The United States of America allocates more funds than all other countries combined to defense spending. It's a statement I've heard before but never really believed.
Take China, Russia, India, Germany, France and every other state army in the world combined, and we outspend them. We're No. 1. In 2008, our country spent $479.5 billion on defense before spending any money on the actual War on Terror. In comparison, the entire European Union spent nearly $312 billion on defense. China spent $60 billion. Russia spent $50 billion. Iran? As of 2005, the gulf state spent a measly $6.3 billion.
How much were we spending at the height of the Cold War, right before the USSR collapsed? Roughly $500 billion in 2007 dollars, and former President Ronald Reagan was already echoing former President Jimmy Carter's premonitions of a vast military-industrial complex taking over our defense department. Today, we spend more on defense and the War on Terror than what we spent at the height of the Cold War, when Reagan asked George Lucas if he could write the next "Star Wars" script.
Proponents of our massive defense spending will rightly argue that the defense budget under Reagan was roughly 6 percent of the GDP, as today our defense budget is only 3 percent of our GDP. We may still spend the same amount of money, but our economy has grown since Reagan left office, and so we spend a smaller amount of our economy on defense. That's true, but when did radical terrorists become the Red Army?
Do we really need another multibillion-dollar naval warship when we're fighting in a desert? Can we only spread the gospel of democracy by outspending every other nation-state's defense budget? Why can't Congress break out the budget scalpel and start trimming the fat?
Of course, no hawkish Republican congressman or congresswoman will ever suggest trimming the defense budget. That's essentially a sacrilegious suggestion if you belong to the Grand Old Party. Unfortunately, the GOP's congressional counterparts also lack the cojones to break out the budget chisels. Why? Members of our armed forces are voters, too.
There's a psychological benefit to having the most expensive armed forces in the world. There's even an economic benefit: somebody has to build and supply the parts for the F-22s, F-35s and other instruments of warfare.
Yet, our economy is now in the gutters. Our GDP shrunk 3.8 percent last quarter alone. Last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment has now risen from 7.2 percent to 7.6 percent. Congress wrangled all last week to compose an economic stimulus bill, and senate democrats finally reached a compromise with republicans to trim the bill. What did they cut? Education, of course.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department has requested a larger budget this year, so that we're again poised to fight another great superpower.
When the next biggest defense spender are the combined nations of the European Union, I have to wonder who exactly our real enemy is?
Must be the French.
Matthew Christ is a political science freshman. His column appears on Mondays.
