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DEFENSE BUDGETS AND CAVEMEN
If you're not allowed to enslave people
any more, or even loot their resources, then
what is the point of being a traditional great
power?
The United States kept an army of over
100,000 soldiers in Iraq for eight years, at a -
cost that will probably end up around a tril
lion dollars. Yet it didn't enslave a single Iraqi
(though it killed quite a lot), and throughout
the occupation it paid full market price for
Iraqi oil. So what American purpose did the
entire enterprise serve?
Oh, silly me. I forgot. It was about "secu
rity.'' And here it comes again, on an even
bigger scale. Quite recently, at the Pentagon,
President Barack Obama unveiled America's
new "defense strategy." But it wasn't actually
about stopping anybody from invading the
United States. That cannot happen. It was
about reshaping the U.S. military in a way
that "preserves American global leadership,
maintains our military superiority," as Obama
put it.
Curiously, President Obama was not wearing
animal skins and wielding a stone ax when he
made this announcement,
although his logic came
straight out of the Stone
Age. Back when land was
the only thing of value,
it made sense to go heavily armed, because
somebody else might try to take it away from
you.
It doesn't make sense any more. China is
not getting rich by sending armies to conquer
other Asian countries. It's getting rich by sell
ing them (and the United States) goods and
services that it can produce cheaply at home,
and buying things that are made more cheaply
elsewhere. It hasn't actually made economic
sense to conquer other countries for at least a
century now—but old attitudes die hard.
If you analyse Obama's rhetoric, he's clearly
torn between the old thinking and the new.
The new U.S. strategy is all about China, but
is it about China as an emerging trade partner
(and rival), or is it about China as the emerg
ing military superpower that threatens the
United States just by being strong? A bit of
both, actually.
‘Our two countries have a strong stake .
in peace and stability in East Asia and an
interest in building a co-operative bilateral
relationship," said Obama. "But the growth of
China's military power must be accompanied
by a greater clarity of its strategic inten
tions in order to avoid causing friction in the
region."
Would it help if China were to promise that
it has no intention of attacking anybody? Of
course not; it already does that. "Clarity about
its strategic intentions" is code for not devel
oping military capabilities that could chal
lenge the very large U.S. military presence in
Asia. After all, the Pentagon implicitly argues,
everybody knows that the U.S. forces are there
solely for defense and deterrence and would
never be used aggressively.
Well, actually, the Chinese do not know
that They see the U.S. maintaining close
military ties with practically all the countries
on China's eastern and southern frontiers,
from Japan and South Korea to Thailand and
India. They see the U.S.
7th Fleet operating right
off the Chinese coast on
a regular basis. And they
do not say to themselves:
"That's OK. The Americans are just deterring
us."
Would Americans say that about China
if Chinese troops were based in Canada and
Mexico, and if Chinese carrier fleets were oper
ating juft '<ff the U.S. West Coast all the time?
No. They'd he just as paranoid as the Chinese
are. Indeed, they are pretty paranoid about
the rise of China even though the shoe is on
the other foot.
For the first time in history, no great power
is planning to attack any other great power.
War between great powers became economic
nonsense more than a century ago, and sheer
suicide after the invention of nuclear weap
ons. Yet the military establishments in every
major power still have a powerful hold on the
popular imagination.
In effect, the new U.S. defense strategy
says that for the United States to be safe,
everybody else must be weaker. This displays
a profound ignorance of human psychology—
unless, of course, it is just a cynical device to
convince the American public to spend a lot
on "defense."
The armed forces are the biggest single
vested interest in the United States, and
indeed in most other countries. To keep their
budgets large, the generals must frighten the
tax-paying public with plausible threats even
if they don't really exist. The Pentagon will
accept some cuts in Army and Marine Corps
manpower, and even a hundred billion dollars
or so off the defense budget for a while, but it
will defend its core interests to the death.
Obama goes along with this because it
would be political suicide not to. Beijing has
its own powerful military lobby, which regu
larly stresses the American "military threat,"
and the Chinese regime goes along with that,
too. We left the caves some time ago, but in
our imaginations and our fears we still live
there.
Gwynn8 Dyer
Gwynne Oyer is a London-based independent journal
ist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
“That’s OK. The Imericans
are Just deterring us.”
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30 FlAGPOLE.COM • JANUARY 18,2012