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From’s Doug Bandow’s commentary in Forbes on what is absolutely needed to get federal spending under control, which won’t happen unless we cut military spending.

The best reason to make true across-the-board cuts is substantive, not political. Military spending is far too high.

Pentagon outlays have increased dramatically since 9/11. My colleagues Chris Preble and Ben Friedman reported that from 1999 to 2010, when post-World War II military outlays peaked, real military spending jumped 77 percent. The “base budget,” not counting war funding, rose 42 percent in real terms. The 2013 budget proposal is the first year the administration actually has proposed reducing base military outlays. Noted a recent Commonwealth Institute study: “despite the fiscal challenges facing America, there has not been a significant decline in the Pentagon’s base budget. And this has added to the difficulty of achieving debt and deficit reduction.”

The U.S. spends far more than it needs on the military. America accounts for roughly half of the globe’s military outlays. In real terms, the U.S. spends more today than during the Cold War, Korean War, or Vietnam War. Toss in America’s allies and friends, and the total is 70 to 80 percent of world military expenditures.

Moreover, the countries that Washington has been defending for decades are capable of defending themselves. Europe has a larger GDP and population than America; it enjoys a ten-to-one economic advantage and three-to-one population advantage over Russia. The continent should be responsible for its own security.

South Korea has roughly a 40-to-one economic edge over North Korea. Japan until recently had the second largest economy on earth. The U.S. should stop acting as the perpetual guardian of prosperous, populous countries which prefer to spend their money on the good life.

Nation-building, too, has proved to be a fool’s errand. In Iraq the Bush administration invaded another country based on false intelligence, sparked a civil conflict which killed a couple hundred thousand people, and left a wrecked society sliding toward intolerant authoritarianism. A decade of combat in Afghanistan has not created Western-style liberal democracy in Central Asia. Washington has no good reason to commit the lives and wealth to additional efforts at social engineering abroad.

Finally, a bigger military has virtually nothing to do with battling terrorism, America’s chief security threat. The invasion of Iraq and decade-long nation-building mission in Afghanistan fueled rather than defeated terrorism. What worked against terrorism were intelligence work, Special Forces operations, international cooperation, and attacks on terrorist funding.

Read the full article here.