12. The Unproductive Protective State: The U.S. Defense Sector as a Fiscal Commons

The use of the terms “national defense” and “military spending” may seem redundant here. However, as we intend to show, these terms are not synonymous, though they are often used as such. In fact, a great deal of military spending has no relation to the defense of the nation.

As Ostrom (1990, p. 30) defines it, a “common-pool resource refers to a natural or man-made resource system that is sufficiently large as to make it costly (but not impossible) to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use.”

Weingast et al. (1981) note that “[s]ince political representation is geographic, legislators care about who gains and who loses in proportion to their geographic locations” (648) creating a system where “locally targeted expenditures are counted by the local constituency as benefits…[and] the districting mechanism in conjunction with the taxation system provides incentives to increase project size beyond the efficient point by attenuating the relationship between beneficiaries and revenue sources” (658). Brubaker (1997, pp. 360–361) furthers this point noting that when it comes to overgrazing, “[a]lthough the hostile reactions of voters temper this incentive somewhat, the representatives’ discretion in allocating from the common fund provides them with a source of power, influence, and a potentially decisive advantage in retaining their offices. They tax opponents and reward supporters, all in the name of public purposes.”

The term requirement is no longer the official language of the budgeting process. “Capability” and “requirement” are interchangeable terms that bridge the official language time gap.

The lobbyist operates as a complex marketer, attempting to place the unfunded capability in front of the most likely source of backing. This source may be a direct Congressional contact or a military contact who has the power or reputation to gain Congressional support. In these attempts, it should be noted that convincing either Congress or the military to accept a program may also include lobbying for a change in policy in order to gain support for the program. So, in essence, the lobbyist is an active participant in both budgeting and policy formation (Kambrod 2007, p. 56; Duncan and Coyne 2015a).

The difficulty in optimal defense spending determination is further established by the unique nature of the defense market, where “the federal government comprises the entire, or nearly the entire, consumptive portion of the defense market” (Duncan and Coyne (2015a, pp. 396–397) and, as such, “there is no guarantee that market operation will reveal the technological information the monopsonist needs in order to buy rationally, even if such information exists” (Adams and Adams 1972, p. 281).

Melman (1985, p. 35) defines competence as “the readiness and ability of the particular firm to satisfy the Pentagon’s requirements in the judgment of its top management. It means its ability to collaborate with the Pentagon-level administrators to turn out the sort of product that the Pentagon wants with regard to details of product designing, testing, producing and servicing” (See also Duncan and Coyne 2013b, p. 426).