[Overspending on the Pentagon Is Stealing Our Future ]
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THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS THE WINNER (NOT YOU)  
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William Hartung
January 16, 2024
Tom Dispatch
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_ Overspending on the Pentagon Is Stealing Our Future _

, AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

 

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s
ongoing invasion
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of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks
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on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter
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in Gaza to a devastating civil war
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in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this
year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of
violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex.

In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886
billion
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in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the
Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of
Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely
emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could
well top $900 billion for the first time this year.

Meanwhile, the administration’s $100-billion-plus
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emergency military aid package that failed to pass Congress last month
is likely to slip by in some form this year, while the House and
Senate are almost guaranteed to add tens of billions
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more for “national defense” projects in specific states and
districts, as happened in two of the last three years.

Of course, before the money actually starts flowing, Congress needs to
pass an appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2024, clearing the way for
that money to be spent. As of this writing, the House and Senate had
indeed agreed to
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a tentative deal to sign onto the $886 billion that was authorized in
December. A trillion-dollar version of such funding could be just
around the corner.  (If past practice is any guide, more than half
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of that sum could go directly to corporations, large and small.)

A trillion dollars is a hard figure to process. In the 1960s, when the
federal budget was a fraction of what it is now, Republican Senator
Everett Dirksen allegedly [[link removed]] said,
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking
real money.” Whether he did or not
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that quote neatly captures how congressional attitudes toward federal
spending have changed. After all, today, a billion dollars is less
than a rounding error at the Pentagon. The department’s budget
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is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the
Vietnam War and over twice what it was when President Eisenhower
warned of the “unwarranted influence
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wielded by what he called “the military-industrial complex.”

To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly,
dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft
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alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
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Lockheed Martin’s contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than
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the budgets of the State Department _and_ the Agency for International
Development combined, and its arms-related revenues
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government’s entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion
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aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget
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Protection Agency. Overall, more than half
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of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year — basically
everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory
programs like Medicare and Social Security — goes to the Pentagon.

It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly
needed to protect the country or make the world a safer
place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a
misguided “cover the globe” military strategy than a careful
consideration of what might be needed for actual “defense.”

CONGRESSIONAL FOLLIES

The road to an $886-billion military budget authorization began early
last year with a debt-ceiling
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deal negotiated by President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin
McCarthy. That rolled back domestic spending levels, while preserving
the administration’s proposal for the Pentagon intact. McCarthy,
since ousted as speaker, had been pressed by members of the right-wing
“Freedom Caucus” and their fellow travelers for just such spending
cuts. (He had little choice but to agree, since that group proved to
be his margin of victory in a speaker’s race that ran to 15 ballots
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There was a brief glimmer of hope that the budget cutters in the
Freedom Caucus might also go after the bloated Pentagon budget rather
than inflict all the fiscal pain on domestic programs. Prominent
right-wing Republicans like Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) pledged
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to put Pentagon spending reductions “on the table,” but then only
went after the military’s alleged “woke agenda,” which boiled
down to cutting a few billion dollars slated for fighting racism and
sexual harassment while supporting reproductive freedom within the
armed forces. Oh wait, Jordan also went after spending on the
development of alternative energy sources as “woke.” In any case,
he focused on just a minuscule share
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of the department’s overall budget.

Prominent Republicans outside Congress expressed stronger views about
bringing the Pentagon to heel, but their perspectives got no traction
on Capitol Hill. For instance, Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage
Foundation, perhaps America’s most influential conservative think
tank, made the case
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for reining in the Pentagon at _American Conservative _magazine:

“In the past, Congress accepted the D.C. canard that a bigger budget
alone equals a stronger military. But now, facing down a record debt
to the tune of $242,000 per household, conservatives are ready to
tackle an entrenched problem and confront the political establishment,
unaccountable federal bureaucrats, and well-connected defense
contractors all at once in order to keep the nation both solvent and
secure.”

Even more surprising, former Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher
Miller released a memoir
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in which he called for a dramatic slashing of the Pentagon budget.
“We could,” he argued, “cut our defense budget in half and it
would still be twice as big as China’s.”

Ultimately, however, such critiques had zero influence over the
Pentagon budget debate in the House, which quickly degenerated into a
fight about a series of toxic amendments
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attacking reproductive freedom and LGTBQ and transgender rights in the
military. Representative Colin Allred (D-TX) rightly denounced
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such amendments as a “shameful display of extremism” and
across-the-board opposition
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by Democrats ensured that the first iteration of the National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024 would be defeated and some of
the most egregious Republican proposals
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eliminated later in the year. 

In the meantime, virtually all mainstream press coverage and most
congressional debate focused on those culture war battles rather than
why this country was poised to shove so much money at the Pentagon in
the first place.

THREAT INFLATION AND THE “ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY”

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the strategic
rationales put forward for the flood of new Pentagon outlays don’t
faintly hold up to scrutiny. First and foremost in the Pentagon’s
argument for virtually unlimited access to the Treasury is the alleged
military threat posed by China. But as Dan Grazier of the Project on
Government Oversight has pointed out
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that country’s military strategy is “inherently defensive”:

“[T]he investments being made [by China] are not suited for foreign
adventurism but are instead designed to use relatively low-cost
weapons to defend against massively expensive American weapons. The
nation’s primary military strategy is to keep foreign powers, and
especially the United States, as far away from its shores as possible
in a policy the Chinese government calls ‘active defense.’”

The greatest point of potential conflict between the U.S. and China
is, of course, Taiwan. But a war over that island would come at a
staggering cost for all concerned and might even escalate into a
nuclear confrontation. A series of war games
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conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
found that, while the United States could indeed “win” a war
defending Taiwan from a Chinese amphibious assault, it would be a
Pyrrhic victory. “The United States and its allies lost dozens of
ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of
servicemembers,” it reported. “Taiwan saw its economy devastated.
Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many
years.” And a nuclear confrontation
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between China and the United States, which CSIS didn’t include in
its assessment, would be a first-class catastrophe of almost
unimaginable proportions.

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would
be to revive
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Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit
itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S.
to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other
words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to
“win” such a war, would be the way to go.

The second major driver of higher Pentagon budgets is allegedly the
strain on this country’s arms manufacturing base caused by supplying
tens of billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine, including
artillery shells and missiles that are running short in American
stockpiles. The answer, according to the Pentagon and the arms
industry, is to further supersize
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this country’s already humongous military-industrial complex to
produce enough weaponry to supply Ukraine (and now Israel
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too), while acquiring sufficient weapons systems for a future war with
China.

There are two problems with such arguments. First, supplying Ukraine
doesn’t justify
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a permanent expansion of the U.S. arms industry. In fact, such aid to
Kyiv needs to be accompanied by a now-missing diplomatic strategy
designed to head off an even longer, ever more grinding war.

Second, the kinds of weapons needed for a war with China would, for
the most part, be different from those relevant to a land war in
Ukraine, so weaponry sent to Ukraine would have little relevance to
readiness for a potential war with China (which Washington should, in
any case, be working to prevent, not preparing for). 

THE DISASTROUS COSTS OF A MILITARIZED FOREIGN POLICY

Before investing ever more tax dollars in building an ever-expanding
garrison state, the military strategy of the United States in the
current global environment should be seriously debated. Just buying
ever more bombs, missiles, drones, and next-generation artificial
intelligence-driven weaponry is not, in fact, a strategy, though it is
a boon to the military-industrial complex and an invitation to a
destabilizing new arms race.

Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the Biden administration seems
inclined to seriously consider an approach that would emphasize
investing in diplomatic and economic tools over force or the threat of
force. Given this country’s staggeringly expensive failures in its
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century (which cost trillions of
dollars), resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties,
and leaving staggering numbers of American veterans with physical and
psychological injuries (as extensively documented
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War Project at Brown University), you might think a different approach
to the use of your tax dollars was in order, but no such luck.

There are indeed a few voices in Congress advocating restraint at the
Pentagon, including Representatives Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Barbara Lee
(D-CA), who have proposed
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a $100 billion reduction in that department’s budget as a first step
toward a more balanced national security policy.  Such efforts,
however, must overcome an inhospitable political environment created
by the endlessly exaggerated military threats facing this country and
the political power of the arms industry, as well as its allies in
Washington. Those allies, of course, include President Biden, who has
labeled the U.S. an “arsenal of democracy
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in his efforts to promote a new round of weapons aid to Ukraine.  Not
unlike his predecessor, he is touting
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potential benefits of arms-production investments in companies in
electoral swing states.

Sadly, throwing more money at the arms industry sacrifices future
needs for short-term economic gains that are modest indeed. Were that
money going into
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producing green jobs, a more resilient infrastructure, improved
scientific and technical education, and a more robust public health
system, we would find ourselves in a different world. Those should be
the pillars of any American economic revival rather than the
all-too-modest side effects of weapons development in fueling economic
growth. Despite huge increases in funding since the 1980s, actual
jobs in the arms manufacturing industry have, in fact, plummeted
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from three million to 1.1 million — and, mind you, those figures
come from the arms industry’s largest trade association. 

The United Auto Workers, one of the unions with the most members
working in the arms industry, has recognized this reality and formed a
Just Transition Committee. As noted by Spencer Ackerman at the
_Nation_
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it’s designed to “examine the size, scope, and impact of the U.S.
military-industrial complex that employs thousands of UAW members and
dominates the global arms trade.” According to Brandon Mancilla,
director of the UAW’s Region 9A, which represents 50,000 active and
retired workers in New York, New England, and Puerto Rico, the
committee will “think about what it would mean to actually have a
just transition, what used to be called a ‘peace conversion,’ of
folks who work in the weapons and defense industry into something
else.”

The UAW initiative parallels a sharp drop in unionization rates at
major weapons makers (as documented
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by journalist Taylor Barnes). To cite two examples: in 1971, 69% of
Lockheed Martin workers were unionized, while in 2022 that number was
19%; at Northrop Grumman today, a mere 4% of its employees are
unionized, a dip that reflects a conscious strategy of the big
weapons-making firms to outsource
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work to non-union subcontractors and states with anti-union “right
to work” laws, while exporting
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tens of thousands of jobs overseas as part of multinational projects
like the F-35 program. So much for the myth that defense industry jobs
are more secure or have better pay and benefits than jobs in other
parts of the economy.

A serious national conversation is needed on what a genuine _defense_
strategy would look like, rather than one based on fantasies of global
military dominance. Otherwise, the overly militarized approach to
foreign and economic policy that has become the essence of Washington
budget-making could be extended endlessly and disastrously into the
future, something this country literally can’t afford to let happen.

Copyright 2024 William D. Hartung

WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, a _TomDispatch _regular
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fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the
author of "Reality Check: Chinese Military Spending in Context
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* US Military Spending; Pentagon Budget; US Foreign Policy;
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