{"id":51287,"date":"2025-02-04T10:34:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=51287"},"modified":"2025-02-04T10:34:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T18:34:26","slug":"william-astore-says-cut-pentagon-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/04\/william-astore-says-cut-pentagon-spending\/","title":{"rendered":"William Astore says Cut Pentagon Spending!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

As Elon Musk runs amok in the U.S. government, claiming to work for government efficiency, I\u2019ve yet to see him tackle the elephant in the room: the Pentagon budget. That budget, nominally at $900 billion, accounts for more than half of federal discretionary spending. If you\u2019re looking to make cuts, that huge target is surely the place to put your crosshairs.<\/p>\n

Will Elon Musk and the DOGE dare to target the Pentagon? If he and his DOGE crew have the guts to do so, I have some ideas for them from a piece I wrote for TomDispatch at the end of 2021.<\/p>\n

Time to show some guts and make deep cuts, Mr. Musk.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An aside: Remember when the Pentagon budget was *only* $778 billion?<\/p>\n

\n

The U.S. Military Budget as a Mushroom Cloud<\/h3>\n

Why It\u2019s Time to Make Deep Cuts at the Pentagon<\/strong><\/p>\n

BY WILLIAM J. ASTORE<\/a><\/strong> (ORIGINAL POST: 12\/12\/2021)<\/p>\n

Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters. And yet \u2014 big surprise! \u2014 there\u2019s always plenty of money<\/a><\/strong> for the Pentagon. In fiscal year 2022, in fact, Congress is being especially generous with $778 billion<\/a><\/strong> in funding, roughly $25 billion more than the Biden administration initially asked for. Even that staggering sum seriously undercounts<\/a><\/strong> government funding for America\u2019s vast national security state, which, since it gobbles up more than half of federal discretionary spending, is truly this country\u2019s primary, if unofficial, fourth<\/a><\/strong> branch of government.<\/p>\n

Final approval of the latest military budget, formally known as the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, may slip into Januar<\/a><\/strong>y as Congress wrangles over various side issues. Unlike so much crucial funding for the direct care of Americans, however, don\u2019t for a second imagine it won\u2019t pass with supermajorities. (Yes, the government could indeed be shut down<\/a><\/strong> one of these days, but not \u2014 never! \u2014 the U.S. military.)<\/p>\n

Some favorites of mine among \u201cdefense\u201d budget side issues now being wrangled over include whether military members should be able to refuse Covid-19 vaccines without being punished<\/a><\/strong>, whether young women should be required to register<\/a><\/strong> for the Selective Service System when they turn 18 (even though this country hasn\u2019t had a draft in almost half a century and isn\u2019t likely to have one in the foreseeable future), or whether the Iraq War AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force), passed by Congress to disastrous effect in 2002, should be repealed<\/a><\/strong> after nearly two decades of calamity and futility.<\/p>\n

As debates over these and similar issues, predictably partisan, grab headlines, the biggest issue of all eludes serious coverage: Why, despite decades of disastrous wars, do Pentagon budgets continue to grow, year after year, like ever-expanding nuclear mushroom clouds? In other words, as voices are raised and arms waved in Congress about vaccine tyranny or a hypothetical future draft of your 18-year-old daughter, truly critical issues involving your money (hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of taxpayer dollars) go largely uncovered.<\/p>\n

What are some of those issues that we should be, but aren\u2019t, looking at? I\u2019m so glad you asked!<\/p>\n

Seven Questions with \u201cThrow-Weight\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in my Air Force days, while working in Cheyenne Mountain<\/a><\/strong> (the ultimate bomb shelter of the Cold War era), we talked about nuclear missiles in terms of their \u201cthrow-weight<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d The bigger their throw-weight, the bigger the warhead. In that spirit, I\u2019d like to lob seven throw-weighty questions \u2014 some with multiple \u201cwarheads\u201d \u2014 in the general direction of the Pentagon budget. It\u2019s an exercise worth doing largely because, despite its sheer size, that budget generally seems impervious to serious oversight, no less real questions of any sort.<\/p>\n

So, here goes and hold on tight (or, in the nuclear spirit, duck and cover!):<\/p>\n

1. Why, with the end of the Afghan War, is the Pentagon budget still mushrooming upward? Even as the U.S. war effort there festered and then collapsed in defeat, the Pentagon, by its own calculation, was burning through almost $4 billion a month or $45 billon a year<\/a><\/strong> in that conflict and, according to the Costs of War Project, $2.313 trillion<\/a><\/strong> since it began. Now that the madness and the lying<\/a><\/strong> are finally over (at least theoretically speaking), after two decades of fraud, waste, and abuses of every sort, shouldn\u2019t the Pentagon budget for 2022 decrease by at least $45 billion? Again, America lost, but shouldn\u2019t we taxpayers now be saving a minimum of $4 billion a month?<\/p>\n

2. After a disastrous war on terror costing upwards of $8 trillion<\/a><\/strong>, isn\u2019t it finally time to begin to downsize America\u2019s global imperial presence? Honestly, for its \u201cdefense,\u201d does the U.S. military need 750 overseas bases<\/a><\/strong> in 80 countries on every continent but Antarctica, maintained at a cost somewhere north of $100 billion annually? Why, for example, is that military expanding its bases on the Pacific island of Guam<\/a><\/strong> at the expense of the environment and despite the protests of many of the indigenous people there? One word: China! Isn\u2019t it amazing how the ever-inflating threat<\/a><\/strong> of China empowers a Pentagon whose insatiable budgetary demands might be in some trouble without a self-defined \u201cnear-peer\u201d adversary? It\u2019s almost as if, in some twisted sense, the Pentagon budget itself were now being \u201cMade in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Speaking of China and its alleged pursuit<\/a><\/strong> of more nuclear weaponry, why is the U.S. military still angling for $1.7 trillion<\/a><\/strong> over the next 30 years for its own set of \u201cmodernized\u201d nuclear weapons? After all, the Navy\u2019s current strategic force, as represented above all by Ohio<\/em>-class submarines with Trident missiles, is (and will for the foreseeable future be) capable of destroying the world as we know it. A \u201cgeneral\u201d nuclear exchange would end the lives of most of humanity, given the dire impact the ensuing nuclear winter<\/a><\/strong> would have on food production. What\u2019s the point of Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cBuild Back Better<\/a><\/strong>\u201d bill, if America\u2019s leaders are preparing to destroy it all with a new generation of holocaust-producing nuclear bombs and missiles?<\/p>\n

4. Why is America\u2019s military, allegedly funded for \u201cdefense,\u201d configured instead for force projection and global strikes of every sort? Think of the Navy, built around aircraft carrier strike groups, now taking the fight to the \u201cenemy\u201d in the South China Sea. Think of Air Force B-52 strategic bombers, still flying provocatively near the borders of Russia<\/a><\/strong>, as if the movie Dr. Strangelove<\/a><\/strong><\/em> had been released not in 1964 but yesterday. Why, in sum, does the U.S. military refuse to stay home and protect Fortress America? An old sports clich\u00e9, \u201cthe best defense is a good offense,\u201d seems to capture the bankruptcy of what passes, even after decades of lost wars in distant lands, for American strategic thinking. It may make sense on a football field, but, judging by those wars, it\u2019s been a staggering loss leader for our military, not to mention the foreign peoples on the receiving end of lethal weapons very much \u201cMade in the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of reveling in shock and awe, this country should find the wars of choice it\u2019s fought since 1945 genuinely shocking and awful \u2014 and act to end them for good and defund any future versions of them.<\/p>\n

5. Speaking of global strikes with awful repercussions, why is the Pentagon working so hard to encircle China<\/a><\/strong>, while ratcheting up tensions that can only contribute to nuclear brinksmanship and even possibly a new world war<\/a><\/strong> as early as 2027? Related question: Why does the Pentagon continue to claim that, in its \u201cwargames\u201d with China over a prospective future battle for the island of Taiwan, it always loses<\/a><\/strong>? Is it because \u201closing\u201d is really winning, since that very possibility can then be cited to justify yet more requests for funds from Congress so that this country can \u201ccatch up\u201d to the latest Red Menace?<\/p>\n

(Bonus question: As America\u2019s generals keep losing real wars as well as imaginary ones, why aren\u2019t any of them ever fired?)<\/p>\n

6. Speaking of global aggression, why does this country maintain a vast, costly military within the military that\u2019s run by Special Operations Command and operationally geared to facilitating interventions anywhere and everywhere? (Note that this country\u2019s special ops forces are bigger than the full-scale militaries of many countries on this planet!) When you look back over the last several decades, Special Operations forces haven\u2019t proven<\/a><\/strong> to be all that special, have they? And it doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re citing the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Put differently, for every SEAL Team 6 mission that kills a big bad guy, there are a surprising number of small-scale catastrophes<\/a><\/strong> that only alienate other peoples, thereby generating blowback (and so, of course, further funding of the military).<\/p>\n

7. Finally, why, oh why, after decades of military losses, does Congress still defer so spinelessly to the \u201cexperience\u201d of our generals and admirals? Why issue so many essentially blank checks to the gang that simply can\u2019t shoot straight, whether in battle or when they testify before Congressional committees, as well as to the giant companies (and congressional lobbying monsters<\/a><\/strong>) that make the very weaponry that can\u2019t shoot straight<\/a><\/strong>?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a compliment in the military to be called a straight shooter. I suggest President Biden start firing a host of generals until he finds a few who are willing to do exactly that and tell him and the rest of us some hard truths, especially about malfunctioning weapons<\/a><\/strong> and lost wars<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, after Ronald Reagan became president, I started writing in earnest against the bloating of the Pentagon budget. At that time, though, I never would have imagined that the budgets of those years would look modest today, especially after the big enemy of that era, the Soviet Union, imploded in 1991.<\/p>\n

Why, then, does each year\u2019s NDAA rise ever higher into the troposphere<\/a><\/strong>, drifting on the wind and poisoning our culture with militarism<\/a><\/strong>? Because, to state the obvious, Congress would rather engage in pork-barrel spending than exercise the slightest real oversight when it comes to the national security state. It has, of course, been essentially captured by the military-industrial complex, a dire fate President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us<\/a><\/strong> about 60 years ago in his farewell address. Instead of being a guard dog for America\u2019s money (not to mention for our rapidly disappearing democracy), Congress has become a genuine lapdog of the military brass and their well-heeled weapons makers.<\/p>\n

So, even as Congress puts on a show of debating the NDAA, it\u2019s really nothing but, at best, a political Kabuki dance<\/a><\/strong> (a metaphor, by the way, that\u2019s quite common in the military, which tells you something about the well-traveled sense of humor of its members). Sure, our congressional representatives act as if they\u2019re exercising oversight, even as they do as they\u2019re told, while the deep-pocketed contractors make major contributions to the campaign \u201cwar chests\u201d of the very same politicians. It\u2019s a win for them, of course, but a major loss for this country \u2014 and indeed for the world.<\/p>\n

Doing More With Less<\/strong><\/p>\n

What would real oversight look like when it comes to the defense budget? Again, glad you asked!<\/p>\n

It would focus on actual defense,<\/em> on preventing wars, and above all, on scaling down our gigantic military. It would involve cutting that budget roughly in half over the next few years and so forcing our generals and admirals to engage in that rarest of acts for them: making some tough choices. Maybe then they\u2019d see the folly of spending $1.7 trillion on the next generation of world-ending weaponry, or maintaining all those military bases globally, or maybe even the blazing stupidity of backing China into a corner in the name of \u201cdeterrence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a radical thought for Congress: Americans, especially the working class, are constantly being advised to do more with less. Come on, you workers out there, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and put your noses to those grindstones!<\/p>\n

To so many of our elected representatives (often sheltered in grotesquely gerrymandered districts), less money and fewer benefits for workers are seldom seen as problems, just challenges. Quit your whining, apply some elbow grease, and \u201cgit-r-done!<\/a><\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. military, still proud of its \u201ccan-do\u201d spirit in a warfighting age of can\u2019t-do-ism, should have plenty of smarts to draw on. Just consider all those Washington \u201cthink tanks\u201d it can call on! Isn\u2019t it high time, then, for Congress to challenge the military-industrial complex to focus on how to do so much less (as in less warfighting) with so much less (as in lower budgets for prodigal weaponry and calamitous wars)?<\/p>\n

For this and future Pentagon budgets, Congress should send the strongest of messages by cutting at least $50 billion a year for the next seven years. Force the guys (and few gals) wearing the stars to set priorities and emphasize the actual defense of this country and its Constitution, which, believe me, would be a unique experience for us all.<\/p>\n

Every year or so, I listen again to Eisenhower\u2019s military-industrial complex speech<\/a><\/strong>. In those final moments of his presidency, Ike warned Americans of the \u201cgrave implications\u201d of the rise of an \u201cimmense military establishment\u201d and \u201ca permanent armaments industry of vast proportions,\u201d the combination of which would constitute a \u201cdisastrous rise of misplaced power.\u201d This country is today suffering from just such a rise to levels that have warped the very structure of our society. Ike also spoke then of pursuing disarmament as a continuous imperative and of the vital importance of seeking peace through diplomacy.<\/p>\n

In his spirit, we should all call on Congress to stop the madness of ever-mushrooming war budgets and substitute for them the pursuit of peace through wisdom and restraint. This time, we truly can\u2019t allow America\u2019s numerous smoking guns to turn into so many mushroom clouds above our beleaguered planet.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. As Elon Musk runs amok in the U.S. government, claiming to work for government efficiency, I\u2019ve yet to see him tackle the elephant in the room: the Pentagon budget. That budget, nominally at $900 billion, accounts for more than half of federal discretionary spending. If you\u2019re looking […]<\/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":"none","_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":[758],"class_list":["post-51287","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":"Do Some Good, Elon Musk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51287","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=51287"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51291,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51287\/revisions\/51291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51287"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=51287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}