Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
The United States
is First in War, But Trailing in Crucial Aspects of Modern Civilization
Lawrence
Wittner
December
29, 2018
Z
Magazine
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 over 2 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 over a third of the world’s military expenditures―more than the
next 7 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.
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.
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, over 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.
Lawrence Wittner (http://www.lawrenceswittner.com) is
Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting
the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
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Source URL: https://portside.org/2018-12-30/united-states-first-war-trailing-crucial-aspects-modern-civilization
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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