The American economy has another hidden weakness – over five percent of our Gross National Product is based on the U.S. Government’s expenditures on the military. That does not include peripheral, indirect military-related aspects of our economy, for which there seem to be no hard numbers. But it is safe to say that a much larger chunk of our economy is dependent upon our military industry. To put this in another way, according to the Center for Defense Information, America spends the same amount as the rest of the entire world on military expenditures. (http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/) This is a problem for three basic reasons. First, diversity is a key for any strong, truly vibrant economy; to have so many of our proverbial eggs in one basket is really tantamount to an economic collapse just waiting to happen, for if military expenditures were to significantly slacken, our economy would (at the very least) greatly suffer.
Second, because we cannot afford to allow military expenditures to decrease, it weakens our resolve for peace both domestically and globally, for it calls into question exactly what is in our national interest. When the Soviet Union collapsed, for example, was it in our national interest to attempt a sort of Eastern Europe ‘Marshall-Plan’ to rebuild the infrastructure and political systems of the multiple countries that were emerging, to help them create a stable and productive Europe (and giving us still more stable, strong trading partners)… or was it in our national interest to do nothing, and allow Eastern Europe to destabilize socially and politically, creating both a market for our weapons and a need for U.S. military involvement? Again, I am not trying to imply that there was some sort of conspiracy to ensure the destabilization of Eastern Europe; but I do believe that our military economy creates an environment in which we are more prone to engage in conflict than we are committed to creating peace. Not intentionally, perhaps – but conflict does seem to be the end result.
The third problem with having our economy dependent upon the military industry is taxes – to maintain a military economy of this magnitude requires an enormous amount of taxpayer money to be spent upon defense. Now, this really amounts to a sort of socialized welfare for the military industry. Indeed, if this were any other industry, the so-called “Right-wing” in this country would be screaming about government waste and socialism – and justifiably so. We all should be ‘up in arms’ (so to speak) over this issue. It strikes me that if our government is going to pump so much money into our economy, it ought at least to diversify a bit and prime the engines of industries from a broader spectrum, beyond the military, to allow for a more balanced and diversified over-all economy. But personally, I’d prefer we didn’t spend taxpayer money so extravagantly at all. Now, all this is not to say that I don’t think we need a strong, pro-active military – we do. But I question the need for a military machine so enormous that it swallows up well over a third of our current national budget and constitutes one of the largest single percentages of our GNP. Here too, we need to reassess our nation’s values and needs, and ensure that they are in accordance with our people’s values and needs.
What is the primary purpose of our military? It is to protect our nation from attack by external forces. Now, sometimes that might best be done by fighting elsewhere on the globe to prevent an escalation of a local conflict into a global one. I would argue that this was true of Kosovo by 1999. (I would also argue that if we had truly tried to help create a stable Eastern Europe starting back in 1989, we quite probably would have avoided the Yugoslavian war altogether.) Similarly, I would suggest that if we had entered the fray sooner in both World War I and World War II, each of those wars would have been over sooner and with less expense of human life. This is not simply hindsight speaking, either – President Roosevelt knew it in 1939, but was hamstrung by popular opinion against involvement and a jittery Congress… until Pearl Harbor. My point is that we do need a strong, pro-active military, and we need to have the willingness to use it. But our current military is simply too expensive. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t have a strong, well-equipped military without also being economically efficient in our management of it. And we also need to be very, very specific with ourselves as to when, how and why we use our military strength. It is contrary to the principles of democracy for America to be the world’s policeman – the world often does not want our stewardship, and unless it can be shown that it truly effects our national interests, we should respect others’ wishes. Indeed, I think that the U.N. ought to be the policeman of the world if anyone should be; that is a large part of why it was founded in the first place, after all. There is no need for America to incur all the cost (and all the wrath) of these conflicts.
There is a problem with all this, of course. It is one thing to say that we need a more balanced economy, one not so heavily dependent upon military expenditures – but it is quite another thing to actually make the shift. Let me give a small but poignant analogy of what I mean here. When the shoe and textile industries pulled out of the State of Maine years ago, moving their factories overseas, tens of thousands of people were thrown out of work. Whole towns were virtually boarded up as local businesses went under from lack of trade. The same thing happened in Michigan when the auto industry shifted overseas. Now, the military industry permeates all fifty States. It is, as I’ve already pointed out, enormous. We truly are dependent upon it, and to try and end that dependence all at once would be economic suicide; the whole nation would look like those ghost towns in Maine. If we are going to decide to end this dependence, we would need to approach things slowly, carefully, and most of all, patiently. I would suggest that since to a large degree this industry is already government-sponsored, in this instance a few socialistic government incentives to encourage companies in the military industry to make the shift to peacetime uses might certainly be in order. On the one hand, we need to slowly cut back on military expenditures; while on the other we need to offer financial aid to help military industries make the shift to the true private sector. It is also important to keep in mind that these industries haven’t had to really deal with the rough and tumble world of true competition – once they’ve signed a deal with the government, there has always been a lot of leeway for mistakes and delays; leeway that the real private sector doesn’t get the chance to enjoy. For them to make the transition successfully will require some degree of government aid, as well as a willingness on their part to change with the times.
