By Lawrence S. WittnerJanuary 01, 2019
Maybe those delirious crowds chanting “USA, USA” have got
something. When it comes to military power, the United States reigns supreme. Newsweek reported in March 2018: “The United States has
the strongest military in the world,” with more than two million military
personnel and vast numbers of the most advanced nuclear missiles, military
aircraft, warships, tanks, and other modern weapons of war. Furthermore, as the
New York Times noted, “the United States also has a
global presence unlike any other nation, with about 200,000 active duty troops
deployed in more than 170 countries.” This presence includes some 800 overseas U.S. military bases.
In 2017 (the last year for which global figures are available), the
U.S. government accounted for more than a third of the world’s military expenditures, more
than the next seven highest-spending countries combined. Not satisfied,
however, President Trump and Congress pushed through a mammoth increase in the
annual U.S. military budget in August 2018, raising it to $717 billion. Maintaining the U.S. status as “No. 1” in
war and war preparations comes at a very high price.
That price is not only paid in dollars—plus massive death and
suffering in warfare? but in the impoverishment of other key sectors of
American life. After all, this lavish outlay on the military now constitutes
about two-thirds of the U.S. government’s discretionary
spending. And these other sectors of American life are in big trouble.
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Let’s consider education. The gold standard for evaluation seems
to be the Program for International Student Assessment of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tests 15-year-old students
every few years. The last test, which occurred in 2015 and involved 540,000
students in 72 nations and regions, found that U.S. students ranked 24th in
reading, 25th in science, and 41st in mathematics. When the scores in these
three areas were combined, U.S. students ranked 31st?behind the
students of Slovenia, Poland, Russia, and Vietnam.
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The educational attainments among many other Americans are also
dismal. An estimated 30 million adult Americans cannot read, write, or do
basic math above a third grade level. Literacy has different definitions and,
for this reason among others, estimates vary about the level of illiteracy in
the United States. But one of the most favorable rankings of the United States
for literacy places it in a tie with numerous other nations for 26th; the worst places it at 125th.
The U.S. healthcare system also fares poorly compared to that of
other nations. A 2017 study of healthcare systems in 11 advanced
industrial countries by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States
ranked at the very bottom of the list. Furthermore, numerous nations with far
less “advanced” economies have superior healthcare systems to that of the
United States. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. healthcare system
ranks 37th among countries behind that of Colombia, Cyprus, and Morocco.
Not surprisingly, American health is relatively poor. The infant mortality rate in the United States is higher
than in 54 other lands, including Belarus, Cuba, Greece, and French Polynesia.
According to the World Cancer Research Fund, the United States has the 5th highest cancer rate of the 50 countries it studied.
For the past few years, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
recently reported, U.S. life expectancy has been declining
and, today, the United States reportedly ranks 53rd among 100 nations in life
expectancy.
Despite the fact that the United States is the world’s richest
nation, it also has an unusually high level of poverty. According to a 2017 UNICEF report, more than 29 percent of American
children live in impoverished circumstances, placing the United States 35th in
childhood poverty among the 41 richest nations. Indeed, the United States has a
higher percentage
of its people living in poverty (15.1 percent) than 41 other countries,
including Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and Sri Lanka.
Nor does the United States rate very well among nations on
environmental issues. According to the Environmental Performance Index, produced by Yale
University and Columbia University in 2018, the United States placed 27th among
the countries it ranked on environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The Social Progress
Index, another well-respected survey that rates countries on their
environmental records, ranked the United States 36th in wastewater treatment,
39th in access to at least basic drinking water, and 73rd in greenhouse gas
emissions.
Actually, the findings of the Social Progress Index are roughly the
same as other evaluators in a broad range of areas. Its 2018 report
concluded that that the United States ranked 63rd in primary school enrollment,
61st in secondary school enrollment, 76th in access to quality education, 40th
in child mortality rate, 62nd in maternity mortality rate, 36th in access to
essential health services, 74th in access to quality healthcare, and 35th in
life expectancy at age 60. In addition, it rated the United States as 33rd in
political killings and torture, 88th in homicide rate, 47th in political
rights, and 67th in discrimination and violence against minorities. All in all,
there’s nothing here to cheer about.
Does the U.S. government’s priority for military spending explain,
at least partially, the discrepancy between the worldwide preeminence of the
U.S. armed forces and the feeble global standing of major American domestic
institutions? Back in April 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower pointed to their connection.
Addressing the American Society of Newspaper editors, he declared: “Every gun
that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the
final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and not clothed.” A militarized world “is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of
its children.”
People infatuated with military supremacy should give that some
thought.
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