{"id":6893,"date":"2014-10-26T18:44:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-26T18:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6893"},"modified":"2014-10-26T18:44:01","modified_gmt":"2014-10-26T18:44:01","slug":"are-we-really-a-second-rate-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6893","title":{"rendered":"Are we really a second-rate power?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You hear it frequently these days from right-wing talking heads, politicians and a few “expert observers” that the United States is in danger of becoming a second-rate military power.<\/p>\n

They express grave concern that the commander in chief, Barack Obama, seeks to “deliberately” reduce America’s standing in the world because of some trumped-up “anti-American bias” they’ve attached to the man.<\/p>\n

I heard U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry express those concerns recently, although he did so with a good measure of class and decorum. He isn’t\u00a0pounding on\u00a0the same drum that many lunatics on the right are beating.<\/p>\n

Thornberry — who’s set to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee next year — did suggest that China is growing its defense budge at a far greater rate than the United States and is concerned that the communist dictatorship may be about to surpass us as the pre-eminent military power on Earth.<\/p>\n

He’s not alone in saying these things.<\/p>\n

I dug into my World Almanac and Book of Facts and found a few interesting numbers. They relate to defense spending.<\/p>\n

In 2012, China spent just a shade less than $90 billion on its defense establishment; Russia — which 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said is our “No. 1 geopolitical adversary” — spent $52 billion. That’s around $142 billion spent between these two fearsome foes.<\/p>\n

The U.S. defense budget for 2012? $739 billion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Are the Russians and Chinese getting so much more bang for the buck — pardon the pun — that we should worry that either of them is going to surpass us in military strength? I hardly think that’s the case.<\/p>\n

I totally get, however, that in this new world of vaguely defined enemies and an international war against terror, that it is next to\u00a0meaningless to measure military strength vis a vis<\/em> our “traditional” foes.<\/p>\n

Let’s cool our jets just a bit, though, when suggesting that the United States of America is no longer capable of defending itself against any foe.<\/p>\n

We’re still pouring lots of money into our national defense and we’re still getting a damn good return on that investment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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You hear it frequently these days from right-wing talking heads, politicians and a few “expert observers” that the United States is in danger of becoming a second-rate military power. They express grave concern that the commander in chief, Barack Obama, seeks to “deliberately” reduce America’s standing in the world because of some trumped-up “anti-American bias” … Continue reading Are we really a second-rate power?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,13],"tags":[540,956,1317,2849,3101,3544,4050],"class_list":["post-6893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-military-news","category-national-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-china","tag-defense-spending","tag-mac-thornberry","tag-mitt-romney","tag-pentagon","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}