defense economics

defense economics, field of national economic management concerned with the economic effects of military expenditure, the management of economics in wartime, and the management of peacetime military budgets.

There is no such thing as an inexpensive war. First, there is the human cost in loss of life and in the physical and psychological maiming of healthy people. While the personal cost of such loss is immeasurable, the economic cost to society can be estimated. This measure was first proposed by a French economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, in 1803. He asserted the principle that war costs more than its direct expenses, for it also costs what its casualties (military and civilian) would have earned throughout their lifetimes if they had never participated in war.

Second, war has economic costs arising from the destruction of buildings, productive farmlands and forests, public services such as waterworks, electricity-generating and distribution systems, roads, bridges, harbours, and airfields, and all manner of personal and corporate property such as homes, possessions, factories, machinery, vehicles, and aircraft. War, therefore, destroys physical capital that has been created by previous economic activity.

Reconstruction after war is a particular economic burden because the finance, imported capital goods, and labour used in reconstruction merely restore the losses a country has sustained, rather than adding to the stock of capital available to its economy. Thus, even if it manages to restore all its physical losses, it uses scarce resources that would otherwise have been available for extending and improving economic activity. As most wars since 1945 have occurred in the Third World, some of the world’s poorest countries have suffered the most from the economic losses of war.

War also costs a great deal in goods and services to create the weapons of war and to supply the people engaged in the war effort. The diversion of these goods and services—which range from the metals and chemicals transformed into weapons to the food, clothing, and shelter for the armed forces—reduces current civilian consumption, which lowers the population’s living standards. Metal used to make a tank cannot be used to build bridges, fuel used to transport military supplies cannot be used on school buses, cement used to construct ammunition dumps cannot be used in house construction. This constitutes the opportunity cost of war—that is, the extent to which the economy foregoes the opportunity to commit these resources to alternative peaceful uses.

The opportunity cost of war is also felt in the future. In addition to allocating resources to consumption (the satisfaction of current needs), an economy allocates resources to investment (the new factories and machinery that produce tomorrow’s goods and services). Resources diverted to war cannot be used to create new productive capacity for future consumption, and this reduces the living standards of the population below what they otherwise would have been in the future.

In summary, the total costs of war include the cost of the foregone use of the economic resources used up in the conflict. These include the cost of the foregone lifetime earnings of those killed in the war, the cost of lifetime medical care for those permanently incapacitated by the war, the cost of replacing the physical capital destroyed or damaged by the war, the cost of supplying the armed forces with the weapons of war, the cost of sustaining the armed forces and those in support functions (including their pay and pensions), and the losses to the economy caused by the diversion of resources from peaceful investment in future economic capacity.

As war is expensive, countries aim to avoid its costs and remain independent within sovereign borders. In the absence of a universally binding and verifiable agreement to abolish war, the best option is to deter those countries prone, by their history or by the policies of their governments, to resolve disputes by resorting to war. Deterrence has two aspects. First, by allocating resources for a minimum level of military capability, a nation ensures that it can resist an attack by a potential aggressor and severely damage the aggressor’s economy and territory. In this way the costs to the aggressor of initiating a war will far exceed any likely gains. Second, by making credible its willingness to use military force, should it prove necessary to do so, the nation aims to leave potential aggressors in no doubt of the consequences they will suffer if they are tempted to launch an attack.

Deterrence, while expensive, is incomparably less expensive than war. The study of its expense constitutes the subject matter of defense economics.

Adam Smith, the founder of economics as a discipline in the social sciences, was the first economist to theorize about the economics of war. In his major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith considered a perennial problem of defense management, namely, the increasing expense of war-fighting equipment. He noted that changing technology raised the costs of war—for example, that the musket was a more expensive item to acquire than its predecessor, the javelin. (In the same way, a modern jet fighter is much more expensive than its propeller-driven predecessor.)

The rising cost of weapon technology does not mean that defense costs (d) necessarily rise as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP; the sum of all expenditures made in one year). The d/GDP ratio is a measure of the military burden, and evidence suggests that this burden has not risen through time (in high-income economies it has been falling for most of the post-World War II decades). Although the unit costs of specific weapons rise as technology adds to their capabilities, high-cost solutions to one form of a military threat (for example, the use of expensive tanks to defend against a massed tank attack) usually become vulnerable to low-cost alternatives (such as the relatively cheap antitank missile and precision-guided munitions), which either alter the nature of the threat or make redundant the high-cost solution.

In a developed economy, the annual costs of defense procurement and logistics typically take up more than half of the defense budget, the rest being spent on personnel. In the underdeveloped economies, the balance is reversed: most of the annual costs (70–90 percent) are spent on personnel, with the remainder spent on procurement and logistics. This difference reflects the gap in available war-fighting technology between the developed and the underdeveloped worlds. The bulk of the world’s defense spending is accounted for by the high-income economies (the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union), primarily because of the cost of high-technology weapon systems. Yet most wars are fought in low-income countries between relatively poorly equipped armed forces. Moreover, the inability of low-income countries to maintain sophisticated weapons to the operational standards of their manufacturers fully explains the many logistical problems the armed forces of poor countries have faced in their wars. Importing sophisticated weapon systems does not guarantee a sophisticated defense capability if the support system (fuel, spares, ammunition, repairs, and overhaul procedures) is either less than satisfactory or less than adequately funded. Defense capability is inseparably linked to the cost of maintenance.

Defense is a public good; that is, once deterrence is achieved, all citizens benefit from the avoidance of war and no citizen can be excluded from enjoying the benefits. People who could not be excluded from a public benefit would, if given the choice, rationally choose not to contribute toward its cost. In other words, they could “free ride” on the contributions of others. For this reason, defense in all countries is paid for by taxation, a burden that is borne by all citizens, and in all countries the military force considered necessary for deterrence is under the direct and exclusive control of the government.