7.9B - Costs of Being a Superpower
The economic costs of maintaining global military power (naval, nuclear, air power, intelligence services) and space exploration are questioned in some existing powers.
The USA spends 3.3% of its GDP on defence ($596 billion in 2015) (4th largest in terms of budget), i.e. hard power. The UK spends 0.7% of its GDP on development assistance (foreign aid), seeing this as a key part of its soft power.
Faced with rising healthcare and ageing costs, it is easy to question this spending on military power and space exploration.
The USA's government budget for 2016:
- social security - $910 billion
- transport, education, housing - $600 (all in billions)
- medicare (health spending, retired) - $588
- defence - $584 (15%)
- unemployment benefits, veterans and other programmes - $563
- medicade (health spending for those on low income) - $368
- debt interest - $241
This shows that:
- defence takes up a very large slice, about 15% of all spending
- intelligence services alone cost $80 billion annually
- spending by NASA on space exploration totalled $18.5 billion in 2016
- each of the USA's ten planned Gerald R Ford-class aircraft carriers will cost $10.4 billion
- simply to test-fire an unarmed Tomahawk cruise missile costs $1.5 million
The UK, France and USA also spend large sums of money on nuclear missile technology and civilian nuclear power research. Both of these can be questioned.
In order to be a truly global superpower, the USA must spend these sums of money. However, the money could be spend in other ways:
- about 13% of Americans live in poverty (living on less than $12,000 per year)
- about 60,000 road and rail bridged in the USA need to be repaired
- the over 65s in the USA made up 15% of the population in 2016, this will rise to 20% by 2030
In the EU, the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-8 have meant government budget cut-backs, especially to defence. Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Islamic State in the Middle East and China's increasing militarisation have not so far been met with increased EU or US military spending.