Tanner Rotering

When you think of your children’s future, what comes to mind?  Do you imagine them having a quality education, a successful career, a happy family, a safe home, and all the freedoms that we enjoy today?  Do you imagine them as happy, healthy, and financially secure?  Regretfully, while this is how we like to think of our children’s future, the truth is much more menacing.  We often take for granted the many freedoms and privileges that we as Americans have, and if we are not more careful concerning the preservation of these freedoms and privileges, others will not hesitate to take them away from us.  Currently America is headed toward a very unsightly demise, and we have to do something about it.

The current military expenditures of the United States Federal Government are not adequate to ensure the security of the United States.  Despite the relative peace that Americans enjoy in the modern age, the choices made in the near future concerning America’s military budget have the potential to permanently alter America’s direction.  With the rising national debt and the recurrent national deficit, well-intentioned reformers risk cutting the programs in the federal government that are most important to the well-being of the United States and that are most in need of federal funding.  In the midst of the “War on Terror” many ill-advised officials are crippling America’s long-term security by stripping the military of its large-scale conflict capabilities in order to make way for a counter-insurgency focus.  Despite inflation and the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military budget is left underfunded due to an alleged lack of funds while President Obama’s controversial health care plan, the trillions of dollars in stimulus money, and countless entitlements are funded without a second thought by many in Congress.  Without a strong military, America is susceptible to countless threats in the modern world, many of which, while not openly hostile to the security of United States, are still a threat to American interests.  If America cannot retain its current status as leader of the free world, there will be no free world.  Thus, in order to avoid this grim prospect, it is imperative that the United States Federal Government substantially increase the federal military budget.

The purpose of this paper is to refute a few common misconceptions concerning the military budget.  When the issue of increased military funding is brought up, several common arguments are made against such an increase.  The first of these arguments states that because we are already spending more money on our military than the rest of the world combined, we do not need to spend any more.  This argument is founded on the critically false assumption the amount of money spent by the military has a one-to-one correlation to both the quantity and quality of the forces produced and maintained by the military.  In other words, people who make this argument often do not realize that the “higher-tech” something is, the more expensive it is, and thus, when the budget is limited, the military generally has to make sacrifices in quantity in order to attain the higher quality (and vice versa).  Because of this trade-off, the military must maintain a balance between more expensive advanced technology and less expensive conventional technology — between technology and numbers.  It is also important to recognize that, because there are multiple combat scenarios in which the United States may have to deploy its military forces, not all technologies are constructed for the same purpose.  More advanced technology is often procured and maintained in order to fulfill very limited and yet very important roles.  For example, certain military UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are outstanding for collecting intelligence and for eliminating certain targets, but currently they are not a competitive form of technology for air superiority; much less advanced manned-aircraft is still capable of out-performing modern UAVs in air-to-air combat.  Because the United States Military has to maintain a careful balance between the quality and the quantity of its forces, because it has multiple roles to fill pertaining to defense, and because a unique technology is often required for each specific combat scenario, the current military budget cannot be assumed to be fully designated to one single aspect of its defense procurement.  Thus, while the United States Military may be spending more money than all of the other nations on earth put together, it cannot then be assumed that America could, for example, easily be victorious in a war with every other nation, because not all of America’s military funding is spent on preparing for this one scenario.  Most countries are not as committed to so many objectives world-wide as is the United States.  Even if there were only one simple objective toward which every nation devoted its military budget, spending a specific amount of money in one nation is not going to bring the same results as spending that same amount of money in another nation.  There are too many variables involved in the process to make such a simple comparison.  These variables include the price of materials, the items purchased, the price of labor, the procurement process, etc.  Thus it should be clear military spending cannot be correlated on a one-to-one ratio to military preparedness for every possible conflict, and thus, one cannot assume because we spend more money than any other nation on earth, we are also better matched for any conflict with any other nation on earth.  One should not judge the benefits of any policy purely by the amount of money spent to achieve its end.

A second common argument some will present for why we should not increase military expenditures asserts that, because of our massive national debt and incessant national deficit, we ought to be cutting military spending rather than increasing it.  While the national debt and the national deficit are certainly significant problems, that does not necessarily mean we should cut every government program.  Instead we should carefully determine which programs ought to have their funding cut, and which programs ought to remain the same or have their funding increased.  National security must not be compromised.  We cannot risk the existence of the United States for the financial security of the United States.  It would do us no good to save a large sum of money by cutting back our military budget in order to reduce the deficit if such an action threatened the existence of the United States as a nation.  There are many alternative programs which can be cut instead of the nation’s already underfunded military program.  Max Boot, in “Impact of Past Defense Cuts Should Warn of Risks” at washingtonpost.com argues that our current defense budget is “eminently affordable.”  At less than four percent of America’s gross domestic product, he says, the relative amount of money which the United States spends on defense is significantly less than it has been throughout the past century.  Citing the example of the “post-Cold War drawdown,” Boot also draws attention to the historical impacts of cutting the defense budget.  While it would be beneficial to eradicate any truly wasteful spending within the military’s budget (though one must be careful what one classifies as wasteful), it is not feasible such an action would free enough money to cover all of the gaps in the military budget.  Thus, in spite of the mounting national debt, we must still increase the funding for the United States Military.

Finally, the third counterargument makes the claim that, because the United States has been able to quickly develop new technology and prepare for conflict in the past, America should postpone any large military budgetary increase until a conflict which necessitates such an increase presents itself.  The fundamental flaw with this argument is the fact it completely ignores the new pace of warfare that has developed as a result of the tremendous technological breakthroughs in the past century.  While a purely reactionary defensive policy may have been sufficient to maintain security in the past, it is no longer a feasible strategy for the 21^st century; warfare has developed much more of an emphasis upon preemption.  In the past, America has relied largely upon its geographical insulation to act as a temporal buffer from conflict.  Because the United States is separated from much of the world by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, historically the United States has been either left alone or has had a substantial amount of time to prepare for battle because of the tremendous amounts of time it would take to cross the ocean by ship.  In the modern world, however, America does not have the privilege of either remaining isolationist or of waging war purely on a reactionary basis.  Because of the interconnectedness of the modern global economy and because of significant advances made in the technology of warfare, the American military must be ready to take action upon a moment’s notice.

American interests are so tightly interwoven with the well-being of countless other economies worldwide that America cannot afford to sit back and not take action when an ally or even a competitor’s security is threatened.  In order to protect America’s trading options, the American military cannot wait until American soil is threatened, but instead it must always be fully capable of deploying anywhere in the world to meet any potential threat.

Modern technology also plays a role in the necessity to anticipate hostilities before they actually occur.  Because modern technology enables quicker communication, quicker mobilization, better networking, faster calculations, faster vehicles, more precise munitions, longer flight times, more powerful weapons, and a whole range of other benefits, the pace of warfare is based upon much shorter time frames.  For example, in World War II, in order for American forces to attack the Japanese homeland, American aircraft carriers had to sail within several hundred miles of the Japanese islands to enable a successful bombing mission.  Because the aircraft had much smaller combat radii than modern aircraft, they had to be deployed much closer to their destination, and this took time.  Modern aircraft, on the other hand, can fly around the world without having to land to refuel.  This means we have to always be prepared to defend ourselves because we don’t have months to prepare while the enemy gets their forces into position.

The fact that technology was much less complex than it is now has significant implications for strategy as well.  In former decades military weapons like airplanes and tanks could be designed, constructed, and sent to the battlefield fairly rapidly.  The technology wasn’t very complex, and it didn’t involve nearly as many components as it does today.  A single company could produce the machines of war largely within its own facilities with its own materials.  In modern times, however, military weapons not only take much longer to develop, perfect, and produce, but the manufacturing process incorporates innumerable intricate, highly specialized parts which are produced by a large variety of companies.  It is no longer reasonable to assume America would be able to design and construct such complicated machines of war on a purely reactionary basis after we have perceived a threat.  It takes the military many years to develop the modern weapons of war, and to expect it to happen overnight is preposterous.

Proponents of this third counter argument may argue that instead of focusing on simply having the “best” technology, we should focus instead on obtaining the technology that best exploits the weaknesses of our enemies.  While it is true taking advantage of opponents’ weaknesses is a valuable tactic in war, proponents of this theory, like Martin Van Creveld in Technology and War, often take it too far.  They claim that because the fundamental principle upon which technology is founded is a system of consistent cause and effect in which an action will always create the same outcome, and because conversely war is founded upon the inconsistencies and unpredictability of one’s opponents, technology and war are fundamentally opposed in their natures (311-320).  Proponents of such theories are not arguing that technology should not be used in war, but that the value of technology is strictly limited to the ability with which it can exploit the enemy’s weakness.  This is not completely accurate, however.  Clearly the human element of warfare adds a sense of unpredictability, but this does not mean anything which utilizes consistency is then necessarily opposed in nature.  Though warfare often involves a series of variables, the laws of physics are constants that can be utilized by means of technology to predict and limit the impact of the variables.  Most will recognize that though the formation of technology is based upon the uniformity of natural causes, the application of technology is more flexible.  Therefore, technology and warfare are not fundamentally opposed in nature since technology can be used in harmony with warfare.

Because of technology’s unique ability to limit the impact of various unknowns in warfare, its applications are much broader than simply exploiting an enemy’s weakness.  Often a superior technology is useful because of factors completely independent of an enemy’s weakness.  For example, radar (when it was first invented) was not useful simply because it exploited a specific weakness of the enemy.  It was useful because it provided vital intelligence concerning enemy positions.  There wasn’t some fundamental flaw unique to the tactics or technology of the enemy that gave value to the technology of radar; it was a new capability all together that could be used by either side.  Some might argue the very fact the enemy could be detected by radar was a weakness, but before radar this was not a problem.  Instead, radar created this weakness in the enemy by creating an advantage for the developing nations.  Thus technology does not have to only exploit enemy weaknesses, but instead it can actually create enemy weaknesses.  Further, technology often has strategic military power completely independent of a specific conflict and should be developed preemptively in order to gain a tactical advantage.  The only way these technologies can be adequately funded, though, is by increasing the military budget.

Though it may be hard for us to imagine a scenario where very desperate measures would be required of us, world stability can falter in the blink of an eye, leaving us in a situation in which we wish we had spent more money ensuring our security.  The unthinkable has happened before.  Remember Pearl Harbor?  Despite the general complacency concerning our security, America was taken completely off guard.  This time, however, we cannot afford to wait to begin preparation until we have been attacked.  Because of the incredible advances in technology in the modern age, warfare is contingent upon much shorter timeframes.  With the advances made in rapid deployment capabilities, precision targeting, efficient communication, and sophisticated weaponry, preemptive modernization is critical to the security of the United States.  Thus, it is absolutely imperative that the United States Federal Government substantially increase the federal military budget.