Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The Indispensable Nation

Nicholas Gvosdev is bored:
I am tired about hearing the U.S. described as a superpower. Yes, we are. Big whup.

The reality is that there are severe domestic constraints on how we can utilize and deploy that power. We can put less troops into the field today that Mussolini's Italy--and Italy of the 1930s was far from being the world's greatest power. Americans do not want to assume the burden of empire--which is why we seem to have to resort to lies to motivate them (the "next Hitler", the imminent mushroom cloud, etc.)

Moreover, our economic prosperity depends on many factors no longer under our control--imported energy, supply chains (read Barry Lynn on this!), etc. We require the active cooperation of the intelligence services of other states in areas where we have limited reach.
I've been thinking about this a lot myself lately. Most recently, while listening to this podcast about Iran. One of the participants - I was supposed to be shopping with Vicki, so I forget who - mentioned that the US spends about 100x more on its military than Iran does. The implication was that the US therefore has a massive (orders of magnitude) advantage over Iran. Needless to say, there's a number of problems with this analysis. To put it simply: Who thinks that the insurgents in Iraq have a multi-hundred billion dollar budget? Who's winning? Who's getting more for their money?

There are two massive structural drains on US power that reduce the effectiveness of every dollar the US spends on its military, one from domestic politics, the other from the nature of American power. The first, domestic, problem is the nature of the US House of Representatives, which effectively necessitates that each large appropriation be broken up in to small pieces and scattered across the country. The B2 bomber is the classic example, but you can look at the old Apollo Program and see the same dynamic - to ensure political longevity, a project has a part built in as many Congressional districts as possible, employing as many people in each district as possible.

No one doubts that this inflates the costs of major appropriations, but I haven't done the research to see by what magnitude. I suspect that, relative to other costs (soldier's pay, for example) the inflation may be relatively modest in absolute terms, even if it does lead to the occasional $500 hammer.

(On that note, I wonder if anybody's compared the relative costs of the British (parliamentary) appropriations during their empire versus the US (congressional) model.)

The far larger structural cost to the US military is simply the purpose of the US military - the maintenance of US power across the planet. This necessitates a huge supply chain of ships, planes, pipelines (fighter jets aren't particularly fuel-efficient) and assorted other transportation. It is no exaggeration to say that, if the US weren't also simultaneously deterring North Korea and Russia (what do you think V Corps is doing in Germany?) the Iraqi adventure would have a lot more troops to spare.

A paradox of American Imperialism: If the US weren't so powerful, they'd be far more potent.

So the American leadership has a choice for the future: If they believe (as they seem to) that the future will inevitably be shaped by Sino-American rivalry, the US needs to downsize its empire to retain a greater military effectiveness. Shut down bases in western Europe, pull out of the Middle East (aside from possibly Qatar, and maybe Saudi Arabia if they'll let Uncle Sam back in), end the various military projects in Latin America. Instead, focus on areas where the Chinese are already competing for influence - Asia and East Africa - and increase the number of troops stationed in Japan and South Korea.

Problem: After decades of American "protection" the South Koreans and Japanese don't particularly want any more American troops on their soil. The other option is Russia, who share a rather long border with China, but are not well-suited for striking at the Chinese coastal cities and military aparatus. Nor do the Russian people particularly like the Americans at the moment - something about American economists doing more damage to Russia than the Wehrmacht. So prickly when the economy declines by 50% in a decade.

1 comment:

Nikolas K. Gvosdev said...

Or, as Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute was advocating I think on this same day, the U.S. should reduce the chance of a clash with China by essentially pulling back its "forward outposts" around China to a more relaxed posture.

The points about spending are well taken. Iraqi insurgents have only one real priority--to drive the U.S. out. Whether the U.S. is still deployed on the Korean peninsula is not of concern. So a more limited set of objectives doesn't require an equal amount of spending.

The test in the future is whether the U.S. is prepared to continue its role as the maintainer of a global system based on open lines of communication even at the cost of free riders (for example, India and China who benefit from U.S. spending to secure the Persian Gulf lines of transit for oil) or whether we would be prepared to let the system be shocked to encourage burden sharing. Geoff Kemp's piece in the forthcoming summer issue of The National Interest looks at the U.S.-China-India question vis-a-vis the Persian Gulf.