Times have changed

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Back in 2001, many people got crazy. Military forces were used for policy and additional funds were made available for them. The U.S. armed services were almost buried under the amount of money that flowed into their budget.

Back in 2007, the beginning economic crisis and soon shrinking Iraq invovlement should have led to an end of the money flood, back to normal. This didn't happen, first due to normal lags and later ebcause fiscal austerity was damned as economic suicide by a grassroots wannabe economic experts movement that took over the mainstream media in most Western nations in a few weeks last year.

The time of economic "stimulus package" (or "we cannot do much of use, but we can pretend to save the world by spending!") politics seems to be over now, and finally, things go back to normal. Well, there's at least a trend in that direction.

The published attitudes seem to have moved during the past few weeks. Maybe it was the impression that Greece left on us. Maybe the time was simply right: Cutting military budgets in order to cure the budget disasters has become a real topic, and an accepted one.

The German Einzelplan 14 budget will probably be cut by about a billion Euros per year, but that's peanuts in comparison to the expected cuts in the UK, Greece and U.S.. Even Spain and Italy might easily exceed that sum.

The strange thing about this is that military spending should be about external factors (such as threats), not about internal ones. Save for procurement activities of lasting effect; doesn't the ability to cut military budgets due to fiscal problems kind of prove that we spent too much before?

Sven Ortmann
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