National Security: Is it necessary? How much and why?

[Nathyn]

Here's a good question for the forum: How much do we really need national security?

The question's so difficult to answer that I feel ambivalent about the issue. I don't really know if overturning the PATRIOT Act and having great Congressional oversight over the NSA would be a good thing, but I just feel so strongly about my liberties that I'm skeptical about any threat to them.

I've never actually gone through a cost-benefit analysis of national security and I would be interested to see if anyone else has. I assume a cost-benefit analysis could suggest that national security is necessary, though I could be wrong. The September 11th attacks had such tremendous impact on the economy that it seems increased security was necessary.

Overall, it seems that national security and the military are self-perpetuating. When we have national security and the military, we can get away with "cowboy diplomacy," interning Muslims, calling other nations the Axis of Evil, starting a war with no casus belli, etc.. We have to maintain friendly relations with the world.

When we have national security, though, we tend to do those things because we can get away with them. As a result, we have so many freaking enemies that want to kill thousands of us that any reduction in security is a major risk.

Also, I think that not spending trillions on national security may actually make the nation safer in the long run. Because not tying up that money allows the economy to use it, so that less or no national security leads to substantially higher economic growth in the long-run, allowing future national security agencies to have a greater pool of funds to work with.

 

[Ziggurat]

Here's a good question for the forum: How much do we really need national security?

The question's so difficult to answer that I feel ambivalent about the issue. I don't really know if overturning the PATRIOT Act and having great Congressional oversight over the NSA would be a good thing, but I just feel so strongly about my liberties that I'm skeptical about any threat to them.

The Patriot Act is considered by proponents to be a national security tool. But pretty much nobody, critics OR supporters, considers it to be national security in toto. So what do YOU mean by "national security"? I can't really tell.

Overall, it seems that national security and the military are self-perpetuating. When we have national security and the military, we can get away with "cowboy diplomacy," interning Muslims, calling other nations the Axis of Evil, starting a war with no casus belli, etc.. We have to maintain friendly relations with the world.

We cannot afford to make enemies with the entire world, but we have not done so. There's no reason we cannot make enemies with parts of the world, and in fact little reason to think we can avoid doing so to at least some extent absent total isolationism (which is not an option).

When we have national security, though, we tend to do those things because we can get away with them. As a result, we have so many freaking enemies that want to kill thousands of us that any reduction in security is a major risk.

You have made a very common error: you think that we need to have established enmity with someone else in order for them to be a threat to us. This notion is wrong. Early American history proves this rather explicitly, though it's not something that gets taught very much. Ever heard of the Barbary Coast pirates? Familiar with the that Marines hymn with the line, "to the shores of Tripoli"? Ever wonder why Tripoli gets mentioned?

Pirate ships operating with state support from Muslim countries in North Africa were attacking merchant ships, including American ships (starting in 1784), in the Mediteranean and even the Atlantic. Why were they doing that? Was it because we had offended them? Because we threatened them? No: they did it for the simple reason that it was profitable: they would capture ships, their crews sold into slavery, and a ransom was demanded for their release. And how did they justify their attacks diplomatically? They justified it upon religious grounds: that because we were infidels, they were free to wage war on us without provocation. It was this piracy which gave birth to the US Navy in 1791, and which led to a serious of wars with the Barbary pirates in 1801, and from those wars sprand the above line in the Marines hymn (the marines being part of the navy), as well as the term "leatherneck" to mean a marine (from protective leather they wore for boarding enemy ships). We were not the agressors in that war, but we were determined (and rightly so) to be the winners.

Choosing an optimal level of spending for national security is a complex problem, and we may indeed not be spending optimally. But the idea that we can forgo security spending, even for a while, is shear fantasy. The world is not made up solely of people who only attack in response to aggression, there are a LOT of people who will attack whenever they think they can gain from it. Without a strong military, we would be the primary target for such attacks. History demonstrates this time and time agai: weakness invites agression whenever it is displayed.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Here's a good question for the forum: How much do we really need national security?

The question's so difficult to answer that I feel ambivalent about the issue. I don't really know if overturning the PATRIOT Act and having great Congressional oversight over the NSA would be a good thing, but I just feel so strongly about my liberties that I'm skeptical about any threat to them.

I've never actually gone through a cost-benefit analysis of national security and I would be interested to see if anyone else has. I assume a cost-benefit analysis could suggest that national security is necessary, though I could be wrong. The September 11th attacks had such tremendous impact on the economy that it seems increased security was necessary.

Overall, it seems that national security and the military are self-perpetuating. When we have national security and the military, we can get away with "cowboy diplomacy," interning Muslims, calling other nations the Axis of Evil, starting a war with no casus belli, etc.. We have to maintain friendly relations with the world.

When we have national security, though, we tend to do those things because we can get away with them. As a result, we have so many freaking enemies that want to kill thousands of us that any reduction in security is a major risk.

Also, I think that not spending trillions on national security may actually make the nation safer in the long run. Because not tying up that money allows the economy to use it, so that less or no national security leads to substantially higher economic growth in the long-run, allowing future national security agencies to have a greater pool of funds to work with.

I don't think you understand national security, or at least what I understand national security to be. You do not offer a workable defniniton of what "national security" is for this discussion. Would you care to do so, to better focus the conversation? Your topic, I will not bail you out by providing you with mine until you first show me yours.

Disclaimer aside, national security, or rather, national level security policy and its implementation, is a bit like an insurance policy. If you buy the whole life version, you end up with an asset in the long term, but it costs a bit more. If you buy term policies, you accept the risk of greater cost in the future for similar coverage. The problem of under resourcing your national security policy is that failure renders moot any further investment, since the entity to secure no longer exists, or an entire menu of options is completely removed from consideration. Since security policy intersects with trade and global interaction related to trade, closing down options can be damaging to an economy, and thus the national interest.

If this stuff was easy, anyone could do it. It's bloody hard to balance the costs, investments, policy, and benefits for a problem with literally hundreds of variables assigned to it.

DR