The Relationship between Military Spending & Inequality: A Review

TT IS widely believed among scholars that defense spending in A-merica is excessively high and has gained an undue influence in setting national priorities which adversely affect our welfare programs. Some writers maintain defense expenditures are excessive because our defense effort has required a reduction in more desirable social welfare programs.' Others argue that in recent years our military system has become economically non-productive and causes stagnation and therefore rising welfare costs in the civilian sector.2 Still others believe that excessive and wasteful defense expenditures are deliberately planned and necessary for a capitalist system to survive.3 Finally, a substantial number of analysts simply believe that the fear of an external threat upon which defense budgets are based is grossly exaggerated, and, conversely, that welfare needs have been underestimated. Both our pacifistic and Judaeo-Christian t-raditions support this position. Those who argue for these propositions usually do so on the basis of a single and quite broad definition of defense spending and a fairly narrow definition of welfare spending. Moreover, the basis of funding is almost always limited to the federal budget. This method, of course, includes virtually all defense-related expenditures, but excludes much of the thrust of state and local welfare-related programs which have been rising almost as fast as federal outlays. These studies also focus on recent years and do not examine long-term trends in either defense or welfare spending. This essay will attempt to expand the number of working definitions of both defense and welfare spending, and compare the spending patterns derived by those different methods since these data first became available. In addition, a method of measurement common to both welfare and defense spending will be developed for purposes of better comparison. It is hoped that, by using a variety of definitions and methods of measurement and a more extensive longitudinal focus, the reader may gain a much more comprehensive picture of the interrelationship between defense spending and welfare spending in the United States and thereby be better able to determine whether either or both are excessive. Finally, I shall argue that our rapidly rising social welfare expenditure trends are far more unsettling than our shrinking defense commitments.

: The 2006 QDR calls for an investment in diverse capabilities to confront a broad range of national security in the twenty first century. US national security documents require the services to maintain a position of supremacy as they build these capabilities. Therefore the Defense Department has set before itself a requirement to modernize a large conventional force structure engaged in ongoing combat operations while simultaneously developing deeper capabilities to counter non-conventional and asymmetric mission requirements. Defense is undertaking this requirement with the smallest share of GDP committed to national defense during any wartime period in United States history while mandatory spending required to support popular entitlement programs is increasing. With the continued aging of the US population the demands for mandatory spending will continue to grow and will increasingly compete with defense programs for the scarce resources of the federal budget. These broad trends indicate an unsustainable course for the federal budget in general and the defense budget in particular. Absent significant changes to popular entitlement programs and a disciplined program of defense investment DOD will find itself with insufficient resources to meet the demands outlined in the QDR and US national strategy.

Uncertainty about the meaning of events and especially about prospective threats … complicates every policy decision. On a good day, you deal with 60-40 odds. Paul Wolfowitz What drives changes in U.S. military spending? Answering this question is the critical first step toward a deeper understanding of how the military dimension of American hegemony has shaped postwar economic performance. It is such a critical first step because military spending constitutes one of only a handful of government programs with the ability to impart a powerful stimulus to the American economy. Two simple statistics illustrate this point. First, throughout the postwar period, the defense budget has constituted the largest single category of U.S. federal government discretionary spending. In fiscal year 2012, for instance, the Department of Defense accounted for just over half of total discretionary federal government expenditures. Moreover, the gap between first and second place is huge. The Department of Education received $79.1 billion, roughly 12 percent of the amount allocated to the Department of Defense. Second, because the military accounts for such a large share of the federal budget, it constitutes a substantial share of national expenditures. As a share of total national income, military expenditures have averaged roughly 6 percent across the postwar period. Because military spending occupies so much of federal discretionary spending, and because these expenditures constitute an important share of national income, government decisions about military spending have potential consequences for macroeconomic activity that are unparalleled by any other single private or public activity. In spite of the economic importance of postwar military spending, we know relatively little about the political dynamics that have driven its variation. This limited insight is not for lack of attention. Research on U.S. defense spending has focused on two models: a threat-driven approach and a bureaucratic politics approach. Throughout the Cold War era, researchers sought to explain U.S. military spending in terms of an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union (see, e.g., Lambelet 1973; Mintz 1992; Moll and Luebbert 1980; Ostrom and Marra 1986; Richardson 1960).

World military expenditure is currently believed to exceed $500 billion annually. Tens of millions of people — according to some estimates 50-60 million — around the world are directly or indirectly dependent on the military sector. What would, in this situation, the economic consequences of global disarmament be? And how could less developed countries become the main beneficiaries of possible savings? These are the key quesions in a research project under the auspices of the United Nations which this article seeks to illuminate. A number of contributions to the project conclude that it is not economic conversion problems which block disarmament. How large an addition disarmament might contribute to international economic aid depends on how sizable the military expenditure reduction would be and what proportion of the savings were allocated to economic aid. In some of the reviewed alternatives, the addition would be highly marginal, while in other hypothetical scenarios it would grow to the projected size of present aid transfers by the year 2000, if not as early as 1990.

The Brookings Institution has long produced an analysis of America's defense budgets and policies. The war on terror and the ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced upon this country soaring defense budgets and unprecedented challenges in policymaking. In the newest installment in this tradition, leading foreign policy expert Michael O'Hanlon offers policy recommendations for strengthening the ability of America's military to respond to international crises in a tumultuous world. The United States can, for the foreseeable future, be confident that its armed forces will remain engaged in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan and other theaters in the war on terror. It will also need to remain involved in deterrence missions in the western Pacific, most notably in Korea and the Taiwan Strait. It will wish to remain engaged in European security, since the capabilities and cohesion of the NATO alliance have important implications for the United States globally. O'Hanlon reviews these priorities, asking tough questions and developing frameworks for answering them: What military will the United States need in the future? How much will it cost? How can the U.S. increase the size of its ground forces without increasing the size of the defense budget? In an era of apocalyptic terror threats, and at a time of $400 billion defense budgets and $400 billion federal budget deficits, how can this country protect its citizens while maintaining fiscal responsibility?

: The current Defense Program fails to adequately address current readiness shortfalls and long-term modernization needs. If allowed to continue unabated, the ability of U.S. forces to support the National Security Strategy may be significantly jeopardized within the next decade. The factors normally cited as catalysts for this situation are the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), and a chronically under funded Defense budget throughout the last decade. These commonly accepted problems with the defense budget are not the true drivers for shortfalls in the defense program. Accordingly, the commonly accepted means for fixing the problems are inevitably going to fall short of their goals. Without a true understanding of the principal factors affecting defense spending, viable, long term solutions cannot be reached. A comprehensive and systemic understanding of the root causes for our current strategy-resource mismatch, as well as an appreciation of how the Defense budget relates to the Federal budget, are necessary before effective solutions can be developed.

Both research and development (R&D) and military expenditure are pivotal areas for any country’s economy. However, most countries tend to spend more on military because of global insecurity and power politics. Nevertheless, this study shows the merit of R&D investment and how it contributes to the national human capital. An analysis was undertaken on the gap between R&D and military expenditure considering the Human Development Index (HDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 76 countries for a period of 15 years (2000–2014). Mixed effect models were applied to adjust the effect of six different continents. The results showed that HDI has a positive bi-directional significant relationship with higher R&D investment. National spending on R&D builds human capital, which in turn contributes to public development over the years, unlike military expenditure that only marginally contributes towards GDP and makes no contribution to HDI.

Over the long haul U.S. military spending, 1946-79, came at the sacrifice of non-durable consumption expenditures, not investment expenditures. This conclusion is based on an examination of trends in the GNP shares of consumption, investment, government and net exports expenditures, 1889-1979. As U.S. defense expenditures moved to new secular heights in the late 1940s and 1950s, the component of U.S. national expenditure sacrificed was private, non-durable, consumption expenditures. When defense spending fell on trend in the 1960s and 1970s, public consumption expenditures rose. The mild negative correlation between military expenditures in the U.S. found by previous research appears to have been based on very brief crowding-out and crowding-in effects of the federal government's budgets in the first and last years of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Copyright 1990 by Oxford University Press.

This study examines the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), trade openness, and economic growth in Russia using annual time series data from 1993 to 2022. Utilizing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, the findings reveal that FDI and trade have positive short-term effects on economic growth but no significant long-term impact. Supporting variables such as the real effective exchange rate positively influence growth in both the short and long term, while youth unemployment shows mixed short-term effects and a consistently negative long-term impact. Military spending has no short-term effect but negatively impacts growth in the long term, whereas inflation exhibits both positive and negative short-term influences and a negative long-term relationship with growth. Granger causality analysis highlights a unidirectional relationship between economic growth and trade openness, military spending, and the real effective exchange rate. The findings suggest policies to attract sustainable foreign investment, enhance trade, tackle youth unemployment, reassess defense budgets, and maintain stable monetary policies.

In the post-Cold War era, the US continues to devote a disproportionate percentage of its wealth to developing and maintaining extraordinary military capabilities. Most countries cut back on their armed forces in the aftermath of the Cold War, but US spending went up. Between 2001 and 2010 the US defense budget increased by 128 percent. In 2003, the US spent $417 billion on defense, 47 percent of the world total. In 2008, it spent 41 percent of its national budget on the military and its two ongoing wars. In absolute terms this was twice the total of Japan, Russia, the UK, Germany, and China combined. On 16 March 2017, President Trump submitted his request to Congress for $639 billion in military spending, which represented a 10 percent increase over Fiscal Year (FY) 2017. With a total federal budget of $3.9 trillion for FY2018, the increase in military spending is predicated on deep cuts to many other federal agencies and domestic programs, as well as the State Department. For FY2019, Trump’s budget would boost military spending by $94 billion.

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 445 Each of these books, in its own way, makes a contribution to the growing literature in the field of aeronautical history. Most readers, however, will prefer Vander Meulen’s tightly organized and analytical study to Meyer’s less sophisticated collection of essays and articles. William F. Trimble Dr. Trimble is an associate professor of history at Auburn University. Fortress California, 1910—1961: From Warfare to Welfare. By Roger W. Lotchin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xviii + 420; notes, index. $45.00. Since the summer of 1990 California has lost almost one million jobs. Small wonder that in November 1991 Time magazine devoted a special issue to “California: The Endangered Dream.” While part of this is attributable to recession, most California doom watchers agree that structural problems are equally serious and that the loss of defense-related jobs has played a major role. During the 1980s, the Los Angeles area alone accounted for 17 percent of all U.S. defense spending. In the face of massive federal budget deficits and the end of the Cold War, the banquet had to end. The publication of Roger Lotchin’s book is as timely as it is prescient. Fortress California makes two very important contributions to our understanding of how and why California became so dependent on the largesse of the defense budget. First, Lotchin documents that California willingly landed itself in this position long before President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address warning of the dangers ofthe military-industrial complex. Indeed, Lotchin traces the roots of California’s dependence back to the 1910s. Second, in explaining the growing importance of military spending to California, he rejects the classic “iron triangle thesis.” He argues forcefully that the martialization of important segments of the California economy originated not because of an incestuous relationship between the federal government, the military, and industry, but because Califor­ nia’s major cities repeatedly and effectively courted all branches of the military, especially the navy and the air force, thereby creating what he calls a “metropolitan-military” complex. Lacking a secure and diverse industrial base in the early 20th century, Californians believed that military spending would rectify the problem. With the help of numerous civic booster organizations, local universities (especially the California Institute of Technology), and articulate congressmen, California cities competed ferociously and ably for all manner of direct and indirect military expenditures. Lotchin admits that various developments in world affairs, ranging from the perceived threat of Japan in the early 20th century to the Korean War, contributed to a significant reallocation of defense 446 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE spending to California. However, he rejects the conventional wisdom that “natural advantages” (climate and geography, in particular) had anything to do with the success of California’s major cities in attract­ ing defense contracts. The rise of California’s martial metropolises was due primarily to the will and skill of their lobbying efforts. Lotchin argues strongly that, while civic boosters played the major role in the lobbying effort, support for urban military spending had a broad base ranging from left-wing labor leaders like Harry Bridges to San Diego housewives. By the 1950s, various factors, ranging from the advent of nuclear warfare to the resentment of other states at California’s success in attracting defense dollars, led to a devolution of defense expenditures away from California. The book suffers from some limitations and contradictions. While knocking some holes in the “natural advantage” thesis, Lotchin does not fully convince me that the argument should be thrown out of court. Indeed, occasional pieces of his evidence lend support to the argument. If Lotchin is correct in claiming that it was the sheer cunning and organization of the civic boosters that accounted for the triumph of California’s martial cities, one must ask why California urban boosters were so much more successful than their rivals. Perhaps the California sunshine and beaches endowed the boosters with supernatural powers of perspicacity? It is somewhat superficial and self-fulfilling to examine the outcomes of only those civic boosters who succeeded in their endeavor. This approach runs the risk of overlooking more objective factors. Indeed, the whole history...

The Russia–Ukraine War has entered its fifth year with few signs that it will come to an end. Russia’s federal budget funding of the war and other military spending reached about 16 trillion roubles in 2025, or 7.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). However, the real-terms growth of military spending moderated, from 38 per cent in 2024 to 6.1 per cent in 2025. In an attempt to restore balance to an economy overheated by increased spending on the war, in 2025 the government implemented a tough monetary policy to reduce the rate of inflation. Yet, budgetary pressures mounted, with an end-of-year deficit of 2.6 per cent GDP. In these circumstances, the Ministry of Defence has adopted more stringent financial management methods and has made savings on purchases of armament. This has led to a reduction of planned military expenditure in the 2026 budget to 14.9 trillion roubles, or 6.3 per cent of GDP. However, the annual budget will probably be amended, as it was twice in 2025. With the Iran war, launched by Israel and the United States in early 2026, this has become even more likely, as higher oil prices should greatly ease Russia’s budget situation this year.

The analysis examines the governmental decisions that tried to provide alternatives and offer a realistic response to the current U.S. debt crisis, severely undermining those defense budget provisions that had previously been planned. First, the impact of the 2011 Budget Control Act and the ‘sequestration’ process will be examined within the context of U.S. defense planning, giving a comprehensive overview of the U.S. budget debate with regard to U.S defense policy. Then the analysis compares and contrasts the current 2013 financial year data to the 2014 financial plan proposal based on President Obama’s statement in the White House on April 10, 2013, in which he presented the key points of the 2014 financial year budget. There the President put an emphasis on his sustained effort to improve the situation of American people through social benefit programs. These will have a determining effect to the United States armed forces in the future, which operate under heavy pressure and at times financial austerity. Expenses of social welfare and medical care are important for our analysis, as these belong to more steady mandatory items of the federal budget, while the defense budget relies mostly on discretionary funding, and is subject to major fluctuations. Finally the assessment will reflect on the Obama administration’s FY 2014 proposals with regard to the US defense policy review process in order to highlight the practical effects of sequestration.

the morning of n September 2001, the temptation to interpret the attacks as a hallmark of our individual and collective lives, to infuse the events with transformational properties, has been ever present. An Ekos poll published on 27 September 2001 showed that 77 percent of Canadians believed that their lives would be deeply and permanently changed by these terrorist attacks.1 David Bercuson rightly noted that, [as] with all such sweeping generalizations, no one will really know until many years have passed.2 Now, over a decade later, one can examine the effects of these events on Canadian security and defence policy with the sobriety the passing of a decade can bring. One common interpretation of Canada's response to 9/11 is that Canada experienced the events by proxy, through the United States. As Jonathan Paquin argues, Since the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the foreign and security policies of no other US allies have been more affected than those of Canada.3 The United States did not present Canada with a choice. On 20 September 2001 President George W. Bush made his expectations of other nations clear Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.4In this article, I consider the impacts of 9/11 on Canadian security policy and, particularly, the notion that the attacks intensified Canada's posture toward the United States. I first examine the existing literature on the nature of Canada-US relations and Canada's behaviour as an example of or as a defence-againsthelp strategy, because, although theoretically plausible, this characterization of the Canada- US defence and security relationship could use further empirical assistance. Second, I argue that the ways in which states allocate their resources can provide a measure of how states perceive and react to their security environment. In this context, if the soft-bandwagoning hypothesis of Canada-US security relations is accurate, we should be able to trace the pattern in their respective military budgets. Finally, I develop an error correction model that analyzes the dynamic relationship between Canadian and US military budgets between 1991 and 2010. Findings from 1991 to 2001 show Canada's soft-bandwagoning with the US, as changes in US military budgets correlate with Canadian military spending. After 9/11 however, there appears to be a break in this relationship, as no evidence supports the bandwagoning argument. On the contrary, Canadian military spending in the period from 2001 to 2010 seems to be primarily influenced by Ottawa's federal budget variations. These results suggest counterintuitively that 9/11 did not heighten Canada's bandwagoning with the US in security and defence matters, but rather led to a more emancipated Canadian security approach.WHAT FLAVOUR OF SOFT?In its relations with the United States, Canada has two possible overarching approaches, one of opposition and one of accommodation.5 In international relations, these two postures give rise to two distinct strategies. States can either ally against the principal threat or soft-balance that threat by taking actions that do not directly challenge U.S. military preponderance but that use nonmilitary tools to delay, frustrate, and undermine aggressive unilateral U.S. military policies.6 By choosing to accommodate stronger states such as the US, states can adopt a bandwagoning strategy either in its hard version, i.e., by directly allying with the source of the insecurity, or its soft version, where support of US foreign policy preferences is only moderate or symbolic in nature.7In Canada, this fundamental dichotomy between opposition and accommodation of a stronger power has structured our discussion on foreign policy. In fact, one could argue that Canada's coming of age at the beginning of the 20* century took the form of a structural discussion between policies of opposition and accommodation. …

Are racism and discrimination forgotten issues in public administration research on the promotion of diversity in graduate education and faculty employment? Studies touching on diversity and employment equity usually address subjects such as education and training—the competencies needed by professional administrators, for example—as well as best practices in diversity management, persistent problems such as the lack of racial or gender diversity in upper management positions in public sector agencies, and the enduring challenges of minority recruitment and retention in public administration programs. The subjects of racism and discrimination as such—or of underlying factors generally—are seldom addressed centrally. Consequently, questions such as the following arise: What role might racism play in academic as well as public sector employment? What about other lines of causation impacting discrimination? How do individual, group, and institutional predispositions and actions affect employment equity? How have such questions been addressed in the public administration literature? In other research and research applications in the social, behavioral, and management sciences? And, finally, what can be learned from successful and failed diversity-promotion practices among academic programs?A significant body of empirical research is uncovering patterns of action that have the intended or unintended effect of excluding candidates of color from recruitment pools, interview short-lists, and faculty hiring and advancement opportunities. This essay reviews and analyzes some of this literature, particularly as it relates to public affairs education. On that basis, it suggests the following: (1) new directions for diversity-related research, (2) changes in the articulation of diversity commitments, particularly by public administration departments and programs, and (3) ways to successfully realize those institutional commitments (assuming that they are more than rhetorical), pointing to research that specifiesproven practices.