The drumbeat of fear has begun about potential defense cutbacks.
“America spends more on defense than the next 14 or 19 nations, depending on methodology, and is the world’s largest arms dealer. It is winding down two wars that lasted longer than American involvement in World War II and in both Iraq and Afghanistan the results are disappointing, to put an optimistic spin on it. The money to wage these wars was largely borrowed from Red China, which our defense establishment is now teeing up as the next ‘enemy’.
“The real lesson of these scary reports is that the American economy is far too dependent on military Keynesianism.
“In the past, when wars ended the economy shifted back to a peacetime footing. Sometimes that did cause recessions on the way to more productive growth (a peacetime economy produces more healthy returns than blowing things up). Now we’re being told that’s impossible.
“That sound you hear is Dwight Eisenhower spinning in his grave.”
