Military Spending

Military spending fell last year in the United States and across western and central Europe, but surged in Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, according to new figures released by a research group based in Sweden. The changes “may be the beginning of a shift in the balance of world military spending from the rich Western countries to emerging nations,” Sam Perlo-Freeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a statement announcing the report Monday.

Military spending fell last year in the United States and across western and central Europe, but surged in Russia, China, the Middle East and North Africa, according to new figures released by a research group based in Sweden. The changes “may be the beginning of a shift in the balance of world military spending from the rich Western countries to emerging nations,” Sam Perlo-Freeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a statement announcing the report Monday.

Now that the Evil Empire is gone, I hope our military complex does not create another one to justify its insatiable budget appetite! Give us time to breath! REMO P. CRUZ, Glendale

Mitt Romney may have won the first presidential debate, but what stuck in many people's minds was his threat to fire Big Bird. Apparently, Romney thinks America's debt problem can be fixed by picking up pennies along Sesame Street. Pressed to explain how he would balance the federal budget while cutting trillions of dollars in taxes, the allegedly masterful debater offered up just two specifics: He would repeal “Obamacare” (even though the Congressional Budget Office says the healthcare act actually reduces deficit spending)

Mitt Romney may have won the first presidential debate, but what stuck in many people's minds was his threat to fire Big Bird. Apparently, Romney thinks America's debt problem can be fixed by picking up pennies along Sesame Street. Pressed to explain how he would balance the federal budget while cutting trillions of dollars in taxes, the allegedly masterful debater offered up just two specifics: He would repeal “Obamacare” (even though the Congressional Budget Office says the healthcare act actually reduces deficit spending)

An eight-year run of rapidly escalating defense costs appears to be coming to an end. The base defense budget is to grow 4%, to $533.7 billion from $513 billion. A separate war-funding bill for Afghanistan and Iraq will ask for $130 billion for next year, down about 8% from the $141.4 billion projected for this year. (About $66 billion of the current year's war costs have been approved by Congress; the administration said Thursday that an additional $75.5 billion would be needed.

Seeking to whip up public support for what's expected to be a hard-fought budget battle in Congress, a group of defense contractors launched a lobbying campaign urging an end to cuts in military spending. The campaign, named Second to None, was introduced by the Aerospace Industries Assn. trade group Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington. The group, which represents manufacturers and suppliers of aircraft, space systems and engines, warned of potential job losses and national security risks.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Saturday that he wanted to sharply cut the military bureaucracy and rein in expenditures on armed forces healthcare and departmental overhead as part of an effort to tame runaway Pentagon spending. Speaking at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library here, Gates presented a roadmap for what might be his last months in office and his final major Pentagon reform push. Gates said his priority was to flatten a hierarchical military command structure and eliminate military offices and agencies that have little direct role in fighting the nation's wars.

What a pleasure it was to find Willens' great piece on the military-industrial complex vis-a-vis Eisenhower's warning. How trusting and amenable we have been as the dismantling of the United States has been proceeding! "National security" indeed! One is reminded of the nursery tale about Foxy Loxy who trapped the barnyard creatures with his warning that the sky was falling down. What a similarity! At least Willens and others of his view have never been tricked or fooled.

Re "America's 'Pacific pivot' craze," Opinion, July 2 Max Boot calls the Obama administration's proposed military budget cuts "draconian. " Surely he is aware of the concept of the "defense" budget. I emphasize the word due to the fact that, believe it or not, there are some who think the function of theU.S. militaryhas far exceeded its stated purpose (the defense of our country) and is now more about "offense. " Example: The United States has less than 5% of the world's population, but its annual "defense" budget is about 40% of the world's total military spending.

Re "Don't trim military, Romney warns," May 29 The observation that neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney served in the military during the Vietnam War is unfair to Romney. Romney, who said in the 2008 campaign that he wished he had spent some time in the military, had legitimate excuses for not serving his country. As The Times pointed out, he was excused to attend college at Stanford and Brigham Young University and to spend 21/2 difficult years in France attempting to convert Christians to the Mormon religion.

With proposed federal budget cuts threatening military contracts and employment in Southern California's aerospace industry, about 2,000 Northrop Grumman Corp. workers were urged by a powerful congressional supporter to fight to save industry jobs. "I implore you, no, I beg you, to stop this from happening," Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) exhorted workers Monday morning during a rousing speech at Northrop's sprawling manufacturing plant in Palmdale, where it built the B-2 stealth bomber.

NEW DELHI - Sailor-suited Russian models touted their nation's submarines. Indian officers posed for pictures atop foreign-made armor-plated vehicles. And working the room at New Delhi's aging exhibition center were French, British and American arms merchants from global defense giants, elbowing each other aside in the search for a deal at Defexpo India 2012, the country's biggest-ever weapons trade show. Fueled by superpower ambitions and rivalry with China but hampered by a creaky domestic defense industry, India is on a military buying spree that's made it the belle-of-the-global-military ball.

It wasn't exactly a campaign-changing moment, when a presidential candidacy is altered by a seemingly spontaneous show of emotion, but Mitt Romney got a chance Saturday to show his personal side on national TV when he was confronted by the weeping father of an Afghanistan war veteran. The exchange, on Mike Huckabee's Fox News candidate forum, was a priceless opportunity for Romney, whose perceived lack of authenticity as a candidate has perhaps been his biggest shortcoming in two presidential runs.

Showing confidence in his rising poll numbers here in Florida, Mitt Romney hammered President Obama for proposing military spending cuts to address the spiraling budget deficit. Campaigning near the Naval Air Station Pensacola in a state with one of the highest concentrations of veterans in the country, Romney got a hand from his onetime foe Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former navy pilot who was awarded his wings in Pensacola and joked to the crowd that he did his “best to help the economy here” - devoting his entire paycheck “to cultural institutions here.” McCain struck a more serious tone when he criticized the recent budget blueprint released by the Defense Department, which would slash projected military spending by nearly half a trillion dollars.

The Pentagon released a budget blueprint Thursday that cuts projected military spending by nearly half a trillion dollars, yet still calls for increasing the base defense budget in all but one of the next five years. The proposal meets both goals because spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is dropping sharply, allowing the base budget - the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships and tanks - to increase modestly, even while complying with last year's bipartisan deal in Congress to reduce the deficit.

As he unveiled his administration's new blueprint for U.S. defense strategy last week, President Obama sought to vaccinate himself against charges that he was gutting the nation's military. Even after the strategy is fully implemented, he said, "the defense budget will still be larger than it was at the end of the Bush administration. " So it seemed a little odd when, an hour later, the second-ranking official in Obama's Pentagon presented what sounded like a rebuttal. "You have, over the next four years, a reduction in total defense spending as rapid as any we experienced after Vietnam or after the Cold War," Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.