Abstract

As the economy has tanked, the banks have been bailed out, and America lost its jobs, the defense budget continues to grow. For the past 13 years U.S. military spending has increased 114 percent. That's 8 percent higher than at the height of Reagan's presidency and the Cold War. The money is used to buying sophisticated weapons that often don't make it into production, and when they do they're expensive to maintain.

Table of Content

Military Spending1

Thesis1

Military Expenditures1

Introduction2

Discussion3

Arguments for the Military Expenditure4

Military-industrial Complex4

Geographic Patterns of Military Expenditures5

Impacts in the United States6

Transnational Impacts7

The Environmental Matrix8

Scales of Analysis9

Approaches to Military Geographic Analyses10

The Evolution of Military Spending11

Conclusion12

Works Cited14

Military Spending

Thesis

“Military expenditures are the necessary for the country to increase the protection level of the country”

Military Expenditures

Military expenditures, broadly defined, are the aggregate funds spent by a national government for military-related purposes. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual SIPRI Yearbook 2007, the aggregate military expenditure by all national governments in 2006 was $1.024 billion in market exchange rate (MER) terms. Adjusted for inflation, this figure marked a 37% growth in military budgets since 1997. This level of increased military spending follows a long trend that dates to World War II and that greatly accelerated during the Cold War. The levels of military spending over the past 60 years have been—and continue to be—a dynamic force that has deeply altered the fabric of social, political, spatial, and economic relationships, from the scale of the local to that of the global. There are four fundamental aspects of military expenditures.

First, high levels of military expenditure are a prerequisite for the geopolitical power of a nation-state, a point exemplified by a global U.S. hegemony, which is founded upon enormous levels of military spending. Second, preparation for war has increasingly integrated private firms, modern production practices, and technological innovation with government spending. This mixture has created a military-industrial complex dedicated to the production of arms. Third, military spending has spatially reorganized local, national, and global economies in a manner quite different from that of the civilian economy. Fourth, high levels of military spending accelerate the international proliferation of advanced weaponry. Finally, there are significant methodological problems inherent in all military expenditures data that must be addressed in geographical research, especially given the polemical debate that often infuses popular discourses on national spending (Clausewitz, 15).

Introduction

Ranking national military expenditures in MER terms, when combined with similar data from previous years, reveals the close link between military spending and the production of global geopolitical power. The major military spender in 2008 was the United States, with $6.071 billion. This accounts for 41% of world military spending in the same year. China, with $84.9 billion, came in second. France and the United Kingdom each spent roughly $65 billion, putting them in third and fourth place, respectively. Russia ranked fifth, with $58.6 billion. Russia's status marks a stark contrast to the position of the former USSR, which typically vied with the United States for the title of the world's biggest military spender during the Cold War (Flint, ...