On July 16, the Stimson Center released a report that concludes that current defense plans call for unsustainable military spending, not just now but decades into the future. “Expansive strategic guidance documents written to justify and validate U.S. militarism and the permanent war economy only hamper U.S. military readiness because their authors suggest that the United States pursue global military primacy forever, at all costs—even if most major defense acquisition programs are over cost and behind schedule,” the report says at the outset. “This vision is neither strategic nor sustainable as it undergirds an egregious and ever-growing military budget. Even with a near trillion dollar Pentagon base budget, the military leaves servicemembers with equipment that doesn’t work, while padding record-breaking profit margins for military contractors.” The Stimson report came out almost two weeks prior to the National Defense Commission report, which calls for massive growth in Pentagon spending and the militarization of the U.S. economy, but clearly applies to it in spades.
The Stimson report says that Pentagon spending has increased by 48% just since 2000 (adjusted for inflation). “Today, the United States spends more money on defense than it did during the peaks of the Korea, Vietnam, and Cold Wars, even after ending the longest war in our history three years ago,” it says. It notes there are efforts to jack up spending even more, including legislation sponsored by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to increase it to 5% of GDP. “Setting arbitrary spending levels rather than crafting rational defense policies sets the U.S. on course to spend even more money on failed programs and ineffective strategies,” it says. “By 2050, the American people may look back fondly on the ‘good old days’ when the annual Pentagon budget was still under a trillion dollars.”
The report then works through a long list of Pentagon weapons programs—some dating back to the 1990s—where costs skyrocketed but still produced systems that failed to work. The result has been that while the Pentagon budget has grown substantially, the military force structure has shrunk for all the services and beset troops with weapons that don’t work, and the promise is that things will only get worse.
