When the economy imploded in the Soviet Union, one of the major factors which led the demise was the consistent foolish desire by the Socialist world leader to "Keep Up with Uncle Sam" in terms of military might. The CIA saw an opportunity in this desire and consistently fed it, in order to drive their ideological opponent out of business. To compound the problem, Soviet Union's incursion into Afghanistan lasted for over nine years and bled the once formidable Socialist adversary completely dry. What the Politburo discovered, when it was way too late to stop the collapse, is that you cannot expect to cover the increasing costs of military spending without growing the country's gross domestic product. But the money to pay for all of this had to come from somewhere... and it did. It came at the cost of a declining living standards of Soviet citizens, as the government fleeced its population of their earnings in order to pay for the military indulgences.
Which all brings us to today, where the United States has no formidable military rival in the world and still outspends the closest military power eleven times over. Let me repeat that, the United States of America spends eleven times more than the second highest military spender in the world. Last year, our country spent over seven hundred billion ($700B) on military during one of the worst ongoing recessions in the country's history. Incidentally, we also had the largest increase in military spending than anyone else in the world. And while our national economy isn't growing, our military spending continues to increase.
To be fair, some of the spending increases are attributed to ongoing operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Nobody will contest that the incursion into Afghanistan after 9/11/2001 was justified as retribution against terrorist-sponsoring Taliban nation. Neither will there be issues justifying the incursion into Iraq in March of 2003 to destroy a terrorist-harboring regime. However, the length of stay in these regions has been extensive. Nevertheless, the public has yet to question our government's intentions when it came to military spending correlation to our economy.
The public may already know that active military operations cost money. The Army employs over 1,100,000 Americans in active and reserve military personnel directly within the branch. You need to pay for arming, clothing, feeding and transporting military personnel. Intelligence, logistics, armored vehicles and other related equipment costs a lot of money - and you can't get it on sale at Walmart. The taxpayers pay the full price and sometimes an inflated price due to the existence of only one supplier in many cases. What most people do not realize is how far-reaching the war machine is into our economy. Manufacture of small arms, tanks, fighter jets, reconnaissance planes, helicopters, drones, refueling vehicles, artillery, optics, satellites and more are all taken care of by private companies. The engineering and medical staff required in the field are a part of the military, but the equipment they require are also supplied and maintained by privately held companies.
Part of the arsenal in our military is the highly mobile Navy that can deliver a military presence anywhere in the world. All of its vessels are enormously expensive to build and maintain, as well as instruct personnel on how to operate them. In the disclosed vast arsenal of our Navy there are 12 Aircraft Carriers, 29 Amphibious Vessels, 109 Surface Vessels and 71 Submarines. To keep this fleet afloat year in and year out costs the American Taxpayer a fortune.
The United States Air Force provides incredible first strike capability in the American arsenal. In addition, it can prevent the need for ground operations and subsequently avoid American casualties. In its services are 5,573 aircraft, including 2,132 fighters. It employs more than 550,000 Americans directly, has 32 satellites and 450 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. However, the wealth of equipment we have is redundant with a significant part of existing projects for future aircraft unnecessary and wasteful. The Comanche helicopter and F-22 Raptor fighter were incredibly expensive and unnecessary projects that cost the taxpayers a lot of money, cancelled due to high cost of the programs and in the end were never needed on the field of battle.
The United States also maintains an incredibly large military presence at home and overseas. We have Army, Navy and Air Force bases all over the world in every continent except for Antarctica. We have bases in Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cuba, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Netherlands, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and Turkey. And these are the installations that the United States has made public - it doesn't account for others that are utilized by various intelligence services. While not as expensive as an active military operation, the same exact costs apply to personnel and equipment. Furthermore, the majority of installations in Europe serve no real purpose, as they are Cold War relics that survived our transition from the days of the arms race, where we successfully pushed the Soviet Union to expend its military to the breaking point.
In the end, the United States military machine is very costly to the American taxpayer. In addition, the war machines and bases the United States maintains around the world are a bleeding wound to the American taxpayer. Furthermore, taxpayer funds are also spent heavily on the wide array of private companies that supply the United States military. As a result, the indirect and direct military expenses are beyond reason. Furthermore, they provide a reduction in unemployment figures as more people are employed directly and indirectly through the military each year - this allows the government to mask true unemployment figures. Moreover, they provide related private sector economic growth which is fueled by government spending and represents false growth and false hope in our economy.
Lastly, and to my initial point, against whom are we conducting this arms race? We no longer have a Soviet Union to strangle with our spending. On the contrary, we are suffocating ourselves with every additional budget increase that is earmarked for the military. Our Cold War rival was pushed to the brink with the arms race we engineered. Let's not fall victim to our own strategy.
