A few years ago I found myself reporting a story about the military buildup on the remote western Pacific island of Guam. Guam happens to be the westernmost territory in the United States, a location that puts it within just a few days' sailing of many potential East Asian flashpoints. One of the people I interviewed was a senior U.S. Navy officer who made the case for expanding base facilities on the island so that they could handle some of the military's biggest ballistic-missile submarines. Among other things, he explained, this was a capability that would beef up America's ability to fight the Global War on Terror. How, exactly? Well, it was simple: These superquiet subs could sneak up close to the coastlines of countries where terrorists were operating and launch mini-subs filled with Navy SEALs through their torpedo tubes. The mini-subs could then drop the men off on the shore -- a perfect way to surprise the bad guys!
I doubt very much that the officer in question really believed that it made much sense to use an Ohio-class submarine -- a Cold War monster originally designed to unleash a nuclear holocaust on the Soviet Union -- as a glorified Humvee. (By point of comparison, the current cost of a boomer of that type would be around $4 billion a pop -- Trident missiles not included, mind you.) I suspect he was smarter than that; maybe he just didn't want me to think that home-porting ballistic-missile subs far out in the western Pacific had anything to with containing China. And I should note at this point that the Advanced SEAL Delivery System he was talking about has since been quietly shelved -- though less because of its inherent absurdity than the fact that the Navy just couldn't get it to work. Still, the officer's argument made perfect sense within the framework of a political culture that has made having the most advanced military technology an end unto itself -- regardless of any rational cost-benefit analysis.
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To anyone who hasn't been paying attention, let's go over it one more time: In February the Pentagon requested $708.2 billion for fiscal year 2011 -- which would make the coming year's defense budget, adjusted for inflation, the biggest since World War II. As one analysis of the budget points out, that would mean that total defense spending -- including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- has grown 70 percent in real terms since 2001. Defense spending now accounts for some 20 percent of federal discretionary spending. That's even more than Social Security.
As a consequence, every year the United States accounts for just under half of the entire world's military spending. (By way of comparison, China spends about 8 percent; Russia, 5 percent.) As Benjamin Friedman, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, recently noted in one report: "The closest thing the United States has to state enemies -- North Korea, Iran, and Syria -- together spend about $10 billion annually on their militaries -- less than one-sixtieth of what we do."
Now, there are still plenty of people around who believe that the United States is duty-bound to spend more on its defense than the next 45 or so countries combined. But let's assume, for the moment, that they're wrong. Let's assume that some members of the American political elite and electorate at large have concluded that the United States can't remake the planet in its own image, or even keep the world safe for everyone else, by means of a globe-spanning military presence. Let's assume that someone has decided to set some reasonable limits, based on a realistic strategy for what can be achieved by U.S. foreign policy.
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