Reducing the quality of lives for americans is a temporary bandaid, water costs are going to continue to increase so they will need to either keep doing that over and over until something in the population snaps or they will have to contract the empire. They have no other choice.
When the British empire faced the same problem, it contracted its reach with cost reductions and closure of non-essential bases. I believe the US empire will do the same.
Water would be a fraction of “operational and maintenance costs” which at least in 2019 figured as 40% of the total DoD budget[1], so 40% of that would be 16% of the overall DoD budget. I tried corroborating the 30-40% figure for water, but I’m not coming up with anything concrete. I’m thinking that it is situational, and possibly outdated information from when the US was still in Afghanistan. A lot of the cost comes from not only transport, but security for the transport, which naturally is much higher in an active combat zone compared with a base in a friendly country.
Side note, I had a good laugh learning about “Marine Corps Energy Assessment Team (MEAT)”[2] while googling this. Only in Burgerland
Researchers at Ft. Lee, VA, with the Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM), in the Petroleum and Water Department, believe water generation is one of the leading fields for material approaches in the Capability Needs Assessment Process. The objective is to develop technologies enabling a logistics transformation in the area of water sustainment by reducing the
water distribution and storage load. Without technology advances, water remains 30%-40% of the force sustainment requirement.
This covers all military operations abroad. So basically 30-40% of everything in the empire outside the US’ borders.
This was the US military’s own assessment of the upcoming problem in 2019. That problem is now beginning to take shape. This report itself frames it as a problem they either need new technology for to solve, or it says the military itself will collapse. Now you and me both know they’re never going to let “collapse” happen, so the obvious outcome is that they’re going to have to shrink their operations, it is the only option they will have.
That’s an incredible statistic. Then taking my 16% estimate from above, and considering DoD is about 14% of total federal budget, then about 2% of every taxpayer dollar is spent on shipping Aquafina to chuds in the desert, if my math is right. (Probably not? Since this is budget, not revenue (shrug))
More nominative determinism: the source within your source is a man by the name of “Burden”:
Burden, Jr., Charles E. Team Leader for Petroleum, Water and Material Handling Equipment, Combined Arms Support Command. Telephone interview by author, April 10, 2018.
Yeah it’s basically what fuels my constant belief that the US military is operating on borrowed time. They can’t stop these events happening, everything in this report is entirely outside of their control. The only solutions are magic technology that doesn’t exist, more money (from where without causing domestic problems?), or contraction. Both of the real solutions will end the US and the one that causes domestic problems is only a temporary delay to a problem that will continue to grow.
They have no options. It’s an extremely good situation and you can bet China’s policy of sitting and waiting is built around it. They can only get weaker. Consider also the implications of this for revolutions that climate change is going to cause - the ability to project power to influence those revolutions will also be much weaker.
Two options, reduce the quality of lives for americans further or contract the reach of the empire by closing bases and reducing water usage.
Water usage is 30-40% of US military costs.
Reducing the quality of lives for americans is a temporary bandaid, water costs are going to continue to increase so they will need to either keep doing that over and over until something in the population snaps or they will have to contract the empire. They have no other choice.
When the British empire faced the same problem, it contracted its reach with cost reductions and closure of non-essential bases. I believe the US empire will do the same.
Water would be a fraction of “operational and maintenance costs” which at least in 2019 figured as 40% of the total DoD budget[1], so 40% of that would be 16% of the overall DoD budget. I tried corroborating the 30-40% figure for water, but I’m not coming up with anything concrete. I’m thinking that it is situational, and possibly outdated information from when the US was still in Afghanistan. A lot of the cost comes from not only transport, but security for the transport, which naturally is much higher in an active combat zone compared with a base in a friendly country.
Side note, I had a good laugh learning about “Marine Corps Energy Assessment Team (MEAT)”[2] while googling this. Only in Burgerland
1. Wikipedia ↩︎
2. CNAS ↩︎
It’s on page 27 of this doc: https://climateandsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/implications-of-climate-change-for-us-army_army-war-college_2019.pdf
This covers all military operations abroad. So basically 30-40% of everything in the empire outside the US’ borders.
This was the US military’s own assessment of the upcoming problem in 2019. That problem is now beginning to take shape. This report itself frames it as a problem they either need new technology for to solve, or it says the military itself will collapse. Now you and me both know they’re never going to let “collapse” happen, so the obvious outcome is that they’re going to have to shrink their operations, it is the only option they will have.
That’s an incredible statistic. Then taking my 16% estimate from above, and considering DoD is about 14% of total federal budget, then about 2% of every taxpayer dollar is spent on shipping Aquafina to chuds in the desert, if my math is right. (Probably not? Since this is budget, not revenue (shrug))
More nominative determinism: the source within your source is a man by the name of “Burden”:
Yeah it’s basically what fuels my constant belief that the US military is operating on borrowed time. They can’t stop these events happening, everything in this report is entirely outside of their control. The only solutions are magic technology that doesn’t exist, more money (from where without causing domestic problems?), or contraction. Both of the real solutions will end the US and the one that causes domestic problems is only a temporary delay to a problem that will continue to grow.
They have no options. It’s an extremely good situation and you can bet China’s policy of sitting and waiting is built around it. They can only get weaker. Consider also the implications of this for revolutions that climate change is going to cause - the ability to project power to influence those revolutions will also be much weaker.
Anti-imperialist praxis is swapping their drinking water our for Dasani(stolen of course to comply with BDS)
60%[1] of the DoD budget is staff and the staff are composed of 50-60% water [2] ergo ~30% of DoD budget is water.
Wikipedia ↩︎