Tyler Sullivan

Persuasive Essay
Cutting Defense Spending
One of many ongoing issues in todays political scene is the discussion of whether or not
to cut defense spending, and the potential repercussions that come along with each possible
decision. There valid reasons to support either side, however I feel that in general it would
prove to have more of a negative effect on our nation if we decide to cut spending, and it
would be better to balance the budget by focusing on other areas to reduce spending on.
Reasons for avoiding cutting defense spending vary from job stability for many Americans, to
losing political strength overseas. Negative effects would be felt by both the nation as a whole
and many individual households.
One argument against the cutting of defense spending is the effect it would have on job
security and unemployment in America. Recent drastic cuts to the defense spending have
caused a great deal of negative repercussions throughout daily life in America, while doing
nearly nothing to help balance the budget or reduce the deficit. The government decided to
make drastic cuts to the defense budget in order to balance the budget for the current fiscal
year. By doing so, the DoD was forced to take dramatic actions and lay off a high percentage of
employees temporarily. By doing so, many families were greatly impacted by losing a significant
amount of their yearly salary. Thankfully government set up a plan that allowed for a
percentage of employees salaries to be returned, however this money could have just been
paid to them normally while avoiding this entire conflict. Another repercussion that came from
this decision was future job security and employment options. Government jobs have famously
been noted as some of the most secure jobs in the country, and although paying less than the
private industries this fact have caused many people to prefer those types of jobs. However
with the recent decisions of the government people no longer have this same type of faith in
the security of a government job. This is creating a less abundant incoming working force and
moving interest to private industries, also weakening the strength of this area of the
government overall. Because of a rash decision to cut the defensive spending of our nation,
they successfully weakened the strength of this section without helping the intended cause of
reducing overall spending.
Decreasing defense spending would also have a tremendous impact on foreign affairs
and the security of our country. One of the many arguments people use when they campaign
for the reduction of defense spending is that the United States spends a great deal more than
any other country in this specific area. However there is also a reason why we havent fought a
war on our own soil since the civil war ended. Yes we spend more than anyone else, but that is
what is necessary in order to maintain a political power and protect ourselves from any wars
being fought on our own soil and also help to protect our allies in what many people feel is an
inevitable World War III. If we were to step down as the political power that we currently are
then there would be unknown repercussions throughout the world, potentially endangering an
extreme amount of both our own and allied civilian lives. Many people feel that the United
States being a military powerhouse causes more wars and poses a bigger issue overall. However
many political figures have shown that decreasing the power of the United States could cause
war to become more frequent and also more devastating. In short, cutting the defense budget
could put our country and the lives of innocent civilians at risk. What good would it be to have
more money for social security and Medicare if there is no longer a country to fight for?
Those in support of cutting defense spending argue that we spend an extreme amount
in this area when compared to other nations. However another argument against this idea is
the fact that the Treaty of the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has been signed by most
UN members, however major nations such as Iran and North Korea have signed taken part in
the treaty. These nations harbor tremendous ill feelings towards the US and remain a constant
threat to national security. With nations such as these continuing to develop military forces and
furthering their nuclear programs, we cannot afford to reduce our spending and allow these
nations to gain an advantage over us in this area. By cutting our defense spending, we would
reduce funding to those areas designed to protect our nation from attacks such as these. This is
an extremely important point to take into account when considering reducing the funding to
these defense programs as it could leave our nation exposed to a nuclear threat from terrorist
groups or non-allied countries. Other areas of defense that could potentially be affected would
be the research areas for future weapons technology. A major advantage the United States had
over rival nations is the advancement in technology. By reducing spending in this area our
nations military technology could fall further behind and again put our security at risk.
By reducing military spending we would put our countries security at great risk. We also
weaken our countries economy by reducing the Department of Defense jobs available and
negatively impacting job security in the governmental area. Past attempts to cut spending have
proved to be fruitless and had an overall negative impact on the nations economy. The cuts did
not help the budget problems and hurt many government workers personally by taking salary
incomes from individual families. Another negative effect that would come from the reduction
of the defense budget is increased activity with foreign affairs. By reducing the power of the
United States military there would no longer be a powerful allied force to reduce the uprising of
nations and prevent large scale war from spreading throughout the world. The United States is
able to prevent rival nations from starting war by interfering before a true risk can be detected.
Without this powerful interference more nations may begin to rebel and a possibility of a future
World War III would increase dramatically. Reducing defense spending could also be
detrimental to our nations security, especially to nuclear threat from nations such as North
Korea and Iran. By evaluating these potential risks one can see that cutting the defense budget
would have a greater negative impact on our nation than the positives that would come from
the same action.