Beal, East Asian research scholar, 2022

Military expenditure may not tell the whole story, but it remains the best single measure of power projection. The United States in recent decades has been able to destroy armies and devastate countries with negligible casualties. Instead, the problems begin during the occupation phase, when guerrilla warfare takes its toll. Whatever the limitation of military spending as an indicator of pacification and long-term control on unruly subjects, it does tell us a lot about motivation, intention, and the political dynamics of the U.S. state.

Geography has given the United States an incredible, unmatched natural defense, with wide oceans to east and west and smaller, subordinate (if sometimes annoyingly disobedient) states to north and south. This natural defense allowed the United States for much of its history up to the mid-twentieth century to have very small military budget and a standing army “modest by international standards.”39 This was labelled “isolationism,” although George Friedman argues that:

But the United States was not isolationist; it was involved in Asia throughout this [inter-war] period. Rather, it saw itself as being the actor of last resort, capable of acting at the decisive moment with overwhelming force because geography had given the United States the option of time and resources.40

Indeed, so-called manifest destiny—originally, an expression of the desire to expand to the Pacific seaboard—was a constant theme from the nineteenth century onward.41 However, this desire did not—or perhaps had no need to—reveal itself in massive, continual military spending until the U.S. entry into the Second World War. The U.S. military budget dropped after the First World War and was set to revert back to previous levels after the Second, but it was rescued by the Cold War and the Korean War, and has scarcely looked back since then. There was a decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that was soon reversed and it does remain inordinately high, far bigger than could be justified by any possible adversary, or even combination of enemies.

Indeed, the actual geopolitical situation is somewhat sidelined by what is conventionally, if inadequately, called the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), a phrase that Dwight D. Eisenhower coined in 1961.42 The crisis in U.S. capitalism after the Second World War has led to both a permanent war economy and the creation of the MIC as a key component. The MIC needs enemies and an empire to defend, but as a business, it has little interest in the details of geopolitics—that is a job for the strategists. As a commercial entity the MIC does not concern itself whether a particular war or state of tension is wise or foolish, let alone the ethics of it all, but whether it produces profit. The MIC is huge and comprises much more than weapons manufactures and soldiers: it encompasses all those who benefit from militarization and miliary spending by the U.S. government and its allies. Prominent in this enterprise are politicians, think tanks, and a large swath of the media. It is thus a very large lobby which complements those who chart U.S. imperial policy and is, needless to say, a generous funder. The MIC does not in itself cause imperialism, but is a tireless promoter of militarization and military solutions to imperialism’s problems.

The U.S. military budget, and the U.S. military itself, tell only one part of the story of imperial coercive power. The U.S. has a considerable array of force multipliers, ranging from allies with substantial (if ineffective) militaries of their own, such as the United Kingdom, through to innumerable proxies: armies that fight their own wars but by so doing serve their patron and funder. These range in size from the very small, through quite substantial (for example, the Kurds), to very large, such as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). The AFU has roughly 250,000 troops, the largest in Europe after Russia. Moreover, it receives substantial military assistance, which has exploded since the Russian invasion in 2022; Glenn Greenwald writing in May of that year calculated that “the total amount spent by the U.S. on the Russia/Ukraine War in less than three months is close to Russia’s total military budget for the entire year ($65.9 billion).”43

Unlike allies, which may have to be cajoled into a “coalition of the willing,” proxies are by definition committed to the fight. From their point of view, it is their cause, and they search for patrons to help them achieve their objectives. Proxies benefit from the support of their patrons though the provision of funds, armaments, training, and positive international media exposure. However, there are two elements of relationship that can prove disastrous. First, they are on the front lines and they bear the consequences of enemy action first and, perhaps, alone; patrons can fight proxy wars suffering no casualties of their own, thus avoiding domestic political damage. Second, the patron may have a change of plan and the proxy may become redundant, perhaps even something to be destroyed. The Kurds, amongst many others, are familiar with betrayal by patrons.44

U.S. military power, in its combined manifestations, is a behemoth which straddles the earth like no other. The United States has other strings in its bow. It has a huge economy, only now challenged by China, and a stranglehold over international finance and banking. This makes sanctions both devastating (though not necessarily effective) and, up until now, with the rise of China and the Ukraine War, basically cost-free.45 It has unparalleled diplomatic/political power enabling it to get governments to sacrifice their national interest for U.S. objectives (sanctions and the exclusion of Huawei being two examples). It can manipulate the UN and its agencies. And it has considerable power over the international media enabling it to whip up antagonism, even hysteria, against its enemies, employing information warfare to an Orwellian degree.46 It is the home to many innovative technologies and still has considerable soft power, although this, as with its other forms of power, is faltering.