Yes, that’s right. All 200 or so of them. Combined.
According to GlobalSecurity.org, last year, the US dropped about $625 billion in taxpayer dollars on its military, while all the rest of the world together spent $500 billion. (The aggregate global figures come from 2004, but have been steady over the prior decade.) However, if you also add in nuclear weapons costs handled separately by the Energy Department, Veterans Affairs, interest on money borrowed to fund previous wars, and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total rises to a jaw-dropping one trillion dollars per year.
Think of how astonishing that is.
Imagine you and all your fishing buddies tied up next to a guy who had to have a boat that was twice as big as all of yours combined. You guys have 15 footers. His would be 6,000 feet long, or six Queen Marys, length-to-length.
Imagine that you knew someone who had to spend double on dinner what everyone else dining in a decent restaurant was spending. The average meal for the rest of you costs 25 dollars. This guy insists on spending $10,000 on one meal, of the same food, prepared by the same chef.
This is an astonishing ratio in so many ways.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about it is that nobody particularly talks about it. It’s one thing to say that military spending has now joined Social Security as the third rail of American politics – you touch it, you die. And, of course, now we are treated to the visage of the “liberal” – even “socialist” and “defeatist” “pal of terrorists” – guy in the White House actually increasing military spending, and doing so at a time when the federal budget is hemorrhaging red ink as if it were the Exxon Valdez, drunken captain at the helm and all. But it’s actually even worse than that.
Not only can you not seriously discuss cutting military spending in America, you can’t even know about this spending ratio relative to the rest of the world, or contemplate what it means. Do you know of any single politician who ever mentions this?
It’s also astonishing because the Cold War is over, the once Nazi-controlled Germany has turned into one of the most pacifist countries in the world, Japan is all about making cars and TVs, and there isn’t a serious enemy of the United States anywhere on either the geographical or temporal horizon. Right now, we are spending vast sums of money to fight gaggles of angry young men armed with box-cutters, and scraggly mullahs hiding in remote mountainous caves. And they’re winning.
It is conceivable that China might, maybe, someday, spend something like what the US does on its military. But for what? Right now China spends a tenth of what the US does on its military, and considerably less than that if you count the other items that bring the US total up to a trillion per year. If it reached parity, what would that permit it that is now impossible, apart from perhaps taking back Taiwan and creating a twentieth century Latin America-style neighborhood it could dominate even more than it does already? Would it allow China to invade the United States, or bend it to Chinese will for fear of a military confrontation? Of course not.
Which is another reason this ratio is so astonishing. Say whatever you want about nuclear weapons from a moral perspective. They have nevertheless changed the dynamic of international politics radically. No state will ever again invade another one which possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to project it in quantity. The doctrine of mutually-assured destruction may indeed be mad from a psychological perspective, but it works – at least apart from situations in which the attacking country’s leadership is either so bonkers or so determined on an issue that national suicide isn’t a deterrent. Of course, non-state actors like al Qaeda are a problem, because they provide little target for retaliation, but would spending another $100 billion on more destroyers or fighter jets solve that problem? Of course not.
This grossly disproportionate ratio of military spending to other countries is also astonishing, and astonishingly obscene, for what it costs this country in missed opportunities. We are by far the richest country in the world – no one is even close. And we have no real enemies. And, as noted, we spend double the entire world combined in order to defend against those non-enemies.
Such thoughtful priorities also entitle our lucky population to have a national healthcare system that is ranked 37th from the top, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Isn’t that special? Morocco does better than we do. So do Colombia, Chile and Costa Rica. And Dominica. Does anyone really even know where Dominica is? All those weapons systems don’t just purchase for us a lack of security, they also buy a country where 50 million Americans lack health insurance of any kind, and countless others are grossly under-insured (including those who don’t know it yet, but will find out fast if they ever get sick).
In part because of this fine health care system, the United States also ranks 29th globally on infant mortality. And the longitudinal trend isn’t pretty. We were 12th in the world in 1960, and 23rd in 1990. Now we are tied with Poland and Slovakia. The good news, though, is that we are still by far and away first worldwide on obesity, with 31 percent of the population qualifying for that distinction, over six percent higher than our nearest competitor! The rest of the world can kick us around all day long, but nobody can ever take that distinction away from us. Oh, and we had almost twice as many plastic surgery procedures as any other country in the world. I guess these figures also partially explain why the richest country in the world, by far, is ranked 47th in the world in terms of life expectancy, below Boznia-Herzegovina, Jordan and Guam. Cool. Go USA!
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