A splendid thing is emerging from the US Budget crisis. It is indirectly and slowly forcing the US military to adopt more sensible policy.

Instead of being “the policeman of the world” – which only gets everyone’s back up, it is being forced to concentrate on core US interests. It has come about in a quite entertaining and ironic way.

A rump in the Republican Party says all government is dangerous and socialist so all government spending must be curtailed. Combined with other fiscal conservatives, they have imposed budgetary “sequestration” on all government departments.

“Sequestration” is similar to Australia’s public service’s “salami slicing”, though perhaps a tad more severe. It is an enforced cut of a certain percentage across the board. Everything must be cut by, say, 3 per cent. If you want something saved from the cut you must cut deeper elsewhere, to achieve the overall 3 per cent balance.

The word “sequestration” means to keep away from others. So spending decisions are taken away from departments who cannot control their own spending, in the same way that bankrupt’s assets are sequestered by the insolvency trustee and applied for the benefit of creditors. Thus people who spend uncontrollably on credit to an extent where they cannot repay have their assets sequestered. Similarly with US Government departments -- control your spending yourself or lose control over it.

Sequestration began with the Budget Control Act in 2011. Unless a department could come up with its overall Budget plan to contribute to an overall reduction of $1 trillion over nine years, there would be an automatic “sequestration” or “salami slice” across every segment.

In general, I am in favour of this sort of forced fiscal frugality, but for a different reason than the Republican warhorses. It is only when governments pay off their credit cards that they are in a position to do all the socially important things a government should do.

As it happens, the Republican warhorses went a bit further than general “sequestration” when it came to the military. A general patriotic fervour swept across the warring sides. It took the form that nothing is too good for our serving and former members of the armed forces. They would not be subject to “sequestration”. In recent years veterans in the US have received some well-deserved extra benefits. These are now immune from sequestration -- but the overall defence budget which includes these benefits is not.

The response of the top brass in the US Department of Defence (or spell it with an “s” if you like – it makes no difference) has been a typical military head-in-the-sand view of the world – fairly limited.

“No-one’s going to stop sating our appetite for ever bigger toys,” they thought. “Yes we agree with the need for fiscal discipline – in 2032.”

Wrong. In March 2013 with vets’ benefits and armed forces salaries immune from cuts and ballooning well beyond inflation, the Department of Defence lost to sequestration about 8 per cent of its remaining Budget – the Budget for big toys. And a similar further cuts are looming.

The entertaining part is that all the voting has been done and given the state of congressional paralysis, is unlikely to be undone. There has been a lot of big-brass presumption that Congress will permit business as usual over sequestration, instead of getting on with the job of looking after their people and removing some of the silly toys from the wish list.

On 1 August, just two months before the beginning of the US 2014 fiscal year, Deputy Defence Secretary Ashton Carter told Congress that another year of sequestration would bring chaos, waste, and lasting disruption. Bluster, bluster. Just how reining in costs on large military hardware constitutes “waste” is a complete mystery to non-military people.

It was a terrific result. The most leftie pacifist could not have achieved such a worthwhile result compared to the combination of conservative fiscal discipline and “nothing is too good for our service people” – overall fewer arms.

When you look at it, money spent on military hardware is a total waste, except in the case of fighting an aggressive national war – something fairly rare these days. Whereas spending on defence personnel, on the other hand, is just non-wasteful churn. It is a bit like welfare payments. The money goes out and comes back in.

Some hawks in the US want Congress to relent on elements of the Budget Control Act. They want the Department of Defence to be relieved of the “burden” of preserving service benefits. They argue that Defence should be allowed to cut benefits to personnel so that the overall budget can be shrunk while still keeping the programs for the big military toys alive -- so that the US military can have enough money to go on being the world’s policeman. There might be an argument there if one thought for one second that the hardware side was doing any good.

Some might well welcome the benign, democratically inspired US military being the world’s policeman -- upholding the rule of law, free trade, democracy and so on. But however well-intentioned the US has been in that role since World War II, it has invariably made an utter hash of it – from Cuba, to Vietnam, to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The big toys, indeed, are often irrelevant to America’s security risks. Nuclear-armed aircraft carriers are not the weapon of choice against a disgruntled US citizen with a crude bomb made from fertiliser. One of the huge tolls, of course, has been the defence people, who get left behind with broken limbs and minds, while the brass march ever onwards for more vainglorious toys.

So Tea Party and other Congressional conservatives keep up the mantra – fiscal discipline and “nothing is too good for our boys”. You are making the world a safer place, even if you don’t know it.

Incidentally, Australia – slave to whatever the US military and government desires – is making the same mistake. We are now arguing over whether we want scores or tens of the new F-35 fighter aircraft, instead of asking whether we need any at all. The modern security threat cannot be met by those fighters – even at the most banal level, Tony Abbott cannot turn back a boat with an F-35 fighter.

And Australia has been just as lacking as the US in dealing with the plight of the people who served in its armed forces. If there are to be any larger defence budgets, let’s at least give them their fair share.

crispin.hull@rubyreef.com.au