Tomgram: Chris Hellman, The Pentagon's Spending Spree

China just launched a refitted Ukrainian aircraft carrier from the 1990's on its first test run, and that is what the only projected "great power" enemy of the US has to offer for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the US Navy has 11 aircraft carrier task forces to cruise the seven seas, and plans to keep that many through 2045. Like so much else, when it comes to the American military, all comparisons are ludicrous. In any "normal" sense, the United States stands alone in military terms. Its expenditures make up almost 50% of global military spending. It dominates the global arms market, and it has countless more bases, pilot-less drones, military bands, and almost anything else military you'd care to mention than does any other power. In other words, comparisons can't be made. The minute you try, you're off the charts, and yet, in purely practical terms, when you take a shot at measuring the overall investment of American treasure in the military, the US intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, and the rest of our "national security establishment" has actually brought us, you come up with a series of wars and conflicts headed nowhere, and a series of post-9/11 terror attacks generally so inept, that it hardly matters whether they were foiled or not! Still, when you come to cutting the US national security budget, none of this seems to matter: The Pentagon "cuts" presently being discussed in Washington are largely in projected future growth, not in REAL funds, and even then, the Pentagon and its many boosters in Washington are largely in "projected future growth", NOT in REAL funds, which continue to rise, and even then, the Pentagon and its many boosters in Washington are already crying "bloody murder". Give some credit for all this to the giant weapon makers, and to the military itself: Both have so carefully tied military-related jobs into so many state economies that few congressional representatives could afford to vote for the sorts of REAL cutbacks that could afford to vote for the sorts of "real" cutbacks that would bring perhaps the most profligate institution on the planet to heel, and yet still leave the country as the globe's military giant.