Does cutting defense spending weaken our national security? Having a principled stand on both domestic politics and foreign affairs should preclude assuming so. In light of our staggering debt, reducing defense spending is one way to strengthen our national security and the liberties our military is there to defend.
The possibility of cutting spending has again cropped up in the Washington. The ensuing debate offers a good reason to examine the premises of our assumptions when it comes to national defense, foreign policy, and how our brave men and women are used around the globe.
Conservatives and folks on the Right support strong national defense. When it comes to domestic policy, many of those same conservatives are guided by the principles of the Constitution, fiscal responsibility, and limited government.
Conservatives are rightly averse to "welfare state" policies. Such "big government" is unconstitutional, creates dependency, burdens tax payers, thwarts initiative and self-reliance, and limits freedom and opportunity. Worse still, entitlement programs become politically next to impossible to reform or eradicate after dependency sets in.
Valid points, all.
When it comes to the Defense Department, however, many conservatives quiet their concerns about fiscal responsibility, bloated and wasteful government spending, dependency on tax dollars, and a constitutionally-restrained government.
The Defense Department is part of the "big government" with which we should cast a suspicious fiscal eye. Cuts in unnecessary defense spending should be as welcome at cuts in wasteful domestic spending. With a budget set at $663 billion, there should be wasteful spending to be found, just as we could find pointless and wasteful spending in the Education Department, for example. Is every dollar consumed by the Pentagon vital to keeping us safe?
As of 2005, the total number of U.S. military bases around the world was 737. Again, that number is 737.
Bases require a lot of tax dollars to maintain. Countries hosting U.S. bases feel little need to provide for their own defense. Why do so so long as our military presence is there? Maintaining our presence in many of these countries becomes a humanitarian issue, not a defense issue, as withdraw could leave entire populations vulnerable to violent insurgencies and hostile government takeovers by brutal forces.
Local economies naturally grow dependent on the infusion of U.S. tax dollars via these bases. This artificial influence disincentives local markets from creating their own wealth and stabilizing their local economies. Dependency on U.S. tax dollars sets in and our military presence becomes a local economic issue, not a national defense issue.
At home we've created a welfare state; abroad we've created a warfare state. Both create dependency, burden the taxpayer, and are unconstitutional.
Continuing down the same old path of supporting an unnecessary military presence around the globe is adding to our mind-boggling national debt, and by so doing is a real threat to our freedoms at home. If running up unconstitutional domestic spending is going to shackle us, our children, and grand children to the Treasury Department, how is maintaining an unnecessary and unconstitutional global military presence not going to do the same?
Liberty is not possible without security. Our military provides our security. But security is not long possible with a fiscally and constitutionally unrestrained government, at home and abroad. How will be come to pay for defense without eventually imposing devastating tax increases? And if we cannot pay for it, how strong will our national defense be?
Now that defense spending cuts are again on the table, we need remember it was the last retired general to serve as president who warned us, upon exiting the White House, about the dangers to liberty wrought by "the military industrial complex."
