The Ridiculously Gigantic United States of America
They say actions speak louder than words. Last week, in response to the Hamas invasion of Israel, the United States Navy sent the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Mediterranean where they are effectively war-ready.
What does this mean? What are these military assets? What can they do, and what are they capable of doing, should the need arise?
According to the United States Navy, the USS Gerald R. Ford is a highly advanced aircraft carrier with cutting-edge technology and lethal capabilities. It features an advanced nuclear plant that provides three times the electrical power of previous carriers, enabling enhanced operations and future technological advancements. It has an electromagnetic aircraft launch system that expands the aircraft launch envelope and allows for the integration of manned and unmanned aircraft.
It also has advanced arresting gear for efficient and safe aircraft recovery operations. Overall, the USS Gerald R. Ford is a highly capable platform that ensures the United States maintains superiority at sea.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to the Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic homepage, is a versatile aircraft carrier with a wide range of mission capabilities. It can carry out maritime security operations, expeditionary power projection, crisis response, sea control, deterrence, counter-terrorism, information operations, security cooperation, and counter-proliferation.
While it may not have the same advanced technology as the USS Gerald R. Ford, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower can effectively respond to national security challenges and maintain a strong naval presence. Well, it sure sounds like it's in the right place for that.
The primary purpose of these forces is obviously to establish a deterrent presence and prevent other regional actors from taking advantage of the situation. However, the US military is also prepared to provide more assistance, according to our actions.
The US is expediting the shipment of munitions and interceptors to Israel, special operations forces are assisting Israel with intelligence and planning, and the US is working to expedite weapons orders for Israel's Iron Dome defense system. These two carriers that have been deployed provide various capabilities, including command and control operations, surveillance, fighter jets, and humanitarian assistance. Biden is insisting on Israel providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
The actions by the US Military speak loudly, even if the words coming from the Commander in Chief are barely decipherable. America isn’t messing around. Any attack on Israel is an attack on the most powerful military on Earth. What the United States military has at its disposal is simply astonishing.
Now, it wouldn’t be like me to not mention the relationship between America's military power, and her economic power. America’s military might is only made possible by the enormity of the United States economy.
America's total GDP is $25.4 trillion. By comparison, China’s is currently $17.9 trillion. To put how economically powerful the United States is into perspective, think about it this way; the US economy is larger than the economies of Japan; Germany; India; United Kingdom; France; Russia; Canada; Italy; Brazil; and Australia combined.
A lot of people, including a lot of Americans, will say yeah, but China isn’t too far behind the United States. I suppose that is true, although $7 trillion isn’t a small gap to close. If $7 trillion were its own country, it would be the third-largest economy in the world.
But even still, China has a population of 1.4 billion people generating $17.9 trillion of economic impact. Their GDP per capita is roughly $12,500. America's per capita GDP is $80,400. The difference in the productivity of the two countries is quite dramatic.
Moreover, according to a story in the Washington Post (that is a couple of years old), the predictions have come mostly true...the United States is experiencing a surge in worker productivity due to the embrace of new technologies. As the linked article points out:
Productivity is crucial for economic growth, and the use of tools, robots, and artificial intelligence is enabling workers to produce more with fewer resources. If this trend continues, economists believe it could have a significant and positive impact on the economy for years to come.
And it has.
Another story that has made its way around cable news, and social media, is about how America is running out of munitions. Military Malthusians want us to believe we’ve exhausted our own supply of weapons in service to creating partisan narratives. Turns out the story isn’t true.
Despite sending more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine—both lethal and non-lethal—the U.S. is not “running out” of any particular munitions or equipment needed for its own forces, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante told attendees at a defense conference in Washington, D.C.
“We’re not running out of anything,” LaPlante said in a fireside chat at the inaugural conference of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technology Institute on Aug. 28.
“In the papers, sometimes, it says, ‘we’ve run out of X or Y,’” because of aid to Ukraine, but that’s not true, LaPLante said.
“We’re managing all of that,” he added, describing the process to identify items for Ukraine that are excess to U.S. military needs. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs review the lists of what’s being offered and what’s being requested, “and they look exactly at the effect on readiness” of providing those items, LaPlante said. If they feel there’s a negative effect, or if handing off a certain weapon or quantity of weapons increases risk beyond an acceptable level, “we won’t do it,” he said, although he didn’t cite any examples of equipment withheld.
In 2022, the United States spent $877 billion on its military budget. The idea that we are running out of things is obviously a false narrative in service to some partisan advantage, or an isolationist foreign policy ideology. What it is not, though, is reality. We aren't running out of guns and bullets.
The United States spends more on its military budget than do the countries of Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, Ukraine, Italy, Australia, Canada, and Israel combined. And in fact, our total annual defense budget exceeds all those other countries' budgets combined -- by $240 billion.
As I said, actions speak louder than words. And by America's actions, meaning, by virtue of what we spend annually on our defense, we say America isn't to be screwed with. And that despite those times when the occupant of the White House is indecipherable on what is at stake in the world, and carries a woke stick, better never to question or doubt the military or economic might of America.
America is on top, and this is still the American Century.
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