Opinion: US military spending highest in world, but not enough spend on health, education
During one of my post-military career adventures, I worked with African countries trying to draft their first National Security Strategy. The hardest lesson for them to embrace was the idea that the military was only a piece, in some cases a very minor piece, of the overall assessment of their national priorities that would serve as the foundation for any meaningful national security strategy. For many, health care, education, border security, trade, labor force development, food and water security, and transportation infrastructure were every bit as critical to their overall security as the state of their military. These same issues are not without relevance here at home.
Since 9/11/2001, any U.S. politician who does not offer full-throated support for expansive spending on military investments is a traitor akin to any full-blooded socialist. “We have to keep pace with China!” the argument goes. In 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion in military spending, according to the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China, the second highest defense spender in the world, spent $292 billion. Russia spent $86 billion, one-tenth of the U.S. military investment.
The Chinese investments are a recent development. In 2002, when China hit its peak investment as a percentage of national GDP at 2.05%, their monetary investment was $30.3 billion. The U.S. investments in 2002 were $378.5 billion (3.45% of GDP). The point of the data is that we continue to outspend by factors of 3-10 times what our leading adversaries spend on military readiness and hardware, yet hawkish political orthodoxy would have the American voter believe we are about to be overrun by Chinese or Russian hordes crossing the Bering Straits unless we throw dollar after dollar at the insatiable appetite of the military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower so presciently warned us during his farewell speech on Jan. 17, 1961. The question we should be demanding an answer to from our political and military leaders is: “Is our defense architecture so woefully inefficient or corrupt that we can’t compete with China and Russia while outspending them by hundreds of billions of dollars every year?”
We have a whole host of national problems in this country that go begging for attention in Congress every year. Most of them are included in the same list of challenges facing African countries with far fewer resources. Everyone acknowledges we have a border/immigration issue. But will Congress take up the matter to address longstanding known shortcomings in our immigration laws? No. Instead, they call on the White House to take executive action because Congress doesn’t want to face voters having actually debated, compromised, and enacted laws that are not part of the red meat agenda of their base.
The United States continues to rank somewhere in the lower third of OECD countries in standardized testing in math and science. Do we do anything to address this? The obvious answer is no. Otherwise, we wouldn’t still be languishing in the cellar of modern industrialized countries in this area decade after decade. Instead, we worry about whether our children will be forced to face the historical facts about slavery. We ban books from celebrated American authors because they were written at a time in our history that was not as politically correct as today. We continue to face the scourge of gun violence and mass shootings while policy makers literally whistle past the graveyard. The common culprit is mental health, but when challenged to do something about that very real crisis, like better funding or more access, politicians are silent and impotent. They say no to sensible gun laws, but also can’t seem to say yes to proposals that address their preferred scapegoat.
I am not suggesting that military readiness and equipping is not an important responsibility for any national government. The United States has a global reach with security interests on every continent. The United States also has pressing problems within its borders that cannot be passed off to local church groups, PTA or Elks Club to solve. The very same choices African countries must face in deciding how to prioritize their limited resources to maximize their economic, social and national security stand before the policy makers of the United States. As a combat veteran, I am only too aware of the necessity for military preparedness. I am also acutely aware that if we do nothing to promote the sustainment of a healthy, well-educated population we must ask ourselves what it is that we are really protecting with our tanks, jet fighters and submarines.
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Brad Gutierrez, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force combat pilot, professor of Political Science, military diplomat, and senior public policy civil servant. He is currently a woodworker and non-fiction writer based in Marshall.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: US military spending highest in world lacking in education and health
