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It's one of the stranger phenomena on this planet. By 2023, the U.S. was estimated to spend more money on its "defense budget" than the next 10 countries combined. Yes, the next 10! And yet, whether you're talking about Korea and Vietnam in the last century, or Afghanistan, Iraq, and so many other places involved in what came to be known as the "war on terror" in this one, the U.S. hasn't won a conflict of any significance (or even insignificance) in recent memory.
Take, for example, Somalia. As Nick Turse reports at the Intercept, the U.S. has been involved in a conflict with what became al-Shabab, a local branch of al-Qaeda, since its special operations forces were first dispatched there in 2002. In the years that followed, conventional troops and air power were added to the mix. In 2007, the U.S. military made its first air strike there and at least 280 air attacks and commando raids on al-Shabab have followed. The result, as Turse notes: "Last year, deaths in Somalia from Islamist violence hit a record high of 7,643 -- triple the number in 2020" [including] a 22% rise in fatalities from terrorism in Somalia from 2022 to 2023," while "violence has increasingly bled across the border into Kenya."
And that's about as close to success as the war on terror gets. Meanwhile, last year Congress responded (as always) by passing a record Pentagon budget of $886 billion on its way, it seems, to the trillion-dollar mark in the foreseeable future. Quite a record, all in all, when it comes to squandering your tax dollars on the military-industrial-congressional complex. But let retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular William Astore fill you in on what it would now mean (and would have meant once upon a time) to cut that budget in a significant fashion -- and then, of course, dream on. Tom
Daring to "Look a Sacred Cow in the Teeth"
Military Spending and National (In)Security
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world's finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security.
Why? Because real national security can neither be measured nor safeguarded solely by military power (especially the might of a military that hasn't won a major war since 1945). Economic vitality matters so much more, as does the availability and affordability of health care, education, housing, and other crucial aspects of life unrelated to weaponry and war. Add to that the importance of a Congress responsive to the needs of the working poor, the hungry and the homeless among us. And don't forget that the moral fabric of our nation should be based not on a military eternally ready to make war but on a determination to uphold international law and defend human rights. It's high time for America to put aside its conveniently generic "rules-based order" anchored in imperial imperatives and face its real problems. A frank look in the mirror is what's most needed here.
It should be simple really: national security is best advanced not by endlessly preparing for war, but by fostering peace. Yet, despite their all-too-loud disagreements, Washington's politicians share a remarkably bipartisan consensus when it comes to genuflecting before and wildly overfunding the military-industrial complex. In truth, ever-rising military spending and yet more wars are a measure of how profoundly unhealthy our country actually is.
"The Scholarly Junior Senator from South Dakota"
Such insights are anything but new and, once upon a time, could even be heard in the halls of Congress. They were, in fact, being aired there within a month of my birth as, on August 2, 1963, Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota -- later a hero of mine -- rose to address his fellow senators about "New Perspectives on American Security."
Nine years later, he (and his vision of the military) would, of course, lose badly to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. No matter that he had been the one who served in combat with distinction in World War II, piloting a B-24 bomber on 35 missions over enemy territory, even as Nixon, then a Navy officer, amassed a tidy sum playing poker. Somehow, McGovern, a decorated hero, became associated with "weakness" because he opposed this country's disastrous Vietnam War, while Nixon manufactured a self-image as the staunchest Cold Warrior around, never missing a chance to pose as tough on communism (until, as president, he memorably visited Communist China, opening relations with that country).
But back to 1963, when McGovern gave that speech (which you can read in the online Senate Congressional Record, volume 109, pages 13,986-94). At that time, the government was already dedicating more than half of all federal discretionary spending to the Pentagon, roughly the same percentage as today. Yet was it spending all that money wisely? McGovern's answer was a resounding no. Congress, he argued, could instantly cut 10% of the Pentagon budget without compromising national security one bit. Indeed, security would be enhanced by investing in this country instead of buying yet more overpriced weaponry. The senator and former bomber pilot was especially critical of the massive amounts then being spent on the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the absurd planetary "overkill" it represented vis--vis the Soviet Union, America's main competitor in the nuclear arms race. As he put it then:
"What possible advantage [can be had] in appropriating additional billions of dollars to build more [nuclear] missiles and bombs when we already have excess capacity to destroy the potential enemy? How many times is it necessary to kill a man or kill a nation?"
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