What is the value of armed forces to make a nation "happy"?
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2014 9:12 pm
As Europe is relatively to other major powers greatly reducing its standing force and being rather relaxed about its military R&D compared to for instance US, Russia, India and China, is this a good thing for happiness or bad thing?
Because obviously the money spent on the welfare of the people, which is some of the ways in which European countries are able to afford extensive welfare systems (freeing up expenses in military), do lead to an ability to make people happier, or at least pull more people out of misery (mainly talking about northern half of Europe in this regard, as bad fiscal policy has lead to crisis elsewhere that certainly does not make many people happy).
However, in the case that a conflict should erupt that is not solvable by diplomatic means, or whose diplomatic cost is too high, then the less capacity will amount to a case of possible great misery in the fight against a larger threat, not only because the threat is proportionally higher, but because it might be more tempting to attack proportionally weaker targets as well so war might happen more often (although this is not a straight-forward calculation, as aid money for instance does lead to more satisfied populations in Africa for instance, and that reduces conflict over sparse wealth, causing more long-term stability for the world at large, and that aid money comes from for instance freed up military spending power).
But the big question is: at what point is the reduction of standing forces too high that it down the line will give too much of an incentive for more militarized countries to use military force to enforce or cause trouble for their own aims?
Take another example, which is South Africa, once a major power in Africa, the "superpower of Africa", is now reduced to a very tiny (but well-supplied) military, that should not be able to secure South Africa in the case of large scale invasions, such as for instance (and now I'm being purely hypothetical, I do not find this likely) a Jihad that gathered large numbers of enemies, and atop they would be fighting guerilla. Now, of course South Africa wouldn't loose the fight, the country is all to big to fall against poorly equipped and trained volunteers in virtually any number. But just imagine the amount of "damage" that the country could be hit by, and so it's not merely a matter of winning a war of attrition, but securing that the enemy can't even do significant damage (except with nuclear weapons, although it's a very complicated technology to be possessed by most rogue organizations and Russia we trust will never go as far as use any nuclear weapon with a radius of damage anywhere near a cold-war nuclear ICBM for instace).
And having that security can be very costly because there are so many ways in which to strike a country, and the question then is: how much should we spend? Europe does have a hugely capable, technologically advanced and large scale force, split among its member countries (in fact, 1.5 million active duty soldiers, in EU alone), but is it sufficient to give the kind of security that we like to have in post-industrial countries? The feeling that "war just doesn't happen here, war is over there". This kind of feeling is certainly one of the things that shocked Norway in the Breivik assault of 22th of July, "this just doesn't happen here", and it turned out that although we did have forces to deal with such situations, quite close by actually, there were lacks in logistics for instance that slowed down the troops and lead to unnecessary amounts of deaths... one could argue that is is the kind of thing that only happens once every half a century or more (Nazi occupation being the last time), so although one should improve, just how much should we spend to improve? At what point are we exaggerating our expenses?
Norway has a very strong army. It's very well equipped, and well trained, but only if you count an average per head is it strong. Because compared to the only thinkable enemy "Russia", we lack heads, we are outnumbered something like 40-50 times or about that in active duty soldiers. Our security goal is to hold out until help arrives... but when you are outnumbered 50 times can you really hold out for any time? Isn't one good plan all the enemy needs to destroy you? So why don't we have a bigger army which supposedly could better hold out? The cost of course of a bigger army is immense, especially if Norway really is to perform that task on its own. So however big the enemy seems, it seems in the short run such a good option to just depend on things to never go that far, and let the nation flourish in what time of peace might be present...
So is Norway right in what it does? Is Europe right? Is South Africa right? Is an American, or Russian, or Chinese, or Indian answer, a better answer?
Because obviously the money spent on the welfare of the people, which is some of the ways in which European countries are able to afford extensive welfare systems (freeing up expenses in military), do lead to an ability to make people happier, or at least pull more people out of misery (mainly talking about northern half of Europe in this regard, as bad fiscal policy has lead to crisis elsewhere that certainly does not make many people happy).
However, in the case that a conflict should erupt that is not solvable by diplomatic means, or whose diplomatic cost is too high, then the less capacity will amount to a case of possible great misery in the fight against a larger threat, not only because the threat is proportionally higher, but because it might be more tempting to attack proportionally weaker targets as well so war might happen more often (although this is not a straight-forward calculation, as aid money for instance does lead to more satisfied populations in Africa for instance, and that reduces conflict over sparse wealth, causing more long-term stability for the world at large, and that aid money comes from for instance freed up military spending power).
But the big question is: at what point is the reduction of standing forces too high that it down the line will give too much of an incentive for more militarized countries to use military force to enforce or cause trouble for their own aims?
Take another example, which is South Africa, once a major power in Africa, the "superpower of Africa", is now reduced to a very tiny (but well-supplied) military, that should not be able to secure South Africa in the case of large scale invasions, such as for instance (and now I'm being purely hypothetical, I do not find this likely) a Jihad that gathered large numbers of enemies, and atop they would be fighting guerilla. Now, of course South Africa wouldn't loose the fight, the country is all to big to fall against poorly equipped and trained volunteers in virtually any number. But just imagine the amount of "damage" that the country could be hit by, and so it's not merely a matter of winning a war of attrition, but securing that the enemy can't even do significant damage (except with nuclear weapons, although it's a very complicated technology to be possessed by most rogue organizations and Russia we trust will never go as far as use any nuclear weapon with a radius of damage anywhere near a cold-war nuclear ICBM for instace).
And having that security can be very costly because there are so many ways in which to strike a country, and the question then is: how much should we spend? Europe does have a hugely capable, technologically advanced and large scale force, split among its member countries (in fact, 1.5 million active duty soldiers, in EU alone), but is it sufficient to give the kind of security that we like to have in post-industrial countries? The feeling that "war just doesn't happen here, war is over there". This kind of feeling is certainly one of the things that shocked Norway in the Breivik assault of 22th of July, "this just doesn't happen here", and it turned out that although we did have forces to deal with such situations, quite close by actually, there were lacks in logistics for instance that slowed down the troops and lead to unnecessary amounts of deaths... one could argue that is is the kind of thing that only happens once every half a century or more (Nazi occupation being the last time), so although one should improve, just how much should we spend to improve? At what point are we exaggerating our expenses?
Norway has a very strong army. It's very well equipped, and well trained, but only if you count an average per head is it strong. Because compared to the only thinkable enemy "Russia", we lack heads, we are outnumbered something like 40-50 times or about that in active duty soldiers. Our security goal is to hold out until help arrives... but when you are outnumbered 50 times can you really hold out for any time? Isn't one good plan all the enemy needs to destroy you? So why don't we have a bigger army which supposedly could better hold out? The cost of course of a bigger army is immense, especially if Norway really is to perform that task on its own. So however big the enemy seems, it seems in the short run such a good option to just depend on things to never go that far, and let the nation flourish in what time of peace might be present...
So is Norway right in what it does? Is Europe right? Is South Africa right? Is an American, or Russian, or Chinese, or Indian answer, a better answer?
