Friday, September 09, 2005
Attacking the war from the right
For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.
The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.
Ouch.
4 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Fri Sep 09, 09:37:00 AM:
The crux of Halprin's criticism, though, is his attack on all American post Cold War Defense policy viz. Communism, in particular China. It is true that Halprin implicitly criticizes the prosecution of the Iraq War as too light-handed. His strident view is that we have underinvested in Defense and manpower since the demise of the Soviet Union. He points to Defense spending as a percent of GDP to highlight the drama.
For what it's worth, I think he ignores results at his peril. He dismisses our performance in Afghanistan and Iraq wrongly, in my view. We cannot throw all our resources at every battle. In my opinion, we did not commit 500,000 troops to Iraq for a number of very good reasons; and while many whine about it, I think the results thus far are pretty damn good, actually unprecedented historically. If you want to ensure larger numbers of dead Americans, and a larger insurgency, put 500,000 American boots on Iraqi soil. And then who's left for Iran? Or China?
Halprin's axe is he wants to aggressively ramp up spending to deal with the risk of Chinese expansionism. That may be a worthy investment -- or not. But that is a dramatically different debate than resource commitment in the Middle East.
One battle at a time please. Remember, we already fought two proxy wars viz. China - Korea and Vietnam. Neither were great experiences for either of us, and the Chinese and Asians generally have substantially liberalized their economies (though not societies) in the interim. Halprin worries, perhaps rightly, that they may have the wealth to run an arms race with us eventually. Again, he may be right. But today, we are making a bet that China will not emerge as a military adversary in the near term. TH - should we be investing to fight a war for Taiwan? That is where Halprin is going. The use of the Shinseki argument in the Middle East is a device, but it's wrong in my view.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Sep 09, 09:54:00 AM:
I do not agree with everything Halprin wrote, particularly regarding China. For starters, I have argued in the past that we should back away from our Taiwan security guarantee, and still believe that. Also, I don't think that China is an inherent threat. Yes, it could become an expansionist power, but that would require it to reverse 700 years of attitude, which will not happen overnight. Do I think China is likely to launch an expansionist war? A country that only allows one child per family cannot absorb a lot of casualties. This is not Mao's China.
By Cardinalpark, at
Fri Sep 09, 10:05:00 AM:
Do you think we should be ramping up spend as he would propose? Would you commit (or have committed) more people on the ground? Do you really think Halprin is at core criticizing our execution in the Middle East, or using a broadly argues criticism to justify his proposal (which really is aimed at another objective))?
By Chris, at
Fri Sep 09, 02:44:00 PM:
With Helprin it's always about the percentage of GDP spent on defense. He is right, of course, about our need to expand our Navy. Naval assets allow us to project power globally in lieu of land bases (albeit at a reduced level).
He has never been a fan of Rumsfeld's transformation of the military. He has been criticizing the work-in-progress since Bush took office. Sometimes I wonder if it's not a bit of calling the caterpillar in it's cocoon ugly and lazy, before it gets a chance to complete the journey to butterfly. In this case, a butterfly armed with a Vulcan cannon.
