what is the military price of oil use, $500B or $0

The reason to use taxes to pay for the military cost of protection of oil and other resources is the only way to get it into the heads of ignorant and stupid Americans that efficiency isn't about denying their freedom.

 

The military is not just about protecting oil resources. There are a lot of other bad things to protect against and to deter. Plus, a good oilquestion might be what's the cost of foreign oil vs thecosts of domestic production. Figure in all the drops in oil use from all reasons you wish, but we'll need oil for a very long time indeed.

 

This argument is a mish-mash of military use to protect resource interests, and military use to play strategy games with competing countries. While there is some overlap in the motivations, they are far from being the same.

Bryz makes it quite clear he was pursuing the cold war with the USSR, as did Reagan. Since the gulf really only has value as an oil lane, it seems to me more than fair to view its protection as an oil use cost. Same with the Saudi Arabian peninsula.

Wars over natural resources have been going on a *long* time; oil is just a current and pernicious one.

 

This is one of the really troublesome aspects how our country is organized. If I look at it from every different angle, the result is that one person (The President of the USA) has been given TOTAL authority to initiate whatever action/war/police action he (or she) so desires. Likewise, it takes the TOTAL initiative of the CinC to end wars and end big overseas mobilizations.

 

The actual cost of protecting the Middle East in the over 30 years so far, is in the neighborhood of $4 Trillion, add the Iraq and Afghanistan war, and the cost of the Middle East so far will be in the $8 Trillion range. Most of that expense was playing king of the hill and protecting oil company and wealthy Middle East kingdoms and corporation property.

 

"The Congress shall have Power To ....To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;" -- U.S. Constitution



The President has NO authority to declare war. (Doesn't mean he doesn't do it anyway, of course)

 

It's pretty clear that the western world mostly ignored the Mideast until oil became a valuable asset. I suspect we would still be ignoring them if not for oil.

Tom

 

It was only the first Gulf War that was funded by other countries, if you look at the amount of money from the US that was given to the so called group of nations in Iraq, in the current so called Operation Freedom, it was mostly a US paid war, with the US carrying by far, almost the full amount. The total additional cost of Iraq and Afghanistan in the current wars will be very close, if not over, to $4 Trillion, which is not even close to the $50 Billion stated at the start.

And here is a study that states it has cost $7 Trillion+ so far protecting the oil:
http://content.usatoday.com/communi...illion-over-last-three-decades/1#.T7qun9TlJ8E

 

Remember that the President, and only the President has the "codes" to use nuclear weapons. Certainly something that seems to be at odds with the Constitution given that using nuclear weapons on any country would be hard to classify as something other than war.....and I know of no congressional involvement in that chain.

Or to restate it differently, I sure wish Congress would take their Constitutional responsibilities much more seriously.

 

peace div? (sp) Such a powerful ending of your orig post, perhaps we should correct for posterity.

I tend to agree with you. We have confused the public by saying nothing can be taken at face value, until we add all the hidden costs to society. But more often than not, the exercise of adding hidden costs has become a game of political football. In most cases we do not need to add hidden costs, unless we are trying to mislead people.

 

Well the problem in a nutshell is that the current conservative belief, is that we need to spend more money on the military, even Romney wants to spend an additional $2+ Trillion over the current budgets over 10 years. When is enough, enough?

 

And what are we defending against with the US military? Not Russia. Not China. It's all oil war, fighting them or preparing to fight them. It's what has created the $14T in debt over the last 30 years while SS and Medicare ran $4T surpluses.

US yearly military spending is $1.4T per the US Budget 2012. 2012 does not look to be much less. This has been true for last 20 years of the constant Middle East wars.

All the spending comes back to being able to field a 200,000 combat troops occupation army in the Middle East.

 

Nope


Medicare Cost and Non-Interest Income by Source as a Percentage of GDP

Entitlement Reform For the Entitled - NYTimes.com

The long-run actuarial deficits of the Social Security and Medicare programs worsened in 2012: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html

 

Thanks for proving my point. Remember that from 1990 to 2006 the war appropriations were done as "supplementals" to try and hide the cost. This was ended in 1990 which is why you see the jump.

As you see from the SS graph, it will be in surplus to 2050 but the real issue is that it has run a huge surplus since the 1980 SS tax increases. So much so that it "loaned" the US goverment over $4T so that SS and Medicare Combined did not contribute anything to US deficits or debt while the $1T+ oil wars were the main cause of debt. Military bankrupting economies is as old as Rome, Athens, Moscow and Washington.

In US case, the $1.4T a year raises a question of what is the threat? US should do zero based budgeting on military. Russia, China? No threat there especially with "front line" nations, Europe on the West and Japan, Korea and Taiwan in the East spending as much as Russia and China respectively.

That leaves...ta da...the oil wars as the sole justification for US military spending.

Another interesting aspect is note the decline in defense spending from 1992-2000 when the US ran budget surpluses and US/Debt GDP declined for the first time since 1980. Cementing the link between US military spending and US deficit/debt of the last 30 years.