Julia Gledhill
Despite ever growing Pentagon budgets, the national security establishment has expressed concerns about insufficient spending to deter or win a great power conflict. But war is not inevitable, and the consequences of a military buildup are grave. Decisionmakers must consider the strategic and fiscal challenges that will face their successors in thirty years – not the interests of corporations and their spokespeople, today.
National security spending has grown nearly 50% since 2000, and the Pentagon budget alone will soon reach the trillion-dollar threshold.1 Still, lawmakers, Pentagon officials, and defense industry spokespeople alike routinely sound the alarm about what they perceive as insufficient national security spending.2 They argue the budget isn’t large enough to maintain deterrence and that Pentagon processes are too slow and rigid for the United States to respond to emerging threats, or if necessary, to prevail in a potential great power conflict.
Proponents of these arguments justify a military buildup by inflating the Pentagon’s ability to address foreign threats to national security. The Pentagon’s core issue, however, is a lack of clear or realistic strategic guidance. No amount of money will resolve issues that are ultimately matters of strategic overreach. Policymakers must scrutinize higher spending proposals and consider their long-term economic impacts. A military build-up would further entrench generations of Americans in the permanent war economy, which already does little to safeguard their security, much less their collective prosperity.
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