Efficacy of US Defense Spending Whether That Money Could be Spent Better to Aid the US Economy

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The latest American-Israeli aggression against Iran has exposed the United States’ inability to defend our big bases in the Gulf Countries and smaller bases in Iraq. For decades, these countries have had to endure the ire of their populations who are unhappy with the presence of U.S. forces in their lands. Their citizens are painfully aware of the U.S. and Israeli mass destruction and murder of their Muslim brothers. This may become a source of instability as war escalates.

Our leaders bribed and coerced the Persian Gulf family monarchies into accepting U.S. military bases in their countries. The regimes justified the American presence because the “most powerful military in history” would protect them.

For decades, U.S. policy toward the Middle East has revolved around a simple premise: the forward deployment of U.S. military power would deter adversaries — chiefly Iran — and, if necessary, defend host states from attack. Today, that premise is increasingly difficult to sustain.

A series of Iranian strikes and threats against critical infrastructure has underscored a widening gap between the promise of protection and the reality of exposure. Far from insulating Persian Gulf states, the U.S. military presence has contributed to their vulnerability.

I posted in September 2022 on another thread:
“Another way to look at the US military is from a performance viewpoint. It has proven to be a failure in every war this century.
Now that failure may be due to the generals or our political leaders that place them in situations that were unwinnable. In any case $7-8 trillion has been borrowed & spent on wasted effort. To say nothing of the deaths & physical disabilities incurred plus creation of many more people filled with hatred for the USA. Oh and political & economic problems for the EU from all the refugees from US misadventures.
Just think of what infrastructure improvement that could have been made with such amount of money.
Are really the best and brightest at the helm of our nation? If the US was a business; those in charge would have been sent packing long ago.”

Oh by the way, the current administration wishes to increase defense spending by 50% to $1.5 trillion annually.

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Blowing things up is easy. Building strong societies amidst radical social and technological change is difficult.

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We need to stop calling it defense spending. It is war spending as admitted by our own government.

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The fastest way to waste men, materials, and money is to start a war.

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Especially when it will end in failure.

The notion that air power alone can decapitate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and produce regime change represents a fantasy that scholars have debunked repeatedly over the past century. Yet here we are, over a month into Operation Epic Fury, watching Washington learn these lessons the hard way.

None of this should surprise anyone who has studied the actual historical record on air power and coercion. Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who also taught at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies and authored Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, has analyzed over a century of air power history. His conclusion is unambiguous.

“I’ve studied every air campaign since World War I, and in all that time, over 100 years, air power alone—without ground forces—has never toppled a regime,” Pape told MS Now. “There have been times when there have been pro-democracy movements in combination with the air power; it has never worked. It has not worked in the dumb-bomb age, the smart-bomb age. We’ve tried so many different combinations, so much intelligence, and it has never worked.”

There has been a few general firings recently. I wonder if those generals brought up the fact that Iranian air attacks would not bring the desired result?

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