speech bit

[Occhidiangela]

"If I'm going to validate a number for spending, I'm going to need a number that both shows what we have to protect and how much we can use to that effect."

And this is the exact point I disagree with. Both of those things, how much you have to protect and how much you have to use, are much less relevant than another factor: how much your enemies can bring to bear against you.

Your position is founded on a flawed basis, Jester, though I am not so sure I agree with the simplicity of SIr Dies A Lot. Enemies and allies change, and the calculus of your ability to deal with prospective threats as a team, versus solo, factors into security resource allocation. The setting is never constant, the chess board changes shape daily. No one makes security decisions in isolation of his neighbors, friend and foe, with the possible exception of North Korea.

That said, if your own economic engine won't sustain a particular level of forces, see the US drawdown in the early 1990's, you can break your nation by playing a sloppy security game. Dies' indexing to GDP is a guideline used by many nations, to enforce a coherent and manageable resourcing process. The money has to come from somewhere, or the inflationary spiral when the government just prints more induces a double whammy: higher debt service and weakened economy/tax base.

By defining a window of affordability, you combine risk taking with prioritization to come up with "what can I afford without breaking the economy" force structure. You now do forecasting, prioritize threats, to include "worst case analysis" and put your resources to work. There are never enough, and when you laugh at that when looking at the US, our security posture is built for GLOBAL not national security. That puts our budgeting model in the proper perspective. (Which is not to say that we could not be a bit smarter in how we spend our defense dollar. We could.)

That budgeting bit is what is such a nightmare for most Third World countries, for example, since the conventional arms race comes with a hell of a price tag. Buying too much capability either puts your nation into massive debt or it incurs significant security compromises with bond and debt holders (or "favor holders") which one way or another, impinge on the sovereignty of the nation in question.

The risk to resource to capability circle is an iterative process, endlessly so, but has to be based on what you can afford before your economy starts to break. Both Roosevelt in WW II, with his bond drives, and Eisenhower in the fifties, with his significant force structure cuts, undrstood that. If you break the engine, you can begin a spiral downward that hurts everything. USSR is of course the cliche example.

But the reason your assertion is on cracked ice is that you have once again posited a threat based model.

Perhaps you, and many laymen, look at security policy and posture as purely "reactive." That is a losing ball game. Ceding your most likely enemy the initiative creates the need to spend more, not less, on defense. You have to have enough to absorb a first blow or you use with the opening throw of the dice when he attacks at a time and place of his choosing. If the enemy picks the terms of an engagement, you are not in a good situation, tactically or strategically. The terrorist, to a certain extent, has that kind of edge.

Defense policy is often incorrectly understood by the layman as "I will defend but won't attack." That position sets you up for surprise attack, so if you economize on military expenditures, you have to spend more on intelligence and warning so that you are not surprised. The battle of the first salvo is THE model to consider at this point in history, given the lethality of modern weapons. Economic warfare takes longer, though it may in the end be a more effective approach to any number of nations at odds with one's own: unless it all starts blowing up.

What your economic engine can produce and sustain is the deciding factor in your security posture. (Peasants in a revolt could not field mounted, armored knights, for example.) If you can't afford "X" defense posture or element, see Canada and the EH-101 Naval helicopter as a perfect example, or the Australian trials with the Collins class submarine, then you have a limited set of options and capabilities that you can afford, and prioritize. You still end up taking risk.

You could be the richest country in the world (you are), but if no power has any chance whatsoever of conquering you (they don't), you don't need any more power than what is needed to generously counter those threats.

Ever heard of an alliance? Get out of the bipolar mindset and look at an 8 man Free For All Starcraft game. Look at the FFA that is the game "Diplomacy."

Your model is outdated and impractical, and shows that you do not understand US security policy, at all. I wonder if you understand Canadian Security policy? I understand it vaguely, but only because I have worked with Canadians, and my understanding is a good 6 years old. There is an unclassified version of the US version on the web, which changes every few years, "security policy light" which takes a grain or two of salt to read, but if you want to converse on this topic, read it.

I think that the root of the flawed position is in being misled by "defense" as the core concept. Security is what you are after. You can achieve a collective security arrangement that saves you money by making your likely foes face a much harder risk decision of their own. (This sort of calculation can in fact lead, again, to a nuclear option as both affordable and scary to opponents.) It still takes effort, but of a different sort, and not necessarily linear in its relationship to resource outlay as a "stand alone" nation.

As to the value issue, military value is something you create, not buy, in a military.

You can have good equipment, as the French did in 1940, but if your military is incohesive and poorly led, not to mention undisciplined, it has has little value no matter how much is spent on it. I offer you the Italian Navy of WW II. Good equipment, crappy effectiveness. The best tank on either side in 1940 was a French medium tank, which Charles DeGaulle had a hand in fielding as a field grade officer. BFD, crappy training, crappy doctrine, lousy leadership.

How do you add value to a military? Partly through a robust economy that allows a wider budget window, and partly through a culture that takes being a warrior seriously. That requires a habit of honest self criticism and reform, discipline, and being serious about the fact that war is "for all the marbles, there is no reboot button," etc.

The "threat" can change any day, your own capability is something you control. Failing to set a guideline for long term fiscal planning incurs an economic risk that cannot be divorced from security resourcing. The GDP index is a reasonable point of departure.

Occhi