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[Previous entry: "Changing barrels"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Bombing in Baghdad"] 16 August 2003: "The burgeoning green machine"
I've been rather slow picking up on it, but over on Pedantry two weeks ago, Scott Martens got into a two-parter on American defence spending and possible unforeseen consequences. The first entry ("America: the stillborn empire?") kicked off with an observation that despite the fact that the American defence budget is now close to equalling or even surpassing those of the rest of the world put together, the US Army's newly appointed chief of staff, General Peter Schoomaker, stated the army probably requires more personnel. The second entry ("It couldn't happen here") delves into where all that money goes (or, at least, where Scott thinks it goes) and the possible side-effects of propping up one's national industry by means of defence contracts. It's a thoroughly thought-provoking read, but there are certain points which I think Scott, and his commenters, have overlooked. I thought I'd address them here, partly because I think it's bad form to overload another blogger's comments section, but mostly because I need to come up with something for my own blog.
Paul Kennedy is best known for advancing the idea that empires are destroyed by overreach, but the numbers in this case are so incredible that I can't imagine why it isn't a public scandal. According to the CDI, Iraq spent all of $1.4 billion on its defence [note: in 2001 - JS], and yet it has cost the US some $70 billion to invade Iraq and roughly $4 billion a month to occupy it. Imagine attacking an enemy that spent $3 billion a year on defence!But is this "overreach"? And if so, in which sense? Not economically; in my copy of The Economist Pocket World in Figures (2003 edition), is a table of defence spending as a percentage of GDP. The top 42 are listed, and the United States is not among them. Iraq, however, comes in at tenth place, spending 9.7% of its GDP on defence. Even if the FY2004 defence budget were approved in its entirely, American defence spending would just top 3.8%. In other words, the United States could more easily afford to spend that $70 billion (and counting) than Iraq could afford to spend that $1.4 billion. Another factor, which I think Scott fails to consider, is that warfare is paid for in money and blood, and there is sufficient empirical evidence to conclude that, the more one is able and willing to spend in money, the less one tends to have to pay in blood. This is reflected at various levels, which roughly correspond with the three categories of military arms and services: combat (or "manoeuvre," i.e. infantry and armour), combat support (artillery, signals, engineers) and combat service support (logistics, maintenance, medical, administration, etc.). At the combat level, we need look no further than personal equipment. Good equipment can greatly improve the combat effectiveness and survivability of the combat soldier. When I think of the kit I was issued ten years ago as a conscript infantryman, I cannot help but feel a tinge of envy at the gear an American GI packs these days: body armour, dust goggles, night vision devices, first aid kits, GPSs, man-portable radios with headsets, knee and elbow protectors, rifles with accessory rails top and bottom, accessories to mount on them, and some units have started issuing CamelBaks. This applies in similar fashion to fighting vehicles. At the combat support level there is the matter of fire support, i.e. artillery and airpower; plentiful and flexible fire support allows manoeuvre elements to disrupt or even destroy an enemy force before engaging it. But this requires good communications, so that the manoeuvre elements can quickly call in fire support on an enemy position. It requires the presence of plentiful fire support, and more than sufficient supplies (ammunition and fuel) so that the fire support can keep firing. And with the (justified) concern over collateral damage these days, there is a need for copious amounts of guided munitions, which are comparatively expensive to develop and manufacture. Meanwhile, engineering units facilitate the crossing of rivers and other obstacles, allowing the combat elements to outmanoeuvre the enemy. At the combat service support level, logistics keeps the whole machine supplied; maintenance keeps the combat and combat support equipment working; medical personnel, if adequately equipped, prevent wounded soldiers from becoming dead ones. The greater one's material advantage in all three areas, the fewer casualties one likely to incur, but each requires serious expenditure. On top of all this, of course, comes training, which also requires expenditures in food, fuel, ammunition and specialised equipment (like MILES). The results are plain to see: since the start of Operation "Iraqi Freedom," the US has incurred roughly 200 fatal casualties (a large portion of them not as the result of enemy action). By contrast, estimates of the Iraqi (combatant) body count start at 5,000 and are generally around 10,000. (Of course, large numbers of Iraqi troops also surrendered without a fight or deserted, and were thus of no more use to the Iraqi war effort.) Scott comments: At 50-to-1, the ratio of US invasion costs to Iraqi annual defence spending, it takes only $20 billion dollars to defend against an annual US defence budget of $1 trillion a year - twice what Bush is budgeting for fiscal 2009.Taking that ratio of financial expenditure, it's worth noting that it is roughly inverse to the ratio of combatant fatalities (roughly fifty Iraqis KIA to every American KIA). It's an extremely crude comparison, but it illustrates my point that a higher expenditure in money permits a lower expenditure in blood. Scott continues: Federal receipts are approximately $2 trillion and total US GDP is roughly $10 trillion, so it doesn't take too many billions in spending to ensure that the US simply can't afford to attack you. At $200 billion, half of what the US spends now, it would take the entire US GDP to invade your country. [...] It doesn't look to me like the US can afford to be a superpower.There are a number of flaws in Scott's argument. The first is that he is talking about a country having an annual defence budget of $200 billion (against a one-time expenditure on America's part). At present, there are 21 countries in the world whose entire GDP is $200 billion or more; of those, most are geo-strategically allied to the United States. The second is that the cost of Operation "Iraqi Freedom" is what it took to invade, occupy the entire country, and remove its government, while incurring minimal friendly casualties and attempting to minimise non-combatant casualties. In other words, if I extend Scott's comparison (which is admittedly limited to the financial aspect alone), even in the highly unlikely event that a country could sustain an annual defence budget of $200 billion, it would take a one-time expenditure on the United States' part equal to its GDP for a single year, not just to invade, but to invade successfully. In practical terms, the action required on the United States' part would be extremely difficult, but the action required on the part of the invaded country would be extremely difficult for a G8 member state, and impossible for anyone else. As a practical example, let's take Russia. Russia has a GDP of just over $250 billion, and its defence spending amounts to 5.0% of GDP. Even with this budget, Russia cannot actually afford the armed forces it has. Many of its troops have not been paid for years. Consequently, draft-dodging and desertion are an endemic and chronic problem. The conflict in Chechnya is sustained in no small part due to the fact that it allows the 80,000 Russian troops involved to gain some income from such activities as looting, selling weapons to the rebels and skimming a percentage off the proceeds of illegal exports of Chechen petroleum products. To judge the effectiveness of the Russian navy, we need look no further than the fate of the Kursk. In comparing budgets, the role of conscription can not be overestimated. Even many western nations pay, or paid, their conscripts significantly less than volunteers (the United States, to its credit, seems to have been an exception on this point). As a conscript sergeant in the Dutch army in 1994, I was pulling down around 1,050 guilders a month (about US$400), two hundred guilders less than I would have received had I been on welfare, whereas a volunteer private first class was getting about double that. The Russians, as I mentioned, don't actually pay their conscripts at all. Certainly, the other large armed forces in the world would have significantly higher expenditures if they had to pay their troops a living wage. By way of illustration, the table in Scott's entry shows that Turkish military expenditure is less than a quarter of Germany's ($5.8 billion against $24.9 billion); however, the Turkish armed forces number almost three times as many troops as the Bundeswehr (609,700 against 221,100). Admittedly, the Turkish armed forces are less "state-of-the-art" than the Germans, but a severe difference in pay levels certainly plays a part in the discrepancy. In his second piece, Scott writes: Although the "military-industrial complex" has become a byword of X-Files type conspiracist thinking, it is not a notion without merit. There are quite a few people who think America's technological dominance is primarily a consequence of vast networks of military spending, and they make a pretty good case.I'm not so sure. I agree that the term "military-industrial complex" is an apt description of the interaction between the American armed forces and the defence industry, and I certainly accept that there is a causal relationship between the existence of this complex and the technological superiority of the American armed forces. But which way the causal relationship runs is entirely open to discussion. When Eisenhower coined the term "military-industrial complex" in 1961, the writing had been on the wall for well over a decade, and successive American administration had not failed to see it: in any conventionally armed confrontation with either the Warsaw Pact or the People's Republic of China (let alone both), the United States and its allies would be at a severe disadvantage as regards manpower. During World War II, the Soviet Union had mobilised half again as many troops as the United States, and the overwhelming numbers the Chinese could muster had become evident in Korea. Moreover, representative democracies tend to have significantly more qualms about expending the lives of their citizens than totalitarian states. To win a confrontation, the United States clearly needed to gain a technological edge. Therefore, even though I suspect a certain degree of reciprocity has come about over time, I would argue that the "military-industrial complex" originally came into existence as a result of the priority placed on technological superiority, rather than vice-versa. From (supposedly) being used to stimulate and subsidise national industry, Scott continues on the topic of the military being used to perform other tasks than the one for which it was created. In this regards he cites, and delivers some criticism on, a short story titled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012", written by then-Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dunlap of the US Air Force. Frankly, I'm inclined to think that better indicators of the influence of the military on public life can be found in defence spending as a percentage of GDP, and the relative proportion of the population under arms. To illustrate my point, let's compare some statistics. Turkey is a democracy, but the military high command wields an inordinate amount of influence on the government. Israel is also a democracy, but one which relies heavily on its armed forces to ensure its survival. North Korea has the highest degree of militarisation of any industrialised nation, arguably of any nation, and is included to provide context.
I think this provides some indication of the levels we'd need to be seeing before LTC Dunlap's scenario might become reality. |
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