Why is even Paul Krugman pro-military spending? :(

I know better than to disagree with a public intellectual who is a Nobel recipient.  But, the following lines in Paul Krugman's piece don't resonate well with me, at all:

Start with a basic point: Slashing government spending destroys jobs and causes the economy to shrink.
This really isn’t a debatable proposition at this point. ...
Even Republicans admit, albeit selectively, that spending cuts hurt employment. Thus John McCain warned earlier this week that the defense cuts scheduled to happen under the budget sequester would cause the loss of a million jobs. It’s true that Republicans often seem to believe in “weaponized Keynesianism,” a doctrine under which military spending, and only military spending, creates jobs. But that is, of course, nonsense. By talking about job losses from defense cuts, the G.O.P. has already conceded the principle of the thing.

Seriously?  Krugman arguing in favor of maintaining the defense spending, too?  And by mockingly citing the "weaponized Keynesianism" he thinks he is reinforcing his argument?  Something is certainly rotten!

In his zealous pursuit of a certain policy option, has Krugman completely overlooked a simple fact that the US now spends more on military than the rest of the world combined.  Yes, the rest of the world combined! Ye tu, Professor Krugman?

If even Paul Krugman can write defending the military's budget, then we are in deep shit.

Contrast that with the following observation:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This is a world in arms. This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. 

That quote on guns and hunger is, of course, from President Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell speech that gave us the phrase the "military-industrial complex."  Jill Lepore reminds us about Ike's warning shot and a lot more in this New Yorker essay on the question on how much military is enough.

It is not merely the defense expenditures that worry me.  Even more than the dollars we spend there, I get depressed when I read and watch how much anything military has become sacred.  As Lepore writes:

Americans “have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedent in U.S. history, Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals.” Even as military spending has soared, war has become more distant: less known than imagined, less remembered than forgotten. War has become a fantasy: sleek, glossy, high-tech (more “Top Gun” than “Apocalypse Now”), and bloodless. Americans have less experience of war, and know less about the military, than at any point in the past century. 

I agree; "a romanticized view" is a better description.  It is simply bizarre.  So bizarre is this unholy combination of a romanticized view and weaponized Keynesianism that we continue to push for the manufacturing the tanks that even the military doesn't want!

Krugman is, of course, not the first economist, it seems like, who makes atrocious statements when caught up with the goal of maximizing the GDP.  Nearly two years ago, Larry Summers made the following point:

Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.

What a disgraceful fall from that wonderful starting point that Lepore reminds us about

The United States, a nation founded on opposition to a standing army, is now a nation engaged in a standing war.

As Jill Lepore notes:

“God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do,” Eisenhower once said.   

Looks like even god can't--we have a bigger military than hers!

An election day poem on patriotic politicians

The email from a student, "Z" was this:

I was reminded of your blog posts about military spending by this op-ed - maybe you have already read it?

I wonder when we will get any president with enough cojones to lay it out to the American public the ugly truth about our military spending and the militarization of culture.

I can safely assume it will never happen; after all, they have all managed to convince many of us that not only do we need a stronger military than the one we have, we ought to also monitor and preempt any home-grown terrorism for which we will soon employ drones flying over our heads in order to keep track of our activities.

Ultimately, it is not patriotic to question the insanity that is our obsession with the military and homeland_security. USA! USA! USA!

Years ago, e.e.cummings wrote about this awful nexus between politicians and patriotism

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

click here to listen to cummings reading this poem

But then, what does a peace-loving Libertarian-Democrat know, right?  This evaluation from isidewith.com is an example, though not accurate, of the mix of political preferences:

Want a real Halloween scare? US defense budget!

I blame Ramesh, for his comment here, for why I am scaring you with how much we spend on fighting whoever it is against whom we are at war on any given day year decade!

America spends as much on defence as the next 17 countries combined (most of whom are American allies). America's main competitor for the title of most profligate is China, which spends about 17% as much as America on defence. That number will continue to grow, but to give you a sense of where China stands in relation to America, look at its big military accomplishment from this year: the successful refurbishment of an old Soviet aircraft carrier, its first. America has 11 aircraft carriers, another in construction, and one more in reserve.

Happy Halloween!

Drones, Defense, and Deficit--Part II of the alliteration

As I take a break from events that have taken over my life, I bet I could have spent those moments on plenty of things better than catching up on news, which included this:

A drone missile struck a house in the Shawal Valley where militants were reported to be hiding in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border.
"Two missiles were fired on a house. Eight militants were killed," said a local intelligence official.
Several of the men killed were loyal to Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a top militant leader in North Waziristan, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Bahadur, a commander who is believed to be allied with the Haqqani network and to support attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan, is said to have an unofficial non-aggression pact with the Pakistani military.
Last week, Bahadur's group said it would act against anyone conducting polio vaccinations in its area, a direct threat to Pakistanis who collaborate with the United States.

The phenomenally expanded drones program fuels the anti-American feelings in countries where the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, President Barack Obama, seems to zealously use them.  Should we, therefore, be surprised to read that drone attacks are equated to terrorism?

Terming the US drone attacks terrorism, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has called for sharing with the nation the number of terrorists killed in the unmanned plane bombings.
“There is no difference between terrorism and drone attacks because both are killing innocent people and the nation must be told about the number of terrorists killed so far in the US campaign,” the chief minister said while addressing the distribution ceremony of E-Bars documents among the Punjab bar associations at Alhamra Hall on Saturday.
“We have to give up the habit of getting charity from foreigners and break beggar’s bowl to get such drone attacks seized,” Shahbaz maintained.

So, in adding to this earlier post, here is more to think about:

or, how about this:

 Hail to the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Warrior-in-Chief :(

Drones, Defense, and Deficit. More than alliteration!

Crazy life we lead!

We can cluster-bomb you back to the stone age!

Some of the students who pay attention to what I say and write think that I have nothing but depressing stuff.  I joke with them that it is no wonder then that they avoid meeting with me in my office!  Well, I have news for them--read what Glenn Greenwald writes about and I will come across as the most optimistic person on the planet :)

It is because Greenwald writes, and often, about the reality that we would rather not recognize, leave alone discuss.  In this edition of inconvenient truth, Greenwald writes about the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, President Obama, being one aggressive warmonger, especially when it comes to cluster bombs that most of the rest of the world is opposed to:

Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack on Yemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 people alleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want Rick Perry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’s presidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a part of a covert, undeclared air war? If anything, as numerous Democrats have ecstatically celebrated, such acts show how Tough and Strong the Democrats are: after all, ponder the massive amounts of nobility and courage it takes to sit in the Oval Office and order this type of aggression on defenseless tribal regions in Yemen. As R.W. Appel put it on the front page of The New York Times back in 1989 when glorifying George H.W. Bush’s equally courageous invasion of Panama: “most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood” and doing so has become “a Presidential initiation rite.”

This alone should depress anybody enough to go jump off the nearest cliff.  But, that is merely the point of departure for what Greenwald wants to point out: despite opposition from even the toadies allies like the UK, Obama is relentless when it comes to the US' inalienable right to use cluster bombs:

Given how indiscriminate and civilian-threatening these weapons are, more than 100 countries have signed a treaty banning their production and use and compelling compensation to their victims. Needless to say, the U.S. has categorically refused to join the Convention, along with the other biggest stockpilers of these weapons, such as Russia, Israel and China. The Obama administration’s refusal to join the Convention has caused tension and controversy even with its most subservient allies, such as Britian, a signatory to the treaty. ...
But now the Obama administration is moving far beyond a mere refusal to join the convention banning these munitions. According to The Independent, the U.S. is playing the leading role “to torpedo the global ban on cluster bombs” through a “proposal that would permit the use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had a failure rate of less than one per cent.”

Hey, where is the change from previous administrations that Obama promised, you ask on your way to that nearest cliff? Greenwald shows how much there has been no change at all:

Don Rumsfeld, November 21, 2002, on Iraq: “All I can say is if history has taught anything, it’s that weakness is provocative. It entices people into doing things that they otherwise would not do.”
Bill Kristol, July 24, 2006, on Iran and Syria: “We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative.”
Leon Panetta, yesterday: “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been steadily escalating his warnings about the impact of the deep cuts facing the Pentagon if the congressional super committee fails to reach a deal. On Thursday, he played the last – and strongest — card in his deck, arguing that the hundreds of billions of dollars of mandatory cuts would directly imperil U.S. national security. . . . Mandatory defense cuts, he warned, would weaken the armed forces to the point that enemies would be emboldened to attack the U.S. ’In effect, it invites aggression,’ Panetta said during the new conference, just his second since taking office in July.”
Yes, President Obama’s Defense Secretary is actually running around the country trying to scare Americans into believing that if the U.S. cuts military spending, then the nation will be attacked.

Happy landing!  From that cliff, that is :)

Occupy Wall Street heading towards ... Guy Fawkes Night ...

Looks like we are slowly moving towards what could become an eventful Guy Fawkes Night, three weeks from now on November 5th.  People are protesting (causes for dissatisfaction is all across the spectrum) and politicians and governments seem to be quite helpless at figuring out hot to get to address the dissatisfied Americans.

In such grave economic contexts, one would imagine reconsidering all the major expenditure items, especially at the federal level, which means talking about the massive military spending that we do.  But then how do you counter a propaganda campaign-by the government and the military industry--that it will be doom and gloom if we cut our defense budget even a tiny bit!

So, is this a good time to rethink American foreign aid? You bet it is!

For the correct reasons, and not the wrong ones.

We don't want to reduce foreign aid because of the isolationist and Tea-Party nutcases.  Nor because of any stupid idea that this and cuts to NPR will somehow wipe away the trillions of debt.

It is time we re-configured the foreign aid because almost always we have been spending money on the wrong people.  I really like the points Ken Adelman makes:

Four of the largest U.S. foreign-aid recipients today -- Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, and Afghanistan -- all take contrary positions on issues of critical importance to the White House. South Vietnam once got gobs -- gobs upon gobs -- of U.S. foreign aid. That didn't help much. Likewise with Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Zaire (now the "Democratic" Republic of the Congo), and other "friendly" (read: graciously willing to take U.S. money) countries.
The conclusion seems clear: The relationship between "the United States' ability to positively influence events abroad," as Nye puts it, and the amount of U.S. foreign aid a country receives is unclear at best. For decades now, the United States has been the No. 1 foreign-aid donor -- it has given the most money to poor countries -- so it can't move up any on that scale. But this hasn't translated in making America the most popular or most influential country around the world. Quite the contrary.
Even the all-time No. 1 recipient of U.S. aid, Israel, rebuffs Washington constantly, on momentous issues of peace. Moreover, Israeli polls show the lowest approval for the U.S. president of nearly anywhere in the world.

Most of what Adelman writes is not new, of course.  His is a response to this piece by Joseph Nye.  Adelman has lots of examples, of which I liked this the best:

Let's recall: The State Department agreed to the Mubarak government's request for its approval before any U.S. democracy programs for Egypt got launched. To put it simply, the soft-power agency consented that anti-dictator programs appropriated by the U.S. Congress first get approved by that dictator.

Awful how we were all cuddly with dictators and showered them with gifts.  That certainly didn't buy us popularity with the people, did it?  Adelman concludes:

I've come to believe that liberals focus primarily on intentions, while conservatives focus more on results. No doubt the soft-power goals of the State Department and USAID on diplomacy, foreign aid, exchange programs, and the like seem wonderful. They're peaceful, caring, intercultural, and so on. They signal the right intentions.
The hard-power association with Pentagon budgets, weapons, and soldiers seems quite contrary. They signal the wrong intentions. But looking at the actual results of soft power versus hard power may yield results that make today's fashionable thinking seem soft, if not altogether squishy.

Nope, I don't want to increase spending on the hard-power--we have way too much already, and one only needs the graphic on the right to be reminded that both in absolute and relative terms we are over-emphasizing the defense budget.  And, if we go by outcomes, well, being stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan for this long tells us that in these days of asymmetric warfare the inexpensive IEDs seem to give our gazillion dollar hard power one hell of a competition, do they not?

What we really need to cut is the size of the defense budget.  But, unfortunately, there are not enough people with the cojones to go after that one.  In fact, it seems like there is always an overwhelming majority that is ready to increase the defense allocation.

Chart of the day: America's military spending. O M G!!!

Ezra Klein has this chart

The outsized military spending on steroids compared to the rest of the world is simply astounding by itself ... but then when you think about this against the backdrop of all the discussions on budgets and deficits, isn't it ridiculous that under the pretext of 30 billion dollars the GOP is ready to shut the government down, and Paul Ryan is eager to go after Medicaid, and the military budget goes, well, untouched?

Klein adds:

Our military spending is absurd in comparison to the rest of the world’s, not particularly popular here at home and widely acknowledged to be full of waste. And yet it has emerged pretty much unscathed from the 2011 spending cuts and the 2012 budgets of both the House GOP and the White House. It’s really quite odd. Real deficit hawks would be spending some serious time with the report (pdf) of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. Guess we’ll see Wednesday whether President Obama is willing to take this fight on.

 Dream on, if you think that Obama will take on the defense budget.  Yes, I am thinking of Paul Krugman here on "Obama is missing."

I don't know if I should worry about defense spending or the fact that the politicos are willing to even restrict  the First Amendment rights in order to keep the military happy.  The following are what Senator, yes, US Senator, Lindsey Graham said:

Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

Can you imagine ever going after the defense budget when such politicians govern? ever, ever , ever?  As Reason pointed out in that context:

You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test. Better yet, maybe start electing some who at least occasionally refrain from supporting new wars against majority-Muslim countries that have yet to make it through a Reformation.

Yes, war forever.  If not with Eurasia, then with East Asia.  There is no place for Winston Smith, unless he truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5.

At the end of it all, as Andrew Sullivan noted:

the liberties taken away by wartime are permanently taken away.

Going after the massive defense budget is, therefore, not merely about deficits, it is also to regain the liberties that the government has taken away from us.  But, ain't gonna happen :(

"Spend, spend, spend" say the Democans

Call them not Democrats or Republicans at Congress. Instead, refer to them as Democans.
When they talk about the budget without talking about the real big expenditures, I say that is a wonderful example of bipartisanship.

Neither one wants to talk about the mandatory spending, but that is where the real money is! (source for the graph, via)
So, what is in this mandatory spending that takes up nearly 60 percent of the budget?

If only the joke weren't on us voters!
And, of course, even within the Discretionary Spending, way too much agreement on the need to spend a gazillion billion on defense :(

I like how Ezra Klein sums up the situation:

Well, the business of the American government is insurance. Literally. If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army.

Chart of the day: America's defense spending

Just the facts, ma'am (ht):

How does this relate to the debt and deficit that we often worry about?  Let us check in with Alan Simpson, the co-chair of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsiblity and Reform (ht):

“We’re going to get rid of all earmarks, all waste, fraud and abuse, all foreign aid, Air Force One, all congressional pensions,” said Simpson on Sunday in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That’s just sparrow belch in the midst of the typhoon. That’s about six, eight, ten percent of where we are. So, I’m waiting for the politician to get up and say, there’s only one way to do this: you dig into the big four, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense. And anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat, and give them the green weenie.”...
While many Republicans are still resisting cutting the defense budget, Simpson said that military spending needed to be addressed in order to seriously reduce the deficit. He said that the commission asked Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) about what they hear from the Defense Department about cutting contractors. “They don’t know how many contractors they have,” he said in amazement of the Pentagon. “It’s something between 250,000 and a million. So, our proposal is to cut 250,000 contractors out of the game.”

The Pentagon doesn't even know how many defense contractors it has?  Do they at least know how many billions we spend?

OMG! Federal budget in 2020

This is from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

(A much simpler graphic than the one on PIIGS, and infinitely simpler than that nasty military Powerpoint slide!)

ht