{"id":65811,"date":"2003-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/12\/04\/le-budget-du-pentagone-cest-une-question-de-point-de-vue\/"},"modified":"2003-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-12-04T00:00:00","slug":"le-budget-du-pentagone-cest-une-question-de-point-de-vue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/12\/04\/le-budget-du-pentagone-cest-une-question-de-point-de-vue\/","title":{"rendered":"Le budget du Pentagone, c’est une question de point de vue<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Le budget du Pentagone, c’est une question de point de vue<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t4 d\u00e9cembre 2003 Le jugement quasi-unanime devant le budget du DoD (d\u00e9partement de la d\u00e9fense) de $401 milliards pour 2004, c’est celui de se trouver devant un effort budg\u00e9taire sans pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent qui doit renforcer de fa\u00e7on exponentielle la puissance et l’expansion des forces arm\u00e9es am\u00e9ricaines. Il y a des applaudissements et il y a des protestations devant le budget du DoD, tous s’accordant dans tous les cas sur le volume extraordinaire de ce budget.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tUne r\u00e9action caract\u00e9ristique \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard est l’\u00e9ditorial du Guardian du 26 novembre<\/a>, intitul\u00e9 de fa\u00e7on significative : \u00ab Scary and scandalous<\/em> \u00bb. Il semble au r\u00e9dacteur de ce texte qu’il s’agisse d’un \u00e9norme budget, mena\u00e7ant et scandaleusement tourn\u00e9 vers la prolif\u00e9ration de nouveaux syst\u00e8mes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab The US administration’s defence authorisation bill for fiscal year 2004 was signed into law by George Bush this week. In all, it totals $401.3bn. Amazingly, this figure does not include one-off appropriations for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan of approximately $150bn. Overall US defence expenditure under Mr Bush is at record levels. It is higher, in relative terms, than equivalent, average American spending during the cold war years when a hostile Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact confronted the US and its allies with thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on land, at sea and in the air, as well as chemical and biological weapons and vast conventional forces. Yet Mr Bush suggested that terrorism now represented the most potent threat in the history of the US. "The war on terror is different than (sic) any war America has ever fought," he said. "This threat to civilisation will be defeated. We will do whatever it takes." So much for the peace dividend.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t(…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb Whatever the actual, unexaggerated threat level may be, some elements of the defence bill are really scary, too – or just plain scandalous. They include exemptions for the military from provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Apparently unpatriotic dolphins and various pacifist fish have been thoughtlessly obstructing training exercises. The bill gives $9.1bn for the further development of Mr Bush’s "Star Wars" global ballistic missile defence wheeze. And it authorises spending on research into a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons, so-called "mini-nukes" and "bunker-busters" that, if built, will make nuclear warfare both more doable and more likely. This project breaches the spirit if not the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which, in a developing world context, the US righteously and noisily insists upon. It is itself a potentially egregious act of proliferation. Japan, the world’s only nuclear victim so far, protested yesterday that the future US deployment of such weapons is "something which cannot be allowed". Yes, but can it be stopped?<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tLa r\u00e9alit\u00e9 militaire, comptable, bureaucratique, au Pentagone et dans les agences qui lui sont li\u00e9es d’une fa\u00e7on ou d’une autre, est incroyablement diff\u00e9rente, elle est m\u00eame le contraire de ce qu’on en croit. La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 comptable est que ces $401 milliards repr\u00e9sentent un budget de mis\u00e8re, rogn\u00e9 partout, notablement insuffisant pour simplement maintenir en \u00e9tat de marche la machine militaire am\u00e9ricaine au niveau o\u00f9 elle se trouve aujourd’hui. Une analyse de Air Force Magazine (AFA), dans ses \u00e9ditions de d\u00e9cembre 2003<\/a>, nous le dit tr\u00e8s pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, et en s’appuyant non pas sur une rh\u00e9torique de propagande mais sur les calculs du tr\u00e8s s\u00e9rieux Congressional Budget Office (CBO).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t(Il est important qu’il s’agisse de chiffres du CBO, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral peu favorable au Pentagone. On ne peut soup\u00e7onner de voir l\u00e0 l’habituelle rh\u00e9torique de AFA, organisme de lobbying de l’U.S. Air Force.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEn chiffres bruts, le budget du Pentagone n\u00e9cessiterait imm\u00e9diatement 20% d’augmentation pour simplement faire face \u00e0 tous les co\u00fbts internes de la machine de guerre US, sans prendre en compte les d\u00e9penses de guerre en Afghanistan et en Irak. C’est-\u00e0-dire qu’\u00e0 $480 milliards, le budget du DoD atteindrait un niveau \u00e0 peine raisonnable. Qu’\u00e9crirait alors l’\u00e9ditorialiste du Guardian<\/em> ?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tExtraits de Air Force Magazine<\/em> :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab Defense budgets are going to have to get about 20 percent bigger just to keep the US military from shrinking, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Half of that increase is needed to cover recently enacted hikes in pay and benefits, while the other half is needed to replace equipment which is getting too old.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The level of spending that is required just to maintain the status quo is 20 percent higher than current fundingexcluding the costs of contingencies such as Afghanistan and Iraqand 10 percent higher than the peak of military spending during the so-called Reagan buildup of the 1980s, according to CBO director Douglas Holtz Eakin.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb In October testimony before the House Budget Committee, HoltzEakin said the Pentagon needs some $44 billion more budget authority each year to cover substantial increases in future purchases of equipment and weapons to fill the gap created by the procurement holiday’ of the 1990s, as well as to invest in new systems and technologies.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb If the money is provided, the Pentagon will eventually be able to halt or reverse adverse aging trends associated with much of its current equipment.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tDans le monde non-am\u00e9ricain et non-pentagonesque, les admirateurs \u00e9perdus (type experts europ\u00e9ens de l’OTAN) autant que les d\u00e9nonciateurs de l’effort budg\u00e9taire am\u00e9ricain de d\u00e9fense se r\u00e9concilient sur une chose : une totale incompr\u00e9hension de la signification de ce budget. Ils n’ont pas compris que la hauteur du budget du DoD n’et pas un signe de la puissance US mais un signe de la crise US. Le budget du DoD alimente la plus formidable montagne bureaucratique de g\u00e2chis et de gaspillage, la plus extraordinaire incapacit\u00e9 de gestion de l’\u00e9poque moderne. Ils n’ont pas compris que lorsqu’un seul bombardier (le B-2) co\u00fbte au contribuable $2 milliards officiellement (entre $4 et $6 milliards officieusement), ce n’est pas une marque de puissance mais une marque d’une si compl\u00e8te absence de capacit\u00e9 de gestion qu’elle conduit \u00e0 l’impuissance. Cette impuissance se refl\u00e8te \u00e9videmment au niveau op\u00e9rationnel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOn ajoutera que, pour \u00eatre vraiment s\u00e9rieux, c’est-\u00e0-dire envisager des forces arm\u00e9es US capables de mener autre chose que les seules op\u00e9rations en cours en Afghanistan et en Irak, et conduire des initiatives nouvelles, il faudrait envisager entre $550 et $600 milliards par an. C’est la th\u00e8se des 4% et plus du PNB consacr\u00e9s aux d\u00e9penses militaires<\/a>. C’est une th\u00e8se comptable qui ne peut \u00eatre contest\u00e9e. Dans la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, ce serait n\u00e9cessairement autre chose : l’afflux massif d’argent ne ferait qu’accro\u00eetre la tendance au g\u00e2chis et au gaspillage, c’est-\u00e0-dire vers l’impuissance. Disant cela, on ne fait que mesurer la profondeur de la crise bureaucratique US, d’ailleurs d\u00e9nonc\u00e9e par Rumsfeld dans son discours fameux du 10 septembre 2001,<\/a> la veille du lendemain…<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le budget du Pentagone, c’est une question de point de vue 4 d\u00e9cembre 2003 Le jugement quasi-unanime devant le budget du DoD (d\u00e9partement de la d\u00e9fense) de $401 milliards pour 2004, c’est celui de se trouver devant un effort budg\u00e9taire sans pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent qui doit renforcer de fa\u00e7on exponentielle la puissance et l’expansion des forces arm\u00e9es… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}