Street Smart Economics | While Democratic and Republican lawmakers squabble over the debt ceiling, they can always agree on one thing: more military funding
There is a lot of talk lately about the federal budget, with Democrats and Republicans arguing over whether to raise the debt ceiling and allow the government to borrow enough money to fund already approved agency budgets and programs. But you know what they never argue about — financing the military.
Showing the love In December 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, approving “national defense” spending of $858 billion for fiscal year 2023. The act covers Pentagon spending as well as work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That total represents a 4.3% increase over the previous year’s authorization, the second biggest increase in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II.
If spending on other military-security-related programs were added, such as homeland security, veterans’ care and Ukraine-related military aid, the total would exceed $1.4 trillion.
The National Defense Authorization Act was overwhelmingly approved by both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives passed it 350 to 80. The Senate 83 to 11. In fact, Congress actually voted to give the military $45 billion more than what Biden and the Pentagon had originally requested. Now, that is showing the love.
In March, the military proposed a national defense budget for fiscal year 2024 of $886 billion. We shall see how much that figure will grow once Congress takes it up.
Military drivers The ever-growing defense budget is said to be needed to keep us safe. Left unsaid is that the roughly $80 billion increase over last year’s approved national defense budget is itself bigger than the military budgets of every country in the world but China. That country’s military budget, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, is $293 billion. North Korea, another country said to be a major threat to U.S. security, has a military budget of approximately $4 billion, according to the U.S. State Department.
One reason we spend a lot is that our government and corporations have an expansive view of our national interest, one that takes in the entire globe. And they want a military presence everywhere to defend it.
As the military analyst William Hartung points out, we have “750 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 — no, that is not a typo — countries.”
China, in contrast, has a total of eight foreign military bases, one in Djibouti and the rest on human-made islands in the South China Sea.
Another reason the military budget continues to increase is that military spending is directly profitable for a core set of major U.S. corporations. More than half of national defense spending goes to private firms, with the largest share going to the top five military contractors, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. These firms aggressively push for the adoption of new weapons systems and use their deep pocketbooks to gain Congressional approval.
The Department of Defense also does what it can to create a favorable environment for its growth. It has long worked closely with filmmakers to boost the image of the military as a defender of the nation and an attractive career. For example, it played a major role in the script development and filming of the popular film “Top Gun: Maverick.” And it generously funds foreign policy think tanks to help shape the domestic conversation on national security.
The military also runs an aggressive recruitment program in high schools.
A case in point: its Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program. Some 3,500 high schools across the country have JROTC programs, with their classes taught by military veterans and with textbooks written by the military. And while participation in the program is supposed to be voluntary, The New York Times found that “thousands of public-school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them.” According to the Army, “44 percent of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered JROTC.”
The military is now targeting fifth graders through its STARBASE program. This program is said to help schools strengthen their STEM offerings, and short of funding, a growing number of schools are happy to participate. Classes are held at National Guard, Marine, Air Force Reserve, Army and Air Force bases across the country, where fifth graders are taught by military-approved instructors and get to see the onsite military hardware.
The costs The militarization of our country comes at a high cost. At the top of the list is the possibility of war.
The Biden administration seems determined to use our military to drive a new cold war in Asia largely to isolate and economically weaken China. In April, Biden announced the United States will deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in more than 40 years.
That same month, the United States, Japan and South Korea, at the United States' urging, agreed to hold joint missile defense and anti-submarine exercises to counter North Korea and “promote peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region,” with special emphasis on “peace and security in the Taiwan Strait.”
The Philippines recently granted the United States access to four additional military bases. These were needed, said the U.S. Secretary of Defense, because “the People’s Republic of China continues to advance its illegitimate claims” in the South China Sea. The United States will soon hold bilateral military exercises with Australia so the country can demonstrate its “ability to receive large volumes of personnel and equipment . . . from across the Indo-Pacific and stage, integrate and move them forward into the large exercise area.”
Thanks to U.S. efforts, even NATO now lists China as a top threat because of its challenge to the “interests, security and values” of its member countries.
The threat of war with China, or possibly North Korea, is real and growing. But even if war is averted, U.S. actions are fueling the militarization of the Asian region, with governments throughout the region boosting spending on their respective militaries to the detriment of their people’s wellbeing.
We suffer a similar fate. The U.S. military now gobbles up more than half the federal discretionary budget, limiting the amount of money available for public health, education, housing, environmental protection and transportation.
The growth in military spending has also led to the militarization of our police. For years, the Pentagon provided surplus military equipment free to police agencies; the transfer dramatically changed police training practices and relations between police and community members, especially people of color, who came to play the role of the enemy that needed to be suppressed.
The militarization of our foreign policy has also promoted a sense of American exceptionalism and national superiority. This development, encouraged by many of our elected leaders, has intensified distrust and dislike of people of color and immigrants, often leading to acts of violence against them. It has also contributed to growing efforts to purge books from our libraries and classrooms that include passages that might lead to a critical understanding of the American experience.
More could be said, but hopefully, the point is clear: we need to build an anti-militarism movement, one that targets not just the size of the military budget but, more importantly, our foreign policy, which sees domination and violence as an acceptable, if not desirable, way to promote our so-called national interest. It’s a big challenge, but the cost of inaction is too great to ignore.
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