Anyone who\u2019s been in the military knows what happens as the end of a fiscal year approaches: wild spending. Any money that\u2019s left in your budget must be spent, if only to justify next year\u2019s budgetary appropriation. Woe to any unit with leftover money! Not only is there no incentive to economize at the Pentagon: there\u2019s a negative incentive to save money, and a positive one to spend as much as possible within your yearly allotment, while complaining to anyone within earshot that you never have enough.<\/p>\n
Trump has already promised to enlarge Pentagon funding by 10% next year, or roughly $54 billion. According to Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Trump\u2019s budget is all about \u201chard-power<\/a>,\u201d a signal to \u201cour allies and our potential adversaries that this is a strong-power administration.” At $54 billion, that is indeed a very expensive signal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Forget about the global fight against ISIS: The big focus at the Pentagon is now going to be on spending that windfall of taxpayers\u2019 dollars. And, unlike the ISIS fight, which is expected to last for at least another generation, the \u201cfight\u201d to spend lots of money quickly is one that the Pentagon will surely win. Believe me, the military-industrial-Congressional complex knows how to spend.<\/p>\n Want to make the Pentagon a better, more effective, place? Cut its budget by 10%. And keep cutting, year by year, while downsizing its mission. Force it to economize \u2013 force it to think<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Let me give you a few examples. How does the stealthy, super-expensive, F-35 jet fighter<\/a> contribute to the war on terror? It doesn\u2019t. Does the U.S. Navy really need more super-expensive aircraft carriers? No, it doesn\u2019t<\/a>. Do USnuclear forces<\/a> really need to be modernized and expanded at a cost of nearly a trillion dollars over the next few decades? No, they don\u2019t<\/a>. More F-35s, more carriers, and more nukes are not going \u201cto make America great again.\u201d What they will do is consume enormous amounts of money for little real gain.<\/p>\n Throwing cash at the Pentagon is not the way to greater security: it\u2019s a guarantee of frivolous military wish lists and \u201cmore of the same, only more\u201d thinking. In case you haven\u2019t noticed, the Pentagon\u2019s record since 9\/11\/2001 is more than a little mixed; some would say it\u2019s been piss-poor. Why is this? One thing is certain: shortage of money hasn\u2019t been the problem.<\/p>\n Want to send a signal about \u201chard-power,\u201d President Trump? Go hard on the Pentagon by cutting its budget. Spend the savings on alternative energy development and similar investments in American infrastructure. That\u2019s the best way to put America first.<\/p>\n William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools and blogs at Bracing Views<\/a>. He can be reached at wastore@pct.edu<\/a>. Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author’s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anyone who\u2019s been in the military knows what happens as the end of a fiscal year approaches: wild spending. Any money that\u2019s left in your budget must be spent, if only to justify next year\u2019s budgetary appropriation. Woe to any unit with leftover money! Not only is there no incentive to economize at the Pentagon: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-28540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28542,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28540\/revisions\/28542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28540"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}