WORD COUNT 653                                                                                                                                                                            APRIL 29, 2009

AMERICA’S DOUBLE STANDARDS ON DEFENSE – by Eric Stoner 

With the release of its annual report on China’s military capabilities at the end of March, the Pentagon is doing its part to keep alive the threat of the red menace.  

China’s official military budget jumped to $60 billion, an 18 percent increase over last year, but U.S. officials warned that the actual figure is somewhere between $105 billion and $150 billion annually.  

Without a hint of irony, the report expresses concern about, “the purposes to which China's current and future military power will be applied,” and suggests that Beijing could even use its armed forces “to ensure access to resources or enforce claims to disputed territories.” 

Sound familiar? Well, Washington apparently needs to relearn the basic moral principle of universality: What is wrong for others to do, must also be wrong for us.  

In February, the Obama administration requested a mind-boggling $664 billion for the U.S. military over the next fiscal year – more than 10 times China’s official budget. In fact, the United States spends roughly the same amount on “defense” each year as every other country in the world combined, according to the authoritative data of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.  

And much like China, Washington’s accounting for such things is notoriously lacking in transparency. Many expenses that the average person would consider defense-related – such as funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Energy’s maintenance of the nuclear stockpile, military aid to allies, and the share of interest payments on the national debt that can be attributed to past military spending – are hidden in other parts of the federal budget. When all of these costly extras are added up, the United States’ unofficial military budget tops out at more than $1 trillion. 

To make it simple, Robert Higgs, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, wrote, "A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it."  

And who outside of our borders would say that the “purposes” of the U.S. military machine are benign or that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with “natural resources”? It’d be hard for anyone to take that argument seriously while our troops occupy two countries and bomb a third with unmanned drones on a weekly basis.  

The truth is that the vast sums allocated by both the United States and China for future wars is a tragic waste of finite resources, especially given the spiraling financial and ecological crises that we face. The trade-offs must be laid bare. Do we want to spend more on F-35 Joint Strike Fighters – at a staggering $100 million apiece – or use that money for food and shelter for the millions who have been driven into poverty due to the world economic collapse? Do we want to spend another $2 billion each month for the next five or 10 years to fight the war in Afghanistan, or should that money be used to further research into alternative energy and build a high-speed rail system across our country? We simply cannot have it all.  

There are a few hopeful signs that things may be changing on Capitol Hill. Congressman Barney Frank has been avidly pushing for a 25 percent cut to the military budget for months. While his proposal is seen as radical by most in Congress, the Pentagon would still receive more taxpayer dollars after his cuts take effect than it did in 2001 – thanks to President George W. Bush’s eight year military spending binge.  

Until the United States acknowledges the monster in the mirror and begins to dramatically cut its bloated military budget, President Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric about the need for a different, more respectful relationship with the rest of the world will unfortunately remain hollow words.  

And if China is ever to slow or reduce its military spending, the United States as the sole military power in the world, must lead by example.  

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Eric Stoner is a freelance journalist based in New York, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. His articles have appeared in “The Guardian,” “Mother Jones” and “The Nation”.  

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