Superpower status, is it worth it?

[Nuclear Raunch]

It's no secret that America is a world Superpower at the moment. We have our military in every section of the world, bases within reach of pretty much anything, navy in every major body of water, etc... We have held this position since World War 2.

When a conflict occurs anywhere in the world people are petitioning America to step in in behalf of one side or the other. In most cases we do a risk-benefit assessment and decide whether or not we want to step in. I'm not going to get into whether or not that's right, instead I want to focus on the cost-benefit ratio of being a military superpower.

COST

According to the Department of Defense the U.S. Military budget is $419.3 billion. As gargantuan as that is, that does not include many things that should be, like nuclear weapons, Department of Homeland Security etc... According to the CIA, our estimated budget deficit for 2005 is $347 billion. If not for our Department of Defense spending we would have a budget surplus of 72.3 billion. Keep in mind that the Department of Defense budget does NOT include the cost for the Iraq war. That number is somewhere around $250 billion dollars. To help put things in perspective, we could DOUBLE our education spending AND our Department of Commerce spending and still have a budget surplus.

A study was done by the San Francisco Chronicle which found that 81.1% of the national debt was due to defense expenditures. Just think about that for a second, 80 freaking percent of America's mindboggling debt is due to defense expenditures. According to the U.S. Treasury, the national debt effective yesterday stood at $8.362 trillion dollars. Do the math, and after interest and everything else our defense costs since 1916 are $6.782 trillion dollars.

Benefit

1: Gives Americans a feeling of superiority over others.

2: Able to send forces anywhere in the world at a moments notice.

3: Defend against invasion.

4: Help with homeland security.

5: Help recover from natural disasters.

6: Great way for people to afford college.

7: Allows us to overthrow governments we don't approve of.

I'm sure there's more, feel free to post them and I'll edit them in.

Rebuttals for Benefits

1: Sadly this may very well be the #1 reason why most Americans would never go for this. My advice is to get a (I reached puberty late.) enlargement surgery.

2: This is only important if we wanted to be a superpower throwing our weight around.

3: This is probably the thing people will argue for the strongest. To all who say that, please show me where a modern army has ever successfully held a country when the population was armed. Guerilla warfare is sooo effective the armies we have seen throughout history displaying their awesome firepower in times past is no longer an effective fighting force.

Think of the battleship. It's an awesome display of sheer force. Massive ship capable of going toe to toe with any other surface ship in the world, and never even break a sweat. unfortunately it is now outdated, all our battleships have been mothballed, they can compete no longer. A submarine requiring the smallest fraction of the resources could annihilate it in an instant.

Think of the art of fighting. For thousands of years standing up, throwing kicks, punches, and an occasional throw was the most effective method. whoever was bigger, stronger, faster, and had the most heart won most of the time. In the last 15 years we have seen that changed drastically. we have seen a single man take on 4 opponents in one night of no holds barred fighting. All 4 were physically superior, all 4 were highly trained, the best of the best if you will, and all 4 were taken out.

Why was one man able to do this on multiple occasions? Their old-school method of fighting was no longer relevant. Don't get me wrong, old school looks a lot sexier, and I'm sure if you picked the top 10 most entertaining fights all 10 would be old-school, but that doesn't change the fact that it has lost it's effectiveness. What is sexy is not usually the most effective, and the most effective is rarely the sexiest.

History should tell us that America can withstand any invading army, so long as her citizens remain armed. (wish the damn Democrats would keep their grubby hands off our guns) I have much more to say about this, but I'd prefer not to make this the central part of this post.

4: A valid point, and one of the principal reasons why I would keep a standing army, just not one as large as we have.

5: See 4. Also our emergency services budget could have a huge jump if we added 1% of the money we'd save from downsizing the Dedense Department.

6: Could very easily afford to pay for kids' college funds without taking 4 years of their life.

7: For starters we have no business meddling in the affairs of anyone outside our borders, just as we shouldn't tolerate anyone else meddling in our affairs. Combine that with our track record for setting up successful governments we should be the last people on earth trying that one. Anyone who thinks we would do a good job setting up any government is just delusional, there's a list a mile long of our failed attempts at setting up a government in a foreign country.

As you may have guessed I would prefer a marginally sized military, one that is used just for defense. I don't think us being able to stick a feather in our hat is nearly as worthwhile as us doing something constructive, like improving the quality of life here. Economic development, improving roadways, utility transmission, educational improvements, research grants, etc...

We could sit here all day long and think of things we could improve, and in all likelihood if we got rid of our military's pork we could afford every single one. What is more important, being able to say my country can kick your countries ass or being able to say my country has the highest standards of living in the world, with the lowest unemployment, highest median income, lowest poverty rates, free college education, healthcare for all, and lower taxes?

Anyway, thats my 2 cents so let the bashing begin

[Freenhult]

You bring up many valid points Mr. Nuke...but I have to say that I disagree with most of it.

For starters...The U.S. Military is the US in a sence. Most countries don't even think about starting any trouble with us because of the fact that we can flaugnt our military might.

Secondly, although many of the people fighting now were on reserves and on non-active duty during Clinton's presidency, we were able to maintain all of our amry and have a surplus in the government. You can't blame the war of the deficite. War-Time mobilization is one of the best kicks in the economies bottom. What ended the "Great Depression"? WWII. Since we have been at war with Terrorist in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are now having some of the best market rallies in yrs. Don't get me wrong...the market still looks like crap, but atleast if is a whole heck of a lot better.

Next..Yes, we do fight a war in a more conveintional way. But the simple fact is that we are not using all of our resourses. If we really wanted to declare open war on Iran...they wouldn't stand a chance. We could simply bomb them back to the stone age and roll enough tanks and troops in to clean up. Anyone who fought back...just goes away. That is how we don't like to fight. Had we done this in Korea and/or Vietnam. We might have scared the daylights out of Russia and China. Might not be having the problems we are having now, eh?

Lastly...Yes. We should meddle in other affairs. If no one else will...we better darn should. We don't have to attack them, just put pressure on there gov't to make a better policy. That is what we do..and how we should do it.

Once the economy picks back up and fuel prices level out, we will be just fine.

[windhound]

its more of a security thing more than a power trip

if we had no defences than any nation could come in, take over, and the US that we know and love would be no more

having comphy living comes with having defences, as others want what you have and will take it if you're not going to protect it

in an ideal world where there is no need for war and 12 year old kids dont kill their mother and brother (last week, new york) your idea would work fine. but every day, hell, every min somone somewhere dies because somone didnt like them. embassys are bombed, people killed over seemingly triffling things, chaos in many parts of the world

the US /has/ good education systems Because we are able to defend what we have

but then again, using that power poorly is BAD. the civilian casulties that occur when you do a wipe such as Freen suggusted are horrendous. many times its not the people of the nation that are bad, its their leader(s).

during the cold war enough nuclear weapons were created clear the surface of the earth several times over

but yeah. again. if you're not going to protect what you have, people will take it from you.

[Ruddertail]

About the causualties - That's why we don't do it. We're not attacking people to obliterate them, we're attacking people to free them from tyranical dictators, thus helping them.

Basically, having a large army is a twofold purpose.

One: Yes, we could fight people off via guerrilla war, but do you really want to spend the rest of your life hiding in the hills waging a guerrilla war? I don't, that's for sure.

Two: Yes, we should interfear with the affairs of other countries, if there are problems. If you saw a father trying to kill his kids, wouldn't you step in and stop him? If you saw an old lady being mugged, wouldn't you smash up the muggers?

The same if we see countries where a dictator is oppressing the people, or countries that are trying to take over others. If the US doesn't stop the aggressor, the oppressor, and the evil doer in this world, no one else can, or will.

[Nohc]

I agree with Nuke that we are spending far to much money on our military, but I do like the idea of living in a country with a large military force. All I know is that we shouldn't be helping out other countries and spending billions if we don't have enough money for ourselves. My solution? Raise taxes (in some areas more than others).

[Gen. Volkov]

Nuke is full of it. That study was crud. The amount we spend on our military is less than 1/20 of the budget. The vast majority goes to social programs, like social security and welfare, and PAYING THE GOVERNMENT WORKERS SALARIES. How about we decrease the amount of money a congressman gets eh? That done with, let's analyze this statement that guerilla war can defend a country.

First, guerilla war necessitates a foreign power occupying your soil, so massive destruction of everything you know and love. Second, it takes a long time to work, even partially, it took 50 years for Israel to leave even parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Took 12 years before the Soviet Union got pushed out of Afganistan. It also requires support from foreign powers supplying guns and other tools of war, but guess who's the biggest supplier of such things, the US. Don't believe me? Look how quick Chechslovakia fell when the Soviets invaded in support of the communists, or Afganistan in modern times when invaded. A successful guerilla war requires outside suppliers of arms. Whose gonna do that when we have done nothing for them?

And another thing, the military has already been massively downsized. we have less than 500 thousand men and women on active duty in the Army. That's half what we had in 1991. We do this every time there looks like there gonna be peace in the world, we try and get rid of our military, and then, without our stabilizing presence, somewhere flares up and we are forced to go on a crash rebuilding program. In order to be and stay a secure country, we need a big military, perhaps bigger than the one we have right now. You think the Soviet Union would have just rolled over and gone belly-up like it did without the US opposing it? Hell no, we'd all be saluting the General secretary and praising comrade Lenin right now. In short you are dead wrong. We aren't spending ENOUGH on our military, do you realize that the order for our newest fighter, the F-22, is only for 60 planes? That's a crime. The original order was for 300. And even 300 is only HALF of the number of planes they are supposed to be replacing.

[Freenhult]

*Bows to Volkov*

That is very true indeed. If all these politions got a little less money, maybe they would do a bit more work and balance the budget...amoung other things. In really, how much we spend on defenses is moot if we can't even properly secure our borders.

[Arthus]

I was reading through this topic and I agree and disagree with many points. first off I am canadien not a U.S citizen but my Aunt does live there and tells me all about the political stuff. Anywho. About sticking our noses in other countries business' im on the fence about. Some countries definitely need our help but arent getting it because we are to busy dealing with the middle east (Iraq and now Iran). How about the problems in Africa where a group is ratially purifying the counry? We are not doing anything to stop them while thousands are being killed. I agree that sending sanctons agaisnt Iran for them to stop there nuclear program is a good thing but we all know how that is going to end. (Look at Iraq). The truth of the matter is that the United States army is spread very thin. We have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries ( not quite sure which I am not that well informed about that) and quie frankly a war with Iran will make everything 10 times worse. China is a superpower that everyone should be afraid of. they have an army that is more than double the states army and they are buying the military technology from America so they are catching up technoligically very quickly. While the americain economy gets worse and their dollar is dropping weekly, China remains the same. And no, oil prices are most likely not going to drop, most likely just go up while we slowly drain the oil thats left on the planet the costs will continue to rise.

Secondly. Whoever said something about us just bombing the (Profanity is a sign of Maturity) out of a country an then just moving in with tanks to clean the place up. We are not at war with the whole country. We arent just going to kill everyone there for the actions of one group of people. ex: Saddam husseins dictatorship.

Now about the social status. I only really know about the educational system. Arent colleges in the United States exceedingly expensive around 30 thousand a year or so which in my opinion i crazy. Health care is also a problem I think.

Basically The U.S. who is still the super power in the world should really think about fixing its current problems before going out and trying to fix other countries problems. Let other countries take on the fight agaisnt terrorism for a while. Canada is basically the peace keepers. We don't really have an army and rely on the U.S and our allies to come to our aid so I am for the U.S. having a large army for a selfish reason. but I think they they should have an army for defense majorily.

I didnt do a very good eplaining what I think but anywho.

[Nuclear Raunch]

Lastly...Yes. We should meddle in other affairs. If no one else will...we better darn should. We don't have to attack them, just put pressure on there gov't to make a better policy. That is what we do..and how we should do it.

Freen: I'm not saying no military whatsoever, just one large enough for defense. Take a look at the top 15 countries for highest military budgets, the U.S. not only ranks #1, but we spend more than the next 14 countries combined. That's a tad on the excessive side don't you think? The second ranking country is china, with 5 times our population, barely spends less than one seventh of what we do. I don't see anyone running their country over.

Think about this, if we cut our miltary expenditures by 90% we would still have the worlds 5th largest defense budget, so our army would certainly not be a pushover. Then think about this, how could a foreign country sneak a 10 million man army over here? Simple answer, they're not. We still would have plenty of cash to maintain satellite photos, and we would see them coming before they left port. They would be sitting ducks the entire way, and we could send ICBM's from our shore and take them out halfway across the ocean. Our enemies know this, so they know better than to attempt it.

I'm not trying to say it's completely impossible to have a budget surplus with an army 10X as large as it should be, I am saying that it would certainly help ALOT. Obviously if you could take your biggest expense and reduce it by 90% it's gonna help your surplus. I don't think boosting the economy is ever a great reason for going to war, however it does have some benefits. In most cases war provides a short term boost followed by a recession. FDR's "New Deal" programs are generally given credit for ending the Great Depression, admittedly the economy had not reached it's previous peak until after World War 2 started.

We might not be having these problems with these governments now had we not created these goverments to begin with. As I recall we didn't like the previous goverment, so the hawks started with their "Once we overthrow this government and install Saddam instead everything will be fine and we'll finally have peace in the Middle East." I don't have the time, but look into the history of the U.S. dealings with Middle Eastern countries and look at just how many rogue governments we set up. Personally I think it's foolish to believe the next government we set up is gonna be different from all the rest but that's another story.

Windy:
With 10% of our military budget we could have a more than adequate defense. Nobody's gonna take anything from us with 10% of our budget. As far as our education goes, it is good but not great. Much improvement is needed for us to compete with other countries, and quite frankly we don't spend enough money on it. Our military is a much higher priority than our education levels, and I find that sad.

Rudder: I mention guerilla warfare more as an absolute worst case scenario than a reality. The simple logistics of another country getting an army over here, with supplies, is quite a challenge. Not to mention we could still have an effective military with 10% of the budget.

Just who set up these "tyrannical dictators" in the first place? Yep, that would be America. We've set up dozens of dictatorships throughout the world, and we have had most of them turn on us already.

Nohc: what exactly do you like about living in a country with a large military force? More curious than anything.

Volkov: Which study is crud, and what about it don't you agree with? I'm definately calling BS on the 1/20th statement. I've been to a dozen government websites and not one of them has shown that figure to be anywhere near accurate. Please state your source. If it's FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, or Republican.com I'm gonna choke you for wasting my time.

As far as arms go don't forget that this IS an industrialized nation, with plenty of natural resources, and easily available info on how to make them. We could literally be producing simple things such as antitank weapons within hours of an invading force attacking us. Trust me, I've done a fair amount of automation and it's not that hard to get a plant going full steam.

I don't see a need for 6 F-22's, let alone 60. Who's gonna be able to send fighters over here? Canada and Mexico, that's it. I see no cause for panic at the thought of facing the Mexican Airforce. The next worse thing would be if they were to be given some Migs, but again, we could see that coming a mile away.

Besides, does anyone honestly that any full scale war between major powers will not result in nuclear war? And if it's nuclear war then our army matters little.

[Nohc]

I'll answer before anyone else gets into a big discussion...

Why do I like a strong military? So that our country can be as well defended and prepared as possible to fend off invaders and preserve our way of life.

[Gen. Volkov]

... Nuke, I'm using your figures. What's our National budget? About 10 trillion a year. What's ~500 billion into 10 trillion? 1/20. That's where I got my figure. The study that YOU mentioned is crud, because it didn't take into account any other expenditures that could be cut. And the countries that spend less then us actually spend more in proportion to their national budgets.

Now you say we could be producing these weapons as soon as an invaded force hit our shores, well what if they bomb our factories? What if they hit so hard and so fast that we don't have a chance to start making these weapons before its over? Wouldn't it be better to stop them before they can ever get here?

What makes you think we are the only airforce in the world with aerial refueling? That's just silly. The Mexican and Canadian airforces are clearly not the only ones we'd have to worry about in the event of an attack. The airforce of the attacker would be attacking using aerial refueling, and they could also launch planes at us off carriers. That'd be the first thing to go if you axed the budget. Our carriers. We would then have no way to stop the enemy short of our shores.

The reason we need F-22's? Because the F-15 has reached it's designed service life. Because new planes out there are better than it or have parity with it. MiG's aren't a threat anymore, the last one designed was the MiG 29, and it's inferior to the F-15, what I'm worried about is European exports to China.

And there's no reason to think that a major war is going to go nuclear anymore, the Soviet Union is gone. That leaves the European powers, most of which do not have nukes, and China, which I would hope is smart enough not to use them, considering they have about 80 missiles all up, and we have thousands. Course 80 modern missiles is enough to destroy most of our major cities, but we could turn their whole country into a smoking glassed crater in the space of the few minutes. If I was facing that, I'd keep the war convential.

[windhound]

10% ?
you couldnt keep the current system running on ten percent, much less improve on it

it may surprise you to realize how much money it takes to keep things working properly, maintence and all. russia had a ton of stuff that is now in disrepair and rusted through because they couldnt maintain it.. which is a shame..

the F-22 (is that their latest?) are needed because it keeps us ahead of the curve, or atleast meeting it. if we fall behind, we'll get left behind. our edge keeps us ontop

the japanese flew their planes at us and hit pearl harbor. noone thought they would do that either.
our detection techniques are significatnly better, but stealth has gotten better as well

it is unfortunate educations isnt as high of a priority as it could be, but its still better than many many other countries

my oppinion? cut the salaries of the big athleats and funnel that into education.
serioulsy. guys get paid MILLIONS of dollars to play with balls. this is wrong beyond belief.

[Urran Voh]

The Soviet Union collapsed because the Russians were putting ~30% of their resources into the military, trying to keep up with the U.S who at the time was using 5-10% (I forget the exact figure..will have to go back to my US Gov't teach for that).

[Nuclear Raunch]

Volkov:

revenues: $2.119 trillion
expenditures: $2.466 trillion; including capital expenditures of $NA (2005 est.)

I think you're thinking of the estimated national debt by the time Bush's term is up. (Not a joke either) It's close to 1/5th of the total budget.

Of course the study didn't account for changes that could be made, it had nothing to do with what could or could not happen in the future, it was simply a study to show how much of our national debt was attributable to our military spending. I guess you could say it is looking solely at the past and you're calling it crud because it doesn't account for something that could theoretically happen in the future.

Please name 3 countries that spend a higher % of their budget on their military. OK, now name one that's not a tiny country ran by a warlord.

First of all unless they use nukes the entire world combined couldn't take out all our factories that fast. But let's assume that they had the firepower to do so, how could they get over here? Sure you can do inflight refueling, but fighters would need it more than once and don't forget that tankers fly a lot slower, so you have to launch a squadron of tankers a couple hours before a strike to give them a head start, then another squadron about an hour before, then 2 more squadrons to give them enough fuel for the return flight. Not that feasible in my opinion.

Submarines are extremely effective at taking out carriers, they don't require a massive crew, they're relatively cheap to build, and they're built relatively quickly. They give the U.S. Navy the ability to strike quickly from any angle and dissappear. The most effective defensive ship the Navy has. Carriers are a much more effective offensive weapon, but then again I don't agree with us trying to boss the world around so I see no major need for them. A couple carriers arn't a bad idea though, they come in handy at times.

Hell I'm worried about American exports to China. Anyway, which European plane do you think is superior to the F-15? Remember that exports are stripped down models too.

I think we both agree that our biggest threat would be China. I think both sides, if faced with the prospect of losing a war, would go nukes. I know we would, and I don't think Chinese culture would allow such a loss of face. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope even more that I don't find out.

Windy: Every other nation in the world could do it, why can't we? Why should our defense cost us so much more than anyone elses?

I know a lot of money is required for a lot of things, I just think that a lot of things are completely unnecessary. Our military should be for defense only imo, and most of what we have is designed foer offense. Our military is not designed to withstand an invasion, it's designed to be the invader.

The Japs got a nice sneak attack in, however they did lose the war.

[Gen. Volkov]

Hmmm. I'll have to figure out where I got that 10 trillion number. And no, I can't name a country that spends more that we do as a percent of it's income that isn't third world. Unless pre-war Iraq counts. And the study should take it account the OTHER factors that contribute to our national debt, like all the social programs that are a legacy of FDR's 4 terms. It can't say that if we had cut some of those programs and not the military, that the National Debt would be where it is. The plain fact of the matter is the study was contrived to make military spending look bad.

Now, I think you overestimate the number's of weapons factories we have. There has been alot of downsizing in our industrial capabilities since WW2. That said, yes it would take a bit of doing to take them out, but flying off aircraft carriers, with precision weapons, it would be quite easy to do. And subs would have real trouble taking out a modern carrier, first off, it's surrounded by it's battle group, which provides detection protection at all levels of combat. Then there's the carrier itself, which is massively armored, and fricking HUGE. It would take many conventional torpedos to sink it. The modern carrier, surrounded by its battle group, with its planes in the air, is nearly impregnable. And the effort required to send a striking force over here from within another country is not as massive as you might think, we do it all the time, most of the B-2's used to bomb Iraq were flown from inside the US.

The Eurofighter is about equal too, if not better than the F-15, as is the newest Swedish plane. The lastest of the Mirage series is very capable as well. And there is a Russian plane that is definitely superior, but it's not in active production, and the only one flying is a prototype. The Su-37. It's basically a Su-27 with canards and thrust vectoring. Any of those in Chinese hands would give me chills.

As to nukes, if we were losing a war against China, we might, because we know we'd get the "better" of the exchange, though that's a relative term here, I don't think the Chinese would though, because they'd know they'd all die and still not defeat us. But I could be wrong, and so I do not wish for a war between the US and China. Even though if it were fought right now, we'd win a conventional one as well as a nuclear one. The possibility of nukes being used in anger again is just too great for me to want that though.