Topic: Foreign Policy and National Security

Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies

By
Christopher A. Preble

How much does the United States spend on the military relative to our allies? A lot. 

A new Cato video, produced by Cato multimedia gurus Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg, puts this comparison in perspective. The data jumps out of the Cato infographic from last week, and shows how we are subsidizing the security of our wealthy allies who can and should defend themselves. Instead, we provide for their security while they free-ride and spend their money on everything else (including bloated welfare states). Your tax dollars at work. 

Check out the video below.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Elite Panic

By
Jim Harper

Prior to the bombing and manhunt in Boston last week, Bruce Schneier pointed to an interesting interview with Rebecca Solnit, author of the book: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. She talks of a concept called elite panic.

The term “elite panic” was coined by Caron Chess and Lee Clarke of Rutgers. From the beginning of the field in the 1950s to the present, the major sociologists of disaster — Charles Fritz, Enrico Quarantelli, Kathleen Tierney, and Lee Clarke — proceeding in the most cautious, methodical, and clearly attempting-to-be-politically-neutral way of social scientists, arrived via their research at this enormous confidence in human nature and deep critique of institutional authority. It’s quite remarkable.

Summarizing her research, Soltis found a portrait elites paint of the public, to which they respond in times of crisis:

Part of the stereotypical image is that we’re either wolves or we’re sheep. We’re either devouring babies raw and tearing up grandmothers with our bare hands, or we’re helpless and we panic and mill around like idiots in need of Charlton Heston men in uniforms with badges to lead us. I think we’re neither, and the evidence bears that out.

There’s no denying the importance and value of investigating and capturing the perpetrators of the bombing, and I do not do so here, but elite panic seems to have been at play in Boston. The lockdown—technically voluntary, but tell that to the guy in the tank (HT: Bovard)—treated the public variously as suspects, sources of interference, or targets for display of governmental authority.

Who are the elites? How does their panic manifest itself? “Elite panic” is not a tight enough concept to declare affirmatively that Boston is its examplar, but the concept is worth having in mind. The resources and resourcefulness of civil society are great and entirely accessible in times of peril. They should not be pushed aside at these times—certainly not at the business end of a gun.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics

Food Aid as Industrial Policy

By
Simon Lester

It’s understandable that Americans would see malnourished people in other countries and want to help. Despite our recent economic woes, we are still relatively wealthy, and our instinct is to make the world a better place if we can.

The role of the government in any such issue is debatable. But not surprisingly, once the government gets involved, the original purpose gets distorted. In practice, after becoming a government program, the idea of giving food to poor people has been turned into an industrial policy tool. Instead of simply giving money to people to buy food from the cheapest source, the U.S. government buys food from U.S. producers and requires that it be sent overseas on U.S. ships.

Thus, government turns aid for the foreign poor into a domestic jobs program. As a result, the percentage of food aid money actually spent on food for the hungry is significantly reduced, as some of that money is now diverted to subsidizing domestic agricultural and other interests. (That, of course, is the problem with all industrial policy: it reduces overall welfare in order to help a favored few.)

Hopefully, that may change soon.  From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration has proposed the first major change in three decades to the way the United States supplies food aid to impoverished nations, significantly scaling back the program that buys commodities from U.S. farmers and ships them to the needy overseas.

Under a proposal in the White House budget released Wednesday, nearly half of $1.4 billion in requested funds for the aid could instead be spent to purchase local bulk food in countries in need or to distribute individual vouchers for local purchases.

Reducing the government’s requirement to purchase U.S. food, most of which by law must be shipped on U.S.-flag vessels, will save enough money to feed an additional 4 million children, according to Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

…

Although the United States is the biggest provider of food assistance in the world, it is the only donor nation that continues to require national purchases and shipment. Government and academic studies in recent years have described the U.S. system as both wasteful and inefficient.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy, Trade and Immigration

The Costs of Our Overseas Military Presence

By
Christopher A. Preble

The AP’s Donna Cassata is reporting today on a study commissioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which purports to calculate the costs of the U.S. military presence overseas. This is a hot topic, but it isn’t exactly a new one. Americans have long been frustrated by inequitable burden sharing, with many of our wealthy allies spending a fraction of what we do on defense. On Monday, Cato published a new infographic on the subject to coincide with tax day (see below).

Unfortunately, the committee’s estimate that the permanent stationing of U.S. troops overseas costs us $10 billion each year is too low–in all likelihood, much too low. I have not yet had a chance to read the entire report, but the DoD’s own estimate of overseas military costs includes the costs of personnel, and is more than twice that amount, $20.9 billion (see p. 207 in the latest budget submission). Even the DoD’s figure, however, understates the true cost of our commitments to defend other countries that can and should defend themselves, because it doesn’t fully account for the additional force structure that is required to maintain a presence many thousands of miles away from the United States. If the U.S. military operated chiefly in the Western Hemisphere, with regular expeditionary operations far afield, we could safely have fewer people on active duty, and mobilize a large and well-trained reserve for genuine emergencies. This smaller military would require ships and planes to take them where they were needed, when they were needed, but not as many planes and ships as we have today. And no report can actually assess the costs and risks when and if our security commitments compel us to become embroiled in a distant war that does not engage vital U.S. interests. 

Other studies have attempted to assess all of the costs of these various global commitments, and the estimates vary widely. Graham Fuller and Ian Lesser of the RAND Corporation, for example, estimated in 1997 that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf cost between $30 and $60 billion per year. A more recent study by Mark Delucchi and James Murphy estimated costs between $47 and $98 billion. Several of us at Cato have been compiling these estimates, and coming up with our own, as part of a comprehensive study of the costs of our global military presence. We will publish our key findings when they become available.

In the meantime, this much is clear: our security commitments, many of them holdovers from the Cold War, induce other countries to spend less than they could on their own defense. And they compel Americans to spend more than we should.  

 

Subsidizing the security of wealthy allies

 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Forget North Korea, Weak or Strong: South Korea’s Strength Is Why America Should Come Home

By
Doug Bandow

Joshua Keating over at Foreign Policy offered a thoughtful commentary on Rob Montz’s North Korea documentary, “Juche Strong,” after last Thursday’s screening at Cato. Keating contended that the film, which suggests that pervasive regime propaganda has created at least some degree of legitimacy in the minds of many North Koreans, makes a case “that the United States needs to maintain its current military commitment to the region.” 

No doubt, it would be better for the Republic of Korea and Japan if the North was made up of “cowed and terrified people who will abandon their leaders at the first signs of weakness,” as Keating put it. But even popular determination and commitment—so far untested in an external crisis—go only so far. The question is not whether the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a threat, but 1) whether it is a threat which cannot be contained by its neighbors and 2) is a sufficient threat to America warranting U.S. led containment. The answers are no. 

First, the DPRK has amassed a large army with lots of tanks, but training is limited and equipment is antiquated. The North’s forces could devastate Seoul with artillery and missile strikes and a 4,000 tank surge might reach the South’s capital, but North Korea would be unlikely to ultimately triumph. The latter is weak in the air and with a decrepit economy can ill afford anything other than an unlikely blitzkrieg victory. Nor could Pyongyang look to Russia or China for support: the Cold War truly is over. 

More important, the ROK, which currently possesses around 40 times the North’s GDP and twice the North’s population, could do much more in its own defense. South Korea has created a competent, modern, and sizeable military. Is it enough? Only Seoul can answer. 

If the South remains vulnerable to a North Korean strike, it is only because the ROK decided to emphasize economic development and rely on America. That made sense during the early days of the Cold War, but no longer. There is no justification for turning what should be a short-term American shield against another round of Soviet- and Chinese-backed aggression into a long-term U.S. defense dole. It doesn’t matter whether the North Koreans are “Juche Strong or Juche Harmless,” as Keating put it. South Korea can defend itself. (Doing so would be even easier if Seoul and Tokyo worked harder to overcome their historical animus. Alas, they feel little pressure to do so as long as they both can rely on Washington for protection.) 

Second, the DPRK poses no threat to America requiring an ongoing military commitment. Even in 1950 the Pentagon did not believe the Korean peninsula to be vital strategically, but the Cold War created a unique context for the conflict. Today a second Korean War would only be a Korean War. Tragic, yes. Threat to America, no. Pyongyang is an ongoing danger to its neighbors, not the United States. 

The North matters to the United States primarily because Washington remains entangled, with troops, bases, and defense commitments. That is, North Korea threatens America because Washington chooses to allow North Korea to threaten America. 

Of course, proliferation would remain a concern even without a U.S. presence in Korea, but America’s garrison does nothing to promote denuclearization. To the contrary, Washington is helpfully providing tens of thousands of American nuclear hostages if the DPRK creates an arsenal of deliverable nuclear warheads. It would be far better for U.S. forces to be far away, out of range of whatever weapons the North possesses. 

North Korea is only one side of the Northeast Asian balance.  It doesn’t much matter if Pyongyang is weak or strong so long as South Korea and Japan are stronger. 

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Your Tax Dollars at Work: Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies

By
Christopher A. Preble

It’s Tax Day, and for millions of Americans that means ponying up to the IRS. The federal government does many things these days—most of which would be more efficiently carried out at the local level, or in the private sector. But Uncle Sam also engages in a particular form of charity that many Americans overlook: spending many tens of billions of dollars to defend wealthy, developed nations.

A new Cato infographic puts it all in perspective. It shows how much American taxpayers spend to subsidize the security, and to defend the interests, of other nations that are more than capable of defending themselves.

Read the rest of this post »

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

The North Korean Threat: Disengage and Defuse

By
Doug Bandow

Americans lived for decades with the fear of instant death from a Soviet nuclear strike. The People’s Republic of China has acquired a similar, though more limited, capability. Nothing happened in either case, because even evil people who acted like barbarians at home refused to commit suicide abroad. 

So it is with North Korea. A Defense Intelligence Agency report that Pyongyang may have miniaturized a nuclear weapon for use on a missile has created a predictable stir. Yet the analysis was carefully hedged, and Washington’s top security leadership, ranging from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper dismissed the seriousness of the threat.  

If the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was lucky, it could successfully launch its longest range missile, topped by a warhead with explosives rather than a nuclear weapon, without the rocket blowing up or falling back on the DPRK. With additional luck, the missile might hit somewhere in Alaska or Hawaii, though Pyongyang would have little control over the actual strike zone. 

But if the missile “worked” in this way, the North’s luck would quickly end. The United States would launch several nuclear-topped missiles and Pyongyang, certainly, and every urban area in the North, probably, would be vaporized. The “lake of fire” about which the DPRK has constantly spoken would occur, all over North Korea. Pretty-boy Kim Jong-un wouldn’t have much to smile about then. 

Deterrence worked against Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. There is no indication that it won’t work against the North Korean leadership. There always is a risk of mistake or miscalculation, but that properly is a problem for Pyongyang’s neighbors.  

The latest DPRK crisis should trigger a policy shift in Washington. Once the immediate furor has passed, the Obama administration should begin bringing home the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the Republic of Korea, and then end America’s formal security guarantee. Once Washington no longer confronted the North, the latter would turn its ire elsewhere. 

The ROK should take over its own defense, while building a better relationship with democratic neighbors, most obviously Japan, which also has been threatened by the North. At the same time, the Obama administration should hint at a rethink of Washington’s traditional opposition to the possibility of South Korea and Japan building nuclear weapons. China should understand that failing to take strong measures to curb its ally’s atomic ambitions could unleash the far more sophisticated nuclear potential of America’s allies. 

North Korea is a practical threat to the United States only to the degree which Washington allows. Better policy-making would reduce America’s role in Pyongyang’s ongoing tragic farce.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

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