Military Spending - Digesting the Information.

Military Spending is a key issue in this years election, and for good reason. It is a topic that divides both public opinion and political parties and one that will continue to be as the world advances into the future. In a world of external conflicts, such as Syria or Afghanistan, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19331551, how should the U.S government approach these issues with the new budget cuts they have to enforce to fix a struggling economy from the 2008 crash, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIBDVH8fRqc?

What are the implications of the Defense Budget, who does it affect and how? Should media outlets be able to use people's lives to create controversy, see http://mediamatters.org/issues/international-conflicts as an example, or should the U.S leave external conflicts to be what they are: external. Over the course of these blogs. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have proposed different military budget plans, one reason it is becoming a key issue, both have implications towards the revival of the U.S economy.  On the one hand, Republicans are planning towards expanding the military budget however the Democrats are proposing to decrease the budget.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8gYGg0dkE On the 6th of April 1917 the U.S joined World War 1 and subsequently led to an massive growth in military spending peaking at over $ 15,000 million comparatively in 1916 military spending was less than 1,000 million. Check out http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1916_1922USm_13s1li011mcn_30t to easily see the changes in government spending across the last 100 years.

At the end of WW1, and the Great Depression of 1928 military spending decreases back to above pre 1916 levels but even during the WW2 we see no increase in spending. This is because of credit spending and massive borrowing that the U.S took out from neighboring Latin American countries and its loans to European Countries before it had joined the war itself. This application of credit and borrowing to cover the costs for wars has been prevalent in U.S culture up to this day, and one reason that American economy is floundering. Moving into the Cold war, the policies of Ronald Reagan are influencing this election due to the republicans proposed policies, and the Vietnam War we saw more funds being directed towards military spending and taxes rose duly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRlGB5FdTbk gives us an introduction into the vietnam war on the ground.

Now in the past 10 years, we have seen an increase in military spending twofold since the war on terror, caused by the events of 9/11, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys3h3uCKSPc, was started by Bush and now the American economy is in deficit partially due to this. This is because of George Bush selling bonds and huge amounts of borrowing has been one of the causes for the current economic issues.

The involvement of the U.S in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused many social issues back in the U.S since 9/11 ,as previously stated, there has been an increase in military funding by over 100% and this meant that jobs were lost in other areas, funding was lost in universities for public health research and moved into the military funding, see http://costsofwar.org/ for specific studies that have been lost. Furthermore, over 130 journalists have been killed covering the wars, from http://www.cpj.org/2011/05/prominent-journalist-dies-in-targeted-killing-in-p.php, this has caused questioning into how wars should be viewed in other countries when innocent lives have been lost for certain causes. The torture within the Guantanamo  Bay facility surfaced questions within the country about how far we should go to gain information on the war with terror, this documentary is on the facility http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HCw-5Qnm8c. Finally, over 6,000 lives have been lost in wars but nearly 4,000 soldiers lives have been lost at home due to overdoses, suicides stated from 2011 statistics and are still on the rise http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18823077. It could be argued that these were preventable lives at the same time that more lives could be lost if the war on terror hadn't been waged.

In this election, the Republican and Democratic party have differing platforms on military spending. For a start the Republicans want to increase military spending and go back to a Reagan platform where there is 'Peace through Strength' with increasing homeland defense and Strategic Defense Infrastructure, whereas the Democrats are pushing for a decrease in military spending however when you look at the two policies they are fighting for the same issues. Both are trying to combat cyber security issues and ending the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, whilst preventing Nuclear weapon spreading however the republicans are looking to stockpile nuclear weapons. Whereas the Democrats are looking to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons and use foreign policies to to strengthen alliances against nuclear war. Here are the two websites you can use to compare the two military policies yourself, http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Exceptionalism/#Item6 and http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform#stronger-world.

Historically, we can see the similarities between Romney's plan and Reagan's plan for Strength through Peace, Romney has openly admitted on his platform that Strength through Peace plan is his way forward, here we can see here Reagan's original plan http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1957.html, again we see Reagan's influence on Romney within his speeches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9GVFFlL6w4 is Reagan's 1983's address to the nation. Here is a news report on Romney's announcement on increasing military expansion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmfYt5BKPcg. We can see over history that increasing military spending has caused massive economic deficits, in the early 2000's the Bush administration borrowed huge amounts of money and sold U.S bonds and now the economy is steeped in debts as these bonds are starting to mature and the borrowing far exceeded the income, here is a short explanation on the U.S bonds situation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfkq9SOWxY8 In WW2, the credit borrowing caused a weak economy after WW2 and economic growth stalled because of the credit that the U.S owed, this was buffered by the debts they were collecting from European countries who were rebuilding their infrastructure.

Over the course of time we can see that Military budgets have been contentious issues and haven't been resolved. The republicans have been pro- military spending whereas the democrats are pro- a smaller military budget. How can we approach these matters is how we interpret each parties policies and how closely they are towards our own lens dictates how we are more likely to vote. The issues I have tried to raise should cause try and look at the implications of each policy. I will accept that finding Democratic policies has been hard in this issue, however they are in the process of fulfilling the policies they set out during the 2008 like the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by 2014. Overall, it is clear to see that Military spending is much more complex than what we have seen on the surface and is ingrained within US culture since World War 1.