A few more notes on cutting defense spending

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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3 Responses

  1. greginak says:

    Good stuff. When people talk about military spending and defense what many people don’t realize is the huge difference between a basic armed forces to defend your country and a huge armed force to project power. The big Euro countries except for the UK, have militaries focused on preventing an invasion, that is a relativity simple requirement since invading a neighboring country is really really hard. It requires at leas a 3-1 advantage in men at least at point of attack, a massive logistical advantage and surprise really helps but is almost impossible nowadays. Even then the costs of maintaining an occupation are huge and be long lasting. Americans, with our huge military, have lost any conception of what we need to defend ourselves ( protip: two big oceans helps). Almost all our military is focused on power projection in other places.

    Europeans also seem to remember the costs of their wars and tend to shy away from them. Here is America some people weep over Europeans not wanting to fight more wars. That in itself should mark a person as someone cosmically ignorant of history.Report

  2. MadRocketScientist says:

    Not too mention, with all the armed citizens we have in this country who would just LOVE (GO WOLVERINES!) to go shooting at invaders (at least, until the invaders started shooting back, then it’s not so much fun anymore, and a lot more like very dangerous work), any attempt to put boots on the ground would be costly.

    Seriously, with this country, best to nuke us from orbit. it’s the only way to be sure.Report

  3. Pat Cahalan says:

    > As soon as the argument about defense spending turns
    > into an argument about jobs you’ve more than likely
    > waded into that fallacy.

    s/waded/dived headlongReport