{"id":7757,"date":"2014-08-10T06:52:37","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T13:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7757"},"modified":"2014-08-08T08:53:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T15:53:42","slug":"democracies-like-military-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democracies-like-military-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracies Like Military Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thorton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via FrontPage Magazine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

President Obama has been rightly chastised for his proposed cuts to our military budget. Critics have gone after his Quadrennial Defense Review and its plan to shrink the armed forces, not to mention the clumsy optics of issuing pink slips to thousands of officers still serving in Afghanistan. More troublesome is the reduction of the military\u2019s global mission from its traditional purpose of being able to fight and defeat two enemies at once, to only defeating one while keeping a second from \u201cachieving its objectives,\u201d a conveniently fuzzy criterion.<\/p>\n

Worse yet, these cuts are coming just as China and Russia are flexing their geopolitical muscles, the Middle East is exploding in sectarian violence, and Iran is creeping ever closer to nuclear weaponry. As a bipartisan panel created by the Pentagon and Congress concludes of these latest reductions, \u201cNot only have they caused significant investment shortfalls in U.S. military readiness and both present and future capabilities, they have prompted our current and potential allies and adversaries to question our commitment and resolve. Unless reversed, these shortfalls will lead to a high-risk force in the near future. That in turn will lead to an America that is not only less secure but also far less prosperous. In this sense, these cuts are ultimately self-defeating.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As the national leader and Commander in Chief, Obama deserves much of the blame for this strategic blunder. But let\u2019s not forget the role of us voters in these decisions. Historically democracies have had a bad habit of preferring butter to guns, privileging shortsighted interests over long-term security.<\/p>\n

Consider ancient Athens, the first democracy. In the 4th<\/sup>\u00a0century BC, the Athenians created a public fund to pay poorer citizens to attend the theater and religious festivals, which were celebrated on over 130 days a year. Soon a law was passed to divert surplus money into that fund instead of the military fund, and a bit later another law made transference of surpluses to the military fund a capital crime. Unfortunately, during this same period Philip II of Macedon embarked upon a program of aggression against the southern Greek city-states. With his defeat of Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip achieved his aim, and the Athenians lost their political freedom. Ancient critics linked Athens\u2019 defeat to the decision to starve the military in order to finance \u201centitlement spending.\u201d Three centuries after Chaeronea, the historian Pompeius Trogus wrote of the Athenians, \u201cThe state revenues they had once spent on the army and the fleet were devoted instead to holidays and festivals,\u201d and public money \u201cbegan to be divided among the people in the city. In this way it happened that in a Greece preoccupied with entertainment the previously lowly and obscure name of Macedon was able to emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n

We see a similar dynamic at work in England after the Great War. Just between 1919 and 1921 the defense budget was cut by four-fifths, and continued to decline until 1933. By 1934 the shortfall in funding was such that the whole defense budget for a year would have been needed just to make up for the deficiencies in spending on the army. By 1938, when Hitler began his rampage of aggression, Germany was spending 5 times more on its military than England was. These decades of cuts, moreover, were justified after the Great War by a defense policy, renewed in 1928, based on the \u201cTen Year Rule,\u201d which assumed that the British Empire would not have to fight a major war during that period, and so did not need an expeditionary force. Germany had other plans, and the folly of scanting the army became obvious in June 1940 with the collapse of the British army in France, and its hairsbreadth escape from annihilation at Dunkirk.<\/p>\n

During this period, of course, money was tight in England. The war-debt, much of it owed to the U.S., had to be serviced. At the same time, voters were demanding increased spending on social-welfare programs. From 1.38% of GDP at the beginning of the Great War, welfare spending reached 3.36% in 1933, while spending on health services went from 1.14% of GDP in 1921, to 1.91% of GDP at the outbreak of World War II, despite occasional cutbacks. During this period, despite the growing evidence of German rearmament, disarmament was an explicit Labor Party policy, partly as a way to acquire revenues for increased social welfare spending. In 1934, Labor leader George Lansbury said he would \u201cclose every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force. I would abolish the whole dreadful equipment of war and say to the world \u2018do your worst.\u2019\u201d That year and the next saw a string of Labor electoral victories, suggesting that the English people were sympathetic to a program of more butter, less guns.<\/p>\n

Our current reductions in military spending also have support from the electorate. The cuts today are a consequence of the 2011 Budget Control Act, which called for $1 trillion in reduced spending over the following decade. Half of this amount is to come from defense, while the primary drivers of debt and deficits, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, have been left untouched. At the time, no great mass of voters protested this unbalanced and shortsighted ratio, reserving their displeasure for the Republicans and their demands for serious deficit reductions during the debt-ceiling crisis, and suggestions that entitlements needed to be reformed. So too today, when the military cuts have not generated any widespread voter interest, let alone protests. Indeed, 37% of Americans say the government spends too much on defense, and 32% say it spend about the right amount\u00ad\u00ad\u2013\u2013\u00ad\u00adthe latter despite the 31% decline since 2010.<\/p>\n

We can fault our leaders for not better explaining that America\u2019s role as the keeper of global order requires it to maintain a military force big enough and lethal enough to deter would-be aggressors. We can see right now the wages of American retreat from that global role, with our rivals and enemies emboldened, and our allies disgusted. And we have our own history to caution us against such shortsighted thinking. Who thought after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when during the 90\u2019s defense spending was reduced 36%, that a new enemy holed up in the badlands of Afghanistan would strike the homeland with such devastation, and trigger two wars? No one knows what new dangers will arise from the current disorder, but we need to be prepared for them. But it\u2019s hard to believe our president agrees with this obvious common sense when he dismisses the metastasizing jihad statelet ISIS by saying, \u201cthe rockets aren\u2019t being fired into the United States.\u201d Not yet they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But the fault does not lie just with our leaders. Unfortunately, democracies have a hard time seeing past the next election cycle and today\u2019s interests and passions. As usual, Tocqueville said it best:<\/p>\n

\u201cA clear perception of the future, founded upon judgment and experience . . . is frequently wanting in democracies. The people are more apt to feel than to reason; and if their present sufferings are great, it is to be feared that the still greater sufferings attendant upon defeat will be forgotten.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cpresent sufferings\u201d that are driving military reductions come from the mere thought of trimming social welfare spending and reforming entitlements to keep them from devouring the whole budget. One can only imagine what the \u201cgreater sufferings\u201d will be like if we continue to reduce our military and turn our backs on our global responsibilities just to protect our government dole.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2014\u00a0FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thorton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine President Obama has been rightly chastised for his proposed cuts to our military budget. Critics have gone after his Quadrennial Defense Review and its plan to shrink the armed forces, not to mention the clumsy optics of issuing pink slips to thousands of officers still serving in Afghanistan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[842,22,247,167,117,47,571,285,196],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-217","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7075,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sacrificing-the-military-to-entitlements\/","url_meta":{"origin":7757,"position":0},"title":"Sacrificing the Military to Entitlements","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Vladimir Putin, playing geopolitical chess while our president plays tiddlywinks, has effectively taken over Crimea. Armed men, looking suspiciously like Russian military personnel, have seized both airports and established border checkpoints decorated with Kalashnikovs and Russian flags. This comes after other armed men seized\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukraine"","block_context":{"text":"Ukraine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/ukraine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, center, is escorted by U.S. Air Force Gen. Jack Weinstein after arriving at the missile alert facility and launch control center at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., Jan. 9, 2014. Hagel was on a two-day trip to visit commands in the western United States.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/800px-thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7839,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words\/","url_meta":{"origin":7757,"position":1},"title":"Obama\u2019s Foreign Policy of Empty Words","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cWhen force threatens, talk is no good.\u201d\u00a0 by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine That line from John Ford\u2019s classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance contains wisdom everyone from peasant to king knew before our modern age and its smug\u00a0illusions. 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