Apropos of Fred Thompson’s suggestion yesterday that the U.S. needs to expand its military - and he wants a far larger military, boosting the Army from 482,000 troops to 775,000 (the Pentagon is already expanding it to 547,000), and increasing the Marine Corps to 225,000 members, up from the current 175,000 - comes a question:
For what, exactly, do we need a military this big?
It’s not a facetious question. The long war in Iraq has been hard on the armed forces - the National Guard in particular. So in one respect, it makes sense that we should try to create a larger force, if only to provide respite for those so long depoloyed in Iraq.
But the concern is that this isn’t the rationale. Thompson paid lip service to it in his speech - but he also said this:
We need the best all-volunteer force that can meet the security needs of this country. And they must be organized, trained and equipped to deal with tomorrow’s threats as well as today.
You could read that a couple of ways. One way would be that we need a military that can wage wars in Iraq and Iran at the same time. And thus, the purpose of expanding the military is not defensive, but offensive.
But read another way - well, what are tomorrow’s threats. Sure sure, “islamofascism” - but is a larger military the best way to deal with the type of warfare we’ve encountered in Iraq, which will serve as the template for guerrilla attacks in Iran, should we invade that country - which, really, will serve as a template for anyone attacking the U.S. military from here on in?
John Robb writes an excellent blog I read from time to time called “Global Guerrillas,” and he’s written at length on what he calls “fourth-generation” warfare. He’s profiled in a piece here that lays out the concept: that for four years the U.S. has been waging war in Iraq with the most technologically advanced military the world has ever seen, yet still we have not won the war on the insurgents.
But that, says Robb, is not because our military isn’t big enough or doesn’t have enough shiny new toys. It’s because “at its heart, this war is radically different from previous ones and must be thought of in an entirely new light”:
As events are making painfully clear, Robb says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing “small groups to…declare war on nations.”
Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3. Need satellite photos? Download them from Google Earth or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. Need to know the current thinking on IED attacks? Watch the latest videos created by insurgents and posted on any one of hundreds of Web sites or log on to chat rooms where you can exchange technical details with like-minded folks.
Yet over even from the question of how effective a million-man military can be against such “viral” warfare looms the question of how much Fred’s military would cost.
In 2008, the U.S. will spend $643.9 billion on its military; for 2006, 28 percent of your U.S. taxes go to the military.
Of all military spending in the world, we spend 43 percent. China and Russia, tied for second place, spend 6 percent of the overall total apiece; we spend more than three times both countries combined.
Yet we need to ratchet this up? Who benefits - besides Halliburton and Blackwater and other military contractors?
I realize it’s a knee-jerk right-wing thing to say we need more soldiers, more arms. It goes over well on the GOP stump. But at this point in the history of our empire, it might be more dangerous to expand our military rashly and for the wrong reasons than it would be to keep things where they are right now.
