In the recent Presidential debates there was an elephant in the living room that no one wanted to talk about. There was a lot of talk about how we were going to cut expenses here, there, and everywhere, except for the military. Guess where our biggest expense is? And guess where everyone wants to spend more money? Having a military that want's to control the world isn't something we can afford any more. England found that out in the 1950s.

Going on an Imperial Bender
How the U.S. Garrisons the Planet and Doesn't Even Notice

Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don't stay, often American equipment does -- carefully stored for further use at tiny "cooperative security locations," known informally as "lily pads" (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis). At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military "sites" abroad. The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard -- that is, the population of an American town -- are functionally floating bases. And here's the other half of that simple truth: We don't care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial. Now, that's the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that's more than you care to know, stop here.

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Meltdown at the Pentagon
Our Shrinking, More Costly Force

It is common knowledge that the Pentagon is spending more in inflation-adjusted dollars today than at any point since the end of World War II. The $635 billion appropriated in fiscal 2007 is $31 billion, or 5 percent, above the previous high-water mark of $604 billion in 1952. 2008 will be higher at about $670 billion, and 2009 will likely be more still. It should also be conventional wisdom — but isn’t — that our military forces are smaller than they have ever been since the end of World War II; major equipment is also, on average, older than it ever has been before; and key elements of our most important fighting forces are not ready for combat. At new highs in spending, all that is an accomplishment of spectacular incompetence — if, indeed, that is the cause. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the human and material stress they have imposed on the forces, are not the cause. The negative trends have been around for decades. The wars have not siphoned off money from the non-war parts of the Pentagon budget, known today as its “base” budget. In fact, above and beyond the $800 billion-plus the Pentagon will have received by the end of 2008 for the wars, it has also received about $770 billion more than was planned for it in 2000. One would hope this huge “plus-up” for the peacetime, or base non-war, budget would have addressed some of the decades-old problems. It didn’t; today they are worse. The base Defense Department budget has increased — in inflation-adjusted dollars — from $370.8 billion in 2001 to $518.3 billion in 2009, a 40 percent increase. Comparing actual Pentagon base budgets to the base budgets planned at the start of the first President Bush administration (for the years from 2001 to 2009) computes to an added $770 billion. The “plus-ups” for each of the military services demonstrate how more money has made our problems worse.

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Use It or Lose It?
How to Manage an Imperial Decline

Do empires end with a bang, a whimper, or the sibilant hiss of financial deflation? We may be about to find out. Right now, in the midst of the financial whirlwind, it's been hard in the United States to see much past the moment. Yet the ongoing economic meltdown has raised a range of non-financial issues of great importance for our future. Uncertainty and anxiety about the prospects for global financial markets -- given the present liquidity crunch -- have left little space for serious consideration of issues of American global power and influence. So let's start with the economic meltdown at hand -- but not end there -- and try to offer a modest initial assessment of how the crumbling U.S. economy might change America's global stance.

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