Sell the armed forces and do something constructive with the money

// June 11th, 2010 // Other news, World Peace

“I say cut defence. I dont mean nibble at it or slice it. I mean cut it, all £45bn of it. George Osborne yesterday asked the nation “for once in a generation” to think the unthinkable, to offer not just percentage cuts but “whether government needs to provide certain public services at all”.What do we really get from the army, the navy and the air force beyond soldiers dying in distant wars and a tingle when the band marches by? Is the tingle worth £45bn, more than the total spent on schools? Why does Osborne “ringfence” defence when everyone knows its budget is a bankruptcy waiting to happen, when Labour ministers bought the wrong kit for wars that they insisted it fight?”
- Simon Jenkins, of The Guardian, brought to my attention by the easy-care and dry-cleanable Lloyd Shepherd of I’ve Said Too Much.
I know this is a brilliant idea because I had it too.
As far as I know, the only nation to give something like this a try was New Zealand, which back in 2000 decided to bail on upgrading the ageing combat aircraft in its airforce.
It’s been ten years now, and New Zealand hasn’t been invaded by anyone, unless we’re counting international tourists.
New Zealand still retains a small navy and an army that Wikipedia says has 4,500 full-time soldiers. Really, subtract the logistics and management overhead from that 4,500 and you’d be lucky if you could beat back a well-drilled rugby scrum much less an invading islamic fundamentalist horde prepared to sacrifice themselves to secure permanent access to high-quality merino wool, organic cold-climate produce and pristine glacial wilderness.
Instead of showing Johnny Hun a lesson and digging in against Kruschev’s tank regiments, Australia’s armed forces now deliver three apparently crucial needs, so crucial that we must spend more on them than we do on schools or hospitals.
Our Navy provides incredibly expensive and over-equipped border security against the terrifying threat of a few thousand Afghani and Sri Lankan refugees each year, starving in rags on leaky wooden Indonesian fishing boats. They don’t stop them, mind, so much as direct them to the closest refugee processing facility. Like Israel’s anti-peace flotilla, minus the regrettable fatalities.
Like most UN nations, our Airforce stands ready to deliver precisely enough Hercules-loads of urgent food and medical aid to service runway-located  television crews. From there, they are delivered to their ultimate destination: overseas correspondents, who desperately need good background to accompany their grim voice-over work as they drone on about how little aid has so far arrived to address the growing humanitarian crisis now enveloping the isolated, mountainous Werthefuk Province of Collapsedistan.
Meanwhile, on the ground, our Army provides an essential support role to US armed forces wherever religions other than Christianity and Judaism seek to overthrow the carefully greenhoused economies of the third world. We provide training and other human resource functions to newly-undisbanded Henchmeni militias, thereby improving the non-combatant collateral damage and informal-taxation-levying capacity necessary to return their nations to approximately the same state they were in before the international peace-keeping mission invaded was invited to assist.
If Australia disbanded its armed forces, could the West Australian Very Large Hole industry use a few poorly-socialised, strong young lads not fussy about the quality of their sleeping quarters and the industrial safety standards of the workplace? Yes. Would we all be competing for our knowledge industry, service and tourism jobs in the rest of the economy with Afghani and Sri Lankan arrivals with ten times the formal qualifications, none of the English-language communication skills and no idea how to knot a tie properly? Almost certainly.
Bring it on.
Australia and those other island nations, UN member nations and nations with significant natural resources or international economic significance should just retire the whole lot. Collapsedistan will offer us a great price. We can then invest the money in something that might provide a return other than full coffins and empty hearts.