The U.S. Can Afford a Bigger Military. We Just Can’t Build It.
When the Center for Strategic and International Studies simulated a war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, the wargame ended with Taiwan still free, at grievous cost. The U.S.
loses two aircraft carriers and up to 20 destroyers and cruisers; China sees more than 50 major surface warships sunk. What looks like a draw, though, becomes a Chinese victory before long. As Eric Labs, a navy analyst for the Congressional Budget Office explains, China can replace lost ships far more quickly.
In the past two years, its navy has grown by 17 cruisers and destroyers; it would take the U.S. six years to build the same number under current conditions, he said. “In terms of industrial competition and shipbuilding, China is where the U.S.
was in the early stages of World War II," Labs said. In the U.S. now, “we just don’t have the industrial capacity to build warships…in large numbers very fast." Intensifying security challenges from the western Pacific to Ukraine to the Middle East have fueled debate over whether the U.S.
can afford a bigger military. In fact, the more pressing question is whether it can build one—when its principal adversary possesses vast industrial capacity. U.S.
military spending was 3.1% of gross domestic product in the last fiscal year, near the lowest since World War II. Add the $106 billion President Biden has requested in aid primarily for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and the total would still be less than the 4.6% spent at the peak of Iraq and Afghanistan operations in 2010, never mind the 8.9% in 1968, during the Vietnam War. Healthcare, pensions and interest on the debt really do menace the nation’s finances; military outlays don’t.
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