The Economics of Empire II

Commentary By Ron Beasley

As I noted here it's economics that bring an end to empires not military defeats.  In Wars Sending US into Ruin Eric Margolis supplies some details.

More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion.
The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin
by buying tanks.

Washington's deficit (the difference between
spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion
US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and
Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will
cost $250 billion.

To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to
start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and
continue for 2,738 years until today.

Margolis notes that the overt US military budget is $1 trillion - half of the worlds military spending.

Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes
Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70
billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and
Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and
veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total
defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

The
Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250
billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's
Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion
- more than Germany's total defence budget.

No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity" budget.

Military
and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads
over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick
Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct
Ottoman Empire.

The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world
military spending. Add America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the
figure reaches 75%.

And here is the empire we can't afford:

There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service
members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan
and South Korea.

Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal
spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush
administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - funded by borrowing -
cost each American family more than $25,000.

Budget Fraud:

Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental
authorizations �- putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit
card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.

This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.

America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.

If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.

America needs a fair, honest war tax.

In site of Eisenhower's warning in 1961 the military industrial complex is in charge.

It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of
America's runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great
President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned
Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades
later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall
Street's money lenders to put America into thrall.

Increasing
numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway
deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also
spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a
vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe - what neocons call
"full spectrum dominance."

If Obama really were serious about
restoring America's economic health, he would demand military spending
be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the
nation's giant Frankenbanks.

Paul Krugman and others want to blame our current decline on the dysfunctional Senate.

Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we�re
paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of
Rome, we�re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

I fear that's a simplification.  I see nothing that would lead me to believe that a Senate that actually did function would not be enslaved to the military industrial complex.

Note:

Thanks to our friends at Rethink Afghanistan for picking up this post.