There is a joke in modern American politics–the Republicans want a big defence force they don’t want to use anywhere and the Democrats want a small defence force they want to use everywhere. Implicit in the joke is that the Republicans like military spending and the Democrats don’t. Because the right is “strong” on defence and the left is “weak” on defence.
But is that correct? The 1991-92 Gulf War was the first time the US had got into a major war under a Republican Administration since the Spanish-American War of 1898 (it entered the Dynasts’ War, the Dictators’ War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War under Democratic Administrations). So, are the Democrats the warmongers?
Faced with a major external threat, a country (and its government) has three basic options; re-armanent, alliances or appeasement. They are not mutually exclusive, but they do involve different costs. In particular, re-armanent requires significantly increased spending, which means either increased taxes, increased borrowing or cuts in other expenditure or some combination thereof. If significantly increased regressive taxation is problematic–morally, politically and fiscally–then increased taxes will fall on the wealthy. (Estate taxes, for example, were relatively easy to collect and significantly driven by military expenditure [via].) Cutting other expenditure also tends to be politically problematic and is not likely to be sufficient. Borrowing simply defers the “who pays?” issue and, depending on the stance of monetary policy, can be inflationary, with inflation tending to be more problematic for income from capital than income from labour. Depending on exchange rate regime and other factors, increased borrowing and shifting production from civilian to military goods can also involve considerably increased state control over the economy.
So, which side of politics is generally more hostile to increased taxes, borrowing and state interference in the economy, the left or the right? So, which side of politics do we expect, when in office, to be more willing to use alliance and appeasement and which to chose re-armanent in the face of increased external threat?
Britain wins the race — 37 to 19
Based on the above analysis, Harvard political scientist Kevin Narizny has examined the political record of the late C19th and C20th for US, British and French politics and finds that (pdf) (via), with one exception, centre-right governments preferred alliances and appeasement to deal with rising external threats while centre-left governments preferred re-armanent.
So, the notionally anti-militaristic British Liberal Government of 1905-1915 decisively outspent the militaristic Second Reich in the 1907-1914 naval arms race by raising taxes on the wealthy dramatically, provoking a constitutional crisis which led to the power of the House of Lords being greatly reduced and higher taxes. Meanwhile, upper class interests in the semi-democratic Reich were able to largely block tax increases. So the left-of-centre liberal democrats of Britain decisively out-built the overtly militaristic Reich in the dreadnought race. Turning the High Seas Fleet into the most disastrous military investment in history, as it (along with the open-ended aggrandisement of Weltpolitik) guaranteed the UK would be anti-German in any general European conflict but failed to overturn British naval superiority.
Earlier, facing the 1894 Franco-Russian alliance and the generally increased competition from other imperial powers, the then Conservative Government of Britain had gone for alliances (with Japan in 1902 and France in 1904) plus accepting US hegemony over the Americas–the alliances and appeasement response.
With the rise of Nazi Germany and Hitler’s Lebensraum strategy, the French Popular Front government of 1936-8 was far more willing to spend on re-armanent than its centre-right opponents (to the extent that the Defence Minister Daladier rejected the General Staff’s budgetary proposal as inadequate, the Cabinet approving an increase in expenditure on the army 50% larger than the generals had asked for: France’s 1940 defeat was result of incompetent military leadership, not lack of men or materiel). The British Conservatives famously relied on appeasement as their preferred strategy to deal with Hitler, being extremely reluctant to increase defence spending. In the US, it was the Republicans who regularly sought to block defence expenditure increases in the late 1930s and during the 1948-1960 Cold War period.
So, faced with an external threat, centre-right politicians find the increased taxation and borrowing required to fund re-armament politically very unpalatable. Conversely, whatever their rhetoric in opposition, centre-left governments find taxing the rich to pay for increased defence spending much more acceptable. Hence centre-right governments engage in appeasement and build alliances, centre-left governments build up the armed forces.
There is one obvious outlier–Ronald Reagan, who famously increased US defence spending. Though not as much as people think–US defence spending only got to 7% of GDP, which is rather lower share of GDP than it had been during the first decade or so of the Cold War. Reagan also reined in other expenditures and presided over a massive surge in federal deficits. As Narizny points out, this borrowing binge was made acceptable to Republican interests through supply-side economics (increased economic strength through tax cuts and regulatory reform) and that Fed Chair Volcker reined in inflation (so the deficit spending was not inflationary). A case of an outlier which does not contradict the underlying thesis.
More recently, Dubya also financed his wars with low-inflation deficit spending, while Al Gore and John Kerry both campaigned on higher defence spending than Dubya proposed.
So, when it comes to dealing with increased foreign threat, when in office, it is the right who tend to be the alliance-and-appeasement “wimps” and the left who are the enthusiasts for warriors and weapons. Any contrary rhetoric in opposition tends to be trumped by the reality of sectional interest when in office. Or, as Narizny puts it:
In periods of critical military weakness, British, French, and American grand strategy was highly politicized, serving parochial interests as much as national ones. All governments try to find some way to secure their state from foreign threats, but their choice of arms, alliances, or appeasement is profoundly influenced by the material preferences of their domestic coalitions.
