The cost of the military industrial complex
I was reviewing an article by Jim Quinn at the most excellent blog “Seeking Alpha”, wherein he laid a fiscally conservative response to the apparent profligfate spending associated with international adventurism initiated by the neo-cons in the Bush Administration. Jim’s article prompted the following thoughts.
full article at this link
The concepts of opportunity cost, and threat based force structure seem foreign to too many people. The current DoD policy of “capabilities based” force structure is too easily co-opted into an open checkbook for unlimited technological solutions for mythical potential enemies, especially if it were linked with a tacit agreement to fund DoD at a fixed % of GDP as unbelievably argued by our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You can hear the hogs of war drooling over that.
the comments in the Quinn article are rich grounds for professional discussions for the faculty at CGSC and mirror a lot of what i hear in the classroom. Almost all the fallacies of logic and reason are represented there in the comments block. I was pleased to see Quinn quoting one of my heroes David Walker, one of the few adult commentators on the subject of our fiscal madness.
I contrast Quinn’s comments with what passes for intelligent discussion of America’s military role in the world, the workof Thomas Barnett, a glib irresponsible pseudo intellectual, and i weep for my country
I commend the book “Military Reform” by Winslow Wheeler and Lawrence Korb, James Fallows‘ “National Defense”, and Robert Coram’s “Boyd”, the biography of COL John Boyd. I am quite sure you have already seen the documentary “Why We Fight” which I think does a responsible job of laying out the 2d and 3d order effects of policy choices made without a clear grasp of long term strategy. It also references Ike in the opening moments.
