137 / America, will your 'defence' spending bring you down?

In the paper today a report about a visitor from America, who reckons his adopted home country is in economic decline, not least because of its 'defence' spending.

In Paul Sheehan's article about visiting Harvard Business School professor Niall Ferguson's speech at the Centre for Independent Studies - 'Chilling message of America's rapid decline' - Ferguson said the US was on the brink of rapid and historic decline (sorry, I can't give a link, the article doesn't come up in a search on the SMH website.)

He says, "By any meaningful measure, the fiscal position of the USA is currently worse than that of Greece … US defence spending must decline." Hear, hear!

It's probably not far fetched to say we should also reduce our 'defence' spending; we could start with saving those billions earmarked for the joint strike-fighter, air-warfare destroyers and the future submarine project … all deemed by former chief of army Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy worth scaling back, since our armed forces are much more involved in nation building and peace-keeping duties than fighting conventional wars. This thought warms my heart; stop fighting and destroying - start peace-keeping and building. Is this idea too outrageous?

I've blogged before about the issue of America's decline.

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