What is the U.S. Military's Role?

[unhappycamper]

What is the U.S. Military's Role?
Kathy Roth-Douquet | September 18, 2007


~snip~

Pomp and Circumstance celebrates the once-seemingly endless rise of Britain. The hardest thing to shake, as we walked out with the crowd, was the image the song evokes today of colossus crumbling in the rear-view mirror. It's an image carrying the frisson not of deja vu but of, say, peut-aetre vu -- or what could be -- if Congress isn't careful about expanding our mightiness.

We are an American military family abroad for my husband's fellowship at a British defense institute. With him are senior military officers from 40-odd countries worldwide, who smilingly (sometimes edgily) call the two Americans in the program "the hegemons." As in, "Ah, the hegemon speaks."

It's true, we Americans are the undisputed military superpower. We have more ships, guns, boots, planes, bombs than anybody else. Over dinner-party conversation, America's interests and actions are deemed relevant in every world region. We're the kind of power Pomp and Circumstance celebrates.

As we negotiate the Ferraris and Bentleys in South Kensington to return to our flat, it's hard not to recognize that America's relative might is in military, not economic, strength. Economically, we're about equal to the European Union, yet our military scope is much grander. The strong-and-free economies of the Asia Pacific -- Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand -- have a fraction of our security program, even as percentage of gross domestic product. We patrol their shores, ensuring that goods reach their markets with a far more powerful force than they can muster themselves.

Yet because we are so active, the rest of the world scales back further. The British navy, the world's second-largest after ours, has announced plans to nearly halve its fleet. As a British admiral confided, why should Britain maintain an expensive navy when the U.S. Navy is so strong? Economists call this the "free rider" problem. In exchange for its ability to act alone, the United States largely bears the cost of securing an increasingly wealthy world.

Now we are growing our military again, regardless of Gen. David Petraeus' testimony or whether we draw down in Iraq.

Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,149653,00.html?wh=wh


uhc comment: This is an excellent article about the military industrial complex.