gracchusdixit

The improbable Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump lurches from one outrageous pratfall to another so quickly that it is all but impossible to keep up.  The unfortunate result is that truly important questions get lost in all the hubbub before they can be dealt with properly.  In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s stumble at the 9/11 ceremony in New York City and all the phony furor about her (quite justifiable) use of the word, “deplorable,” to describe the racism of many Trump supporters, we have lost sight of something far more deplorable than an all-advised choice of words by the Democratic candidate for President.

Trump’s campaign has, from the start, been fueled by fabrications, falsehoods, and cons, each more outlandish than the last.  Mere hours before the distractions I just mentioned, Trump presented us with a con more colossal than anything he has thus far conjured up—one that has been all but ignored by the media.

In Philadelphia, where our Constitution was crafted more than 200 years ago, Trump delivered what was dubbed a “major address on national security.”  It turned out to be a largely incoherent rant, during which he strove to characterize himself as a figure of steady judgment in a world of chaos, created by a “weak” Barack Obama and a “reckless” Hillary Clinton, whom he described as “trigger happy and unstable.”  All this, from a man who thinks it would be a “great idea” if more countries around the world acquired nuclear weapons and can scarcely contain his thrill at any word of flattery that falls from the lips of Russia’s de facto dictator, Vladimir Putin.

Trump proposed a massive expansion in military spending, rattling off a bill of particulars that sounded like the Christmas wish list of the frustrated and disgruntled ex-generals and admirals who support him.  He promised more divisions for the Army, more battalions for the Marines, more planes for the Air Force, more ships for the Navy—more of everything for everyone.  To justify this extravagance, he claimed that our military has been “degraded” by President Obama and Hillary Clinton, whom he blamed for overseeing “deep cuts, which only invite more aggression from our adversaries.”

Trump neglected to mention that the budget cuts he derided were initiated, not by the President, let alone Hillary Clinton, but by the Republican majority that controls the Congress of the United States.  In any event, he declared that he would pay for all this new military spending by:

1. “Eliminating government waste and budget gimmicks.”
2. Collecting unpaid taxes “estimated to be as high as $385 billion.”
3. “Reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.”
4. Asking all NATO countries to “pay their bills.”
5. Asking Germany, Japan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia to “pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.”
6. “Unleashing” American energy production.

In deciphering this gibberish, it is difficult to know where or how to begin.  Trump is so ignorant, or so deceptive, that it is all but impossible to disentangle each of his particular falsehoods.  Indeed, that may be his plan, since the fundamental trick behind every con is distraction.

Let us, nonetheless, try to disambiguate this particular set of distractions.

First, Trump’s essential premise—that our armed forces have been “degraded”—is utter nonsense.  Even after the sequestration imposed by Congress, the “defense” budget of the United States is by far the largest in the world, equal to the military spending of the next ten countries put together.  We outspend the Chinese four to one, the Russians nine to one, and the United Kingdom—our closest ally—ten to one.  We are the major arms dealer in the world, selling billions of dollars worth of military hardware to everyone from the Saudis to the Israelis.

Trump’s notion that a massive boost in military spending can be paid for by “eliminating government waste” is ludicrous on its face, because the major source of “government waste” is the military itself.  No other department of government squanders so much money with so little oversight or accountability.  The idea of giving still more money to such a fiscally irresponsible institution is simply nuts.

His suggestion that collecting unpaid taxes might somehow pay for more ships, planes, and tanks is equally ridiculous.  The only institution capable of collecting those taxes, the IRS, has been gutted by a Republican Congress viscerally opposed to everything the IRS stands for.  Unless Trump is proposing to hire more IRS agents—which is clearly not the case—exactly how does he expect these unpaid taxes to be collected?

Trump says that reducing the size of the “federal bureaucracy” will help to pay for his proposed largess to the military.  The reality is that the number of civilian employees in the federal government is lower than it’s been in a generation.  The “bureaucracy” he should be worrying about is that inside the Pentagon.

Trump says that he wants our NATO allies to “pay their bills.” He clearly has no comprehension of how NATO actually works—no surprise from a candidate who understands next to nothing about nearly everything.  NATO countries have a target for defense spending that amounts to two percent of GDP, but that target is non-binding and therefore unenforceable.  Some NATO members strive to meet it; others decide to take a pass (which is their prerogative); still others simply lack the resources.  No President of the United States has any authority to change this situation, and it doesn’t matter in the end.  Even if every NATO member were to spend two percent of GDP on defense, that wouldn’t reduce our military expenditures by so much as a penny.

Trump seems to think that we have troops and military bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia to accommodate the Germans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, and the Saudis.  The truth is, we have bases in those countries to advance our interests—and those countries already subsidize our military presence heavily.  In truth, several of them would be quite happy to do without the “tremendous security” Trump says we provide.

Trump’s final proposal—to pay for military expansion by “unleashing” domestic energy production—is a notion that has nothing whatever to do with military costs or energy needs, since we already have more domestic energy than we can possibly use.  It is nothing but a handout to the fossil fuel industry, under the guise of national security.

Apart from the silliness of Donald Trump’s proposals and the falsehoods he uses to justify them, his proposals pose more fundamental dangers.  American military power is a blade with two edges.  When we overreach, which happens all too often, we do not make the world safer; we make it more perilous.  Our disproportionate military power causes other nations, even our friends and allies, to distrust and fear our motives, creating resentment, civil unrest, and chaos.  The Middle East is coming apart, not because we lack sufficient military power or have failed to use it, but rather because we used our power and used it badly.  The last thing we need is still more of that power.

We should never forget Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous phrase, “shock and awe,” invoked to describe and justify the invasion of Iraq.  That invasion did, indeed, produce “shock and awe,” but not the sort that was intended.  To imagine that more military spending, more “shock and awe,” will somehow put the world right is the greatest and the worst of Donald Trump’s innumerable cons.