1900s when the USA had a strongly home defense orientated military.

[Gumby]

Gumby, I frankly believe that in the wider world, the US military is unwanted and incapable of providing a  "Team America World Police" role. When you say globalization would be compromised I think that needs to be carefully scrutinized. Perhaps corporations might be less gung ho about off shoring jobs but the USA was integrated into global trade in the late 1800s/ early 1900s when the USA had a strongly home defense orientated military.

Frankly, Stone, I think that is very naive. China and North Korea would easily step into key choke points in the Pacific if the US was not preventing them from doing so. Japan would be vulnerable, and that would seriously affect the global marketplace. I think if you were able to sit next to the Secretary of State for a week, you'd see that the world is not the friendly hand-holding place you think it is. When even the smallest nation (Greece) has the ability to disrupt the global marketplace (and the S&P 500), regional stability is pretty important.

You also have leaders of nations who publicly denounce the US military and privately send diplomatic cables begging us for help. It's not like we enjoy sacrificing lives to keep the world safe. Yes, we do it selfishly, but let's not pretend that everybody hates worldwide regional stability.

[stone]

Gumby, to me the real risk humanity faces is that the wrong kind of globalization has meant that we now have all of our eggs in one basket. The fact that Greece has such global effects, indicates to me that the system needs to be far less centralized and interdependent. A key part of having a ship well designed is to have independent compartments any of which can fail without the ship sinking. We have done the opposite.  Things are set up so that one nation with one central bank tries to control the entire world with much of the global economy being dependent on a handful of companies. That is about as far from being a robust design as it is possible to imagine.

[Reub]

The real risk is, as always, the rise of tyranny.

[stone]

The real risk is, as always, the rise of tyranny.

Reub, isn't that risk also greater if centralization goes too far? The USA is now run by well meaning good people. What if that changed? Having the world divided into Switzerland sized, non-agressive, non-interfering countries would make global tyranny a slow uphill struggle if it ever sparked off.

[Gumby]

Gumby, to me the real risk humanity faces is that the wrong kind of globalization has meant that we now have all of our eggs in one basket. The fact that Greece has such global effects, indicates to me that the system needs to be far less centralized and interdependent. A key part of having a ship well designed is to have independent compartments any of which can fail without the ship sinking. We have done the opposite.  Things are set up so that one nation with one central bank tries to control the entire world with much of the global economy being dependent on a handful of companies. That is about as far from being a robust design as it is possible to imagine.

Well... good luck with trying to undo that. The world is becoming more interconnected, not less. More interconnectivity has always been the underlying trend.

Having the world divided into Switzerland sized, non-agressive, non-interfering countries would make global tyranny a slow uphill struggle if it ever sparked off.

That's quite a fantasy, Stone. The overwhelming majority of countries on the planet are nothing like that.

[MachineGhost]

I just wish Congress would prioritize making healthcare and eduction more affordable — so that we can all be more productive.

I see this fallacy alot from Democrats.  What they forget is all that "free" government money appropriating the good/services in the private sector will drive up the cost as there isn't enough supply to meet the increased demand.  Ex: huge rise in tuition over time.  And thats not to say that supply can increase either, in most cases the educational institutions seem to game the system by keeping the cost increasing to keep their profits high (way above the rate of inflation).  The for-profit education firms are signing up unemployed people literally living on the streets just to get their cut of federal education loan money!  All of this is why education is "unaffordable".

We would need a lot more accountability and transparency before we start transferring even more money to the institutions in the private sector (implying a bigger police state), or not give them any at all and actually make them compete for consumers on the value of what they are providing.  At least the military has an accountable, top down command and control structure -- and is remarkably efficient compared to most of the private sector.  I don't blame the military per se as much as the rent seeking contractors and contractees.

It's almost tempting to join in on the orgy if there are no reserve constraints, which is the past of least resistance.  Why fight it?  Plenty of people don't.

MG

[Gumby]

I just wish Congress would prioritize making healthcare and eduction more affordable — so that we can all be more productive.

I see this fallacy alot from Democrats.  What they forget is all that "free" government money appropriating the good/services in the private sector will drive up the cost as there isn't enough supply to meet the increased demand.  Ex: huge rise in tuition over time.

That's true. Reckless spending into anything will drive the cost up. But, that's not what I said. I said "prioritize making healthcare and eduction more affordable." That doesn't mean recklessly pouring money into institutions. It means finding ways to streamline operations and reduce the cost of educating people, sharing resources, having some scholarships for those who would otherwise go into too much debt, etc. I'm not suggesting that I have a good solution to the problem. But, having a $1 Trillion in private student loans isn't exactly a good thing — particularly when education helps make a society more productive.

[stone]

Gumby, countries have been splitting up. Look at the former Soviet Union or former Yugloslavia. Sudan  split last year. The UK may well soon split up with talk of a referendum on Scottish independence next year. The EU looks more likely to disintergrate than intergrate. I don't see why you consider it more of a fantasy to have numerous independent countries than to have a superpower.

Do you consider most of the world's countries to not fall broadly into the "non-interfering, non-aggressive" class?

[Gumby]

Gumby, countries have been splitting up. Look at the former Soviet Union or former Yugloslavia. Sudan  split last year. The UK may well soon split up with talk of a referendum on Scottish independence next year. The EU looks more likely to disintergrate than intergrate. I don't see why you consider it more of a fantasy to have numerous independent countries than to have a superpower.

The interconnectedness I was talking about has nothing to do with the number of countries on the map. It has to do with the level of financial interaction between those countries. The world is far more interconnected than ever from a fiscal perspective. If/when Greece defaults, it might very well send shockwaves throughout the world (US banks, Japanese banks, etc). So, providing regional stability helps basically prevents entire regions from blowing up. If the China or North Korea threatened Thailand or Indonesia, and destabilized the South Pacific region, it would have a huge affect on global financial markets.

Do you consider most of the world's countries to not fall broadly into the "non-interfering, non-aggressive" class?

Sure. I misspoke by saying that the overwhelming majority of countries aren't "non-interfering, non-aggressive". I suppose that's true. What I mean to say is that it's a fantasy to think those countries would remain that way without a super power to keep things stable.

China, Iran, Sudan, Syria and North Korea are not exactly neutral nations. Without the presence of a deterring force, the world's non-interfering and non-aggressive nations would be sitting ducks to those countries.

[stone]

Gumby, I have never heard a non-American make the point that America keeps the peace. Have you?

I agree that the world is financially interconnected. I suspect that the best long term financial strategy for any entity is to ensure that they have independent set ups that won't get pulled down when-ever the rest of it collapses. I think any financial regulators who are doing their job should ensure that the system they are looking after is not going to domino over. The key way to do that is to ensure a lack of interdependence.

[Gumby]

Gumby, I have never heard a non-American make the point that America keeps the peace. Have you?

Well, no. Nobody ever thanks us, if that's what you're saying. Though, I think everyone reluctantly acknowledges that we are the "World Police". That's what policemen do. They keep the peace. Selfishly, America keeps the peace to protect its own interests, citizens, and financial freedom. No one is suggesting that we do it to make everyone happy. But, please don't pretend that non-aggressive states would be able to fend off threats from North Korea, China, Syria, Iran and Sudan without the assistance of aggressive states. That's fantasy. Let's not forget what Hitler did to France.

[stone]

Gumby, the USA did step in to keep the peace in the former Yugloslavia. In the Congo and Sudan, the USA had no part. The Rwanda genocide was allowed to go on unabated. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were (pretty much) started by the USA. I'm not getting a policeman vibe from that on balance. I'd feel much safer in a world with no one country as policeman but a united nations. My guess is that if a Hitler appeared then small countries would team up against such a tyrant. I also feel that providing for refugees and enforcing safe passage of refugees is the most important role that other countries can provide in a conflict. The world totally failed to do that in the holocaust and totally failed to do that in the Rwanda 1996 genocide.

[Gumby]

Yes. That's all true. Which is why I said that the US has a mission of regional stability, selfishly, for its own interests.

However, you're forgetting that the United States funds 22% of the UN's annual budget. Japan foots 12% of the bill, followed by Germany (8%), UK (6%), France (6%), Italy (5%) and so on. The UN would be incredibly weak without the US.

You're welcome

My guess is that if a Hitler appeared then small countries would team up against such a tyrant.

But, that's not what happened, is it. Hitler needed to be defeated by a small group of larger nations with more firepower.

[stone]

The US foots 22% of the UN's budget but receives all of the "exorbitant privilege" of issuing the currency used for global trade. In effect the entire world foots the bill for the US military (whether they want it or not) via using USD for international trade. The USA then deploys that military in a partisan and some would say inept manner.

[Gumby]

And yet, the world would be in a much weaker position without that arrangement — as distasteful as it might be. (Perhaps that's the reason why countries go along with the arrangement.) Hitler would not have been defeated by a group of small non-aggressive nations.

[Gumby]

Very interesting article about SOCOM and JSOC:

Aljazera English: The US military's secret military

Somewhere on this planet a US commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you're done ... for the day. Without the knowledge of much of the general American public, a secret force within the US military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, and deserves further attention.

After a US Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden's chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the US military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it's well known that US Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has often remained out of the public scrutiny.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that US Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, US Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. "We do a lot of travelling - a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently. This global presence - in about 60 per cent of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged - is evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army's "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States' most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine".

This assassination programme has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3bn to $6.3bn. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8bn in these years.  Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

...

Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 68821.html

Sounds like most foreign leaders like having a "World Police" they can call any time they need help...which is apparently every single day. Explains why countries probably don't mind using US dollars for their foreign transactions.

[stone]

And yet, the world would be in a much weaker position without that arrangement — as distasteful as it might be. (Perhaps that's the reason why countries go along with the arrangement.) Hitler would not have been defeated by a group of small non-aggressive nations.

I guess UK politicians agree with you. The UK seems to do its best to wiggle into playing the mini-me role for the US in its military adventures.

I just don't agree though. The world "would be weaker" in what sense? What if the next Hitler is at the helm of the single superpower's military? Hitler was defeated by the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union had instead been independent countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia etc) that had come together to fight him then I think that also could have defeated him. I think dictators always fall anyway. To my mind the key lesson from WWII was about the failure to ensure safe passage of refugees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

"According to authors Rabbi Ted Falcon, Ph.D & David Blatner in Judaism for Dummies, when the “St Louis was turned away from Cuba…, America not only refused their entry but even fired a warning shot to keep them away from Florida’s shores”?.[6] Legally the refugees could not enter on tourist visas, as they had no return addresses, and the U.S. had enacted immigration quotas in 1924. Telephone records show discussion of the situation by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, who tried to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees. Their actions, together with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, were not successful.[7] The Coast Guard was not ordered to turn away the refugees, but the US did not make provision for their entry.[8] As St. Louis was turned away from the United States, a group of academics and clergy in Canada attempted to persuade Canada's Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to provide sanctuary to the ship, which was only two days from Halifax, Nova Scotia.[9] However Canadian immigration officials and cabinet ministers hostile to Jewish immigration persuaded the Prime Minister not to intervene on June 9.[10]
Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis while the ship was docked in the port of Havana.

(It is unknown why Captain Schröder did not proceed to the Dominican Republic, as the Dominican Republic at the Evian Conference in July 1938 offered to accept 100,000 Jews.)

Captain Gustav Schröder,[11] the commander of the ship, was a non-Jewish German and an anti-Nazi who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers. He arranged for Jewish religious services and commanded his crew to treat the refugee passengers as they would any other customers on the cruise line. As the situation of the vessel deteriorated, he personally negotiated and schemed to find them a safe haven (for instance, at one point he formulated plans to wreck the ship on the British coast to force the passengers to be taken as refugees). He refused to return the ship to Germany until all the passengers had been given entry to some other country.

US officials worked with Britain and European nations to find refuge for the travelers in Europe.[7] The ship returned to Europe, docking at Antwerp, Belgium, on 17 June 1939.[12] The United Kingdom agreed to take 288 of the passengers, who disembarked and traveled to the UK by other steamers. After much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were allowed to disembark at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. They appeared to be safe from Hitler’s persecution.

The following year, after the German invasions of Belgium and France in May 1940, the Jews were at renewed risk.[13][14] Without its passengers, the ship returned to Hamburg and survived the war.
St. Louis Captain Gustav Schröder negotiates landing permits for the passengers with Belgian officials in the Port of Antwerp.

By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts, the authors of Voyage of the Damned, estimated that 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain.[15][16]

Later research by Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a more precise, higher total of 254 deaths:

    "Of the 620 St. Louis passengers who returned to continental Europe, we determined that eighty-seven were able to emigrate before Germany invaded western Europe on May 10, 1940. Two hundred fifty-four passengers in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands after that date died during the Holocaust. Most of these people were murdered in the killing centers of Auschwitz and Sobibór; the rest died in internment camps, in hiding or attempting to evade the Nazis. Three hundred sixty-five of the 620 passengers who returned to continental Europe survived the war."[17]

[stone]

Gumby, my guess is that the vast bulk of the actions taken by those commandos around the world are simply addressing blow back from US military action. It is a constant cause and effect. Other governments request it because the governments in power are those that are in cahoots with the US military. To me it is a tragic case of basically good people getting drawn into a terrible spiral of pointless violence.

[Gumby]

I just don't agree though. The world "would be weaker" in what sense?

In the sense that JCOM and SOCOM special forces are requested by the leaders of roughly 70 different countries every single day. If the world was so capable of defending itself, why our so many countries requesting the US to do their dirty work, every single day?

What if the next Hitler is at the helm of the single superpower's military?

Then small non-aggressive nations won't stand a chance. What's your point?

Hitler was defeated by the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union had instead been independent countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia etc) that had come together to fight him then I think that also could have defeated him.

Unlikely. And easier said than done. It would require many moving parts to willingly come into place. Militaries work much quicker and effectively with a centralized command and a centralized budget. And the simple fact that other small non-aggressive nations didn't rise up and form their own centralized command against Hitler just proves my point.

I think dictators always fall anyway.

Wow. I didn't know 'wishful thinking' was a strategy.

To my mind the key lesson from WWII was about the failure to ensure safe passage of refugees

Yes, the US has made a lot of mistakes. That should be obvious.

[Gumby]

Gumby, my guess is that the vast bulk of the actions taken by those commandos around the world are simply addressing blow back from US military action. It is a constant cause and effect. Other governments request it because the governments in power are those that are in cahoots with the US military. To me it is a tragic case of basically good people getting drawn into a terrible spiral of pointless violence.

Stone, now you're just speculating.

For 70 countries to be requesting special forces every single day tells me that it has far more to do than blowback and being in "cahoots" with the US military. Clearly these countries are obviously incapable of handling their own domestic situations. They are obviously reliant on the US military — that much should be clear.

Furthermore... it's 70 countries a day. But, it's spread out over at least 120 different countries.

Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at," says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have - it may be internal, it may be regional."

...

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 68821.html

Either way, it explains why most countries don't mind using US dollars.

Stone, I could be wrong. But, it sounds like you are blaming the US for fueling terrorism throughout the world. Is that what you believe? There is certainly some evidence of this, but it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that the world would be peaceful without the US's interference.

My main point is that for 120 different countries to continuously requesting the help of US special forces suggests that most non-agressive countries don't have the capability to do their own domestic dirty work. That basically proves that most small non-agressive nations would be unable to band together against a common threat.

It's fairly obvious that most non-agressive countries need the US military's assistance whether they want to admit that publicly or not.

[stone]

I just don't agree though. The world "would be weaker" in what sense?

In the sense that JCOM and SOCOM special forces are requested by the leaders of roughly 70 different countries every single day. If the world was so capable of defending itself, why our so many countries requesting the US to do their dirty work, every single day?

What if the next Hitler is at the helm of the single superpower's military?

Then small non-aggressive nations won't stand a chance. What's your point?

My point is that the world is not a safer place for having a vast US military. It is an unnecessary power that all too easily could fall into the wrong hands and currently seems to be mostly engaged in simply ensuring its own perpetuation.
Puppet rulers will obviously call upon the true power behind them. They wouldn't be puppet rulers if they didn't and wouldn't be reviled by their own people as such if they didn't. They would be in power without foreign help if they were not puppet rulers. Keeping puppet rulers in power takes a tremendous amount of military power.

[Gumby]

My point is that the world is not a safer place for having a vast US military.

That's a very naive view, in my opinion. The world is a much safer place than it was 100 years ago or 50 years ago — thanks to the superpowers that made the world a safer place. If the US wasn't watching Syria, Iran, Sudan, North Korea or China it's highly unlikely that the 120 countries (that regularly request US special forces) who can barely take care of their own back yards would be able to do anything about those rogue nations.

Puppet rulers will obviously call upon the true power behind them. They wouldn't be puppet rulers if they didn't and wouldn't be reviled by their own people as such if they didn't. They would be in power without foreign help if they were not puppet rulers. Keeping puppet rulers in power takes a tremendous amount of military power.

Are you suggesting that the US military maintains a vast network of roughly 120 different puppet rulers? That's quite a conspiracy, Stone.

[stone]

Gumby, if a country's government fears that it will be overthrown by people who it considers are not acting in the interests of the country, then that government needs to appeal to its own people to stand up against that. If they won't then that is that country's issue IMO. It is a recipe for disaster to have a foreign  force coming to the aid of a government that can not drum up enough support from its own people to keep it in power against its own citizens.

You wouldn't consider the world was a safe place if you lived in Iraq.

[Gumby]

if a country's government fears that it will be overthrown by people who it considers are not acting in the interests of the country, then that government needs to appeal to its own people to stand up against that. If they won't then that is that country's issue IMO. It is a recipe for disaster to have a foreign  force coming to the aid of a government that can not drum up enough support from its own people to keep it in power against its own citizens.

Yesterday you were telling me that the majority of the countries in the world were non-aggressive and totally capable of banding together to take on domestic and regional conflicts without the help of the US. Today, you're telling me that the majority of the countries in the world are puppet governments of the United States, who are clearly unable to take on their own domestic issues — let alone regional conflicts.

Which is it, Stone? You can't have it both ways.