Part of Trump’s budget deal includes increasing the military budget by over 80 billion dollars to a total of 686 billion dollars. This has inspired the usual arguments from critics, including how the United States spends more than the rest of the world combined and hand-wringing about the supposed military industrial complex and lack of social spending.
While the US spends a good deal on the military, these criticisms come from a world view that lacks key facts regarding the manipulation of spending by other countries and the futility of social programs. Yet in the end, the futility that critics don’t notice is the best argument against giving the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy radically more funding.
Military Spending
According to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US spends more money than the next eight nations combined. The increase in spending will be the single largest increase in history. Yet the problem is that many countries likely misreport their spending.
Just with China, there is considerable evidence of cooking the books. Sinologist June Teufel Dryer in the Military History of China points to complaints from local leaders about billeting soldiers, missing personnel costs, and their weapons acquisition and nuclear programs to suggest that Chinese spending is much higher. The median derived by most analysts suggests a military budget three to four times their disclosed amount.
Using the amount China admits to (144 billion in military spending in 2015) and then multiplying by 4 (the amount that most analysts suggest) would place China roughly equal with the US in spending. In short, just a single competitor likely has the same amount of spending as the United States, and that doesn’t include other potential foes like Russia, North Korea, and Islamic radicals.
The Budget Agreement today is so important for our great Military. It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America Great. Republicans and Democrats must support our troops and support this Bill!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2018
Social Spending
Others from the Win Without War group say that “when our nation can’t manage to turn the lights on for the people of Puerto Rico, when we can’t help those suffering from opioid addiction get treatment, and when we can’t ensure education and healthcare to all of our citizens, how is it possible we can justify spending billions more on weapons that don’t work to fight enemies that don’t exist?”
These comments favor social spending more than military spending. It is always tempting to argue that the US has problems at home and should spend money here. While the US might not be interested in the world’s problems, many bad actors that create those problems are interested in us. The Taliban is still potent in Afghanistan; they and other nations support terrorist groups like ISIS that have potential recruits in every state. Russia is destabilizing much of Eastern Europe, and the US has firm commitments and treaty obligations that would be disastrous to undermine.
The US largely stayed out of the Syrian civil war out of the fear of “blowback” to pursue Obama’s domestic policies.
The best example of the dangers of focusing on home is Syria. The US largely stayed out of the Syrian civil war out of the fear of “blowback” to pursue Obama’s domestic policies. But not intervening produced a lengthy civil war that featured battle-hardened ISIS forces with a self-declared caliphate that captured territory across the Middle East and produced millions of displaced persons, unsecured nuclear weapons, and a refugee crisis. We sure dodged that blowback! The US was forced to intervene militarily anyway, but in a much weaker position with few good choices and fewer potential allies.
John F. Kennedy once said that the country was willing to pay any price and bear any burden to support the cause of freedom. Whenever somebody makes critiques about the money spent, I try to think about how much they would spend to save a life, and how much the average American would spend to save a life. It’s tough to quantify exactly how much is needed, but based on the threats around the world I tend to think that we should be willing to spend on the military to save lives.
“Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (right) and other crew members of PT-109, 1943.” (Credit: Facebook/War History Online)
Assuming we did ignore world problems and spent all of our money on social programs, there is no evidence that increased spending actually helps the poor. The war on poverty has been happening for 50 years and merely subsidizes counterproductive behavior and produces generational poverty. It creates perverse incentives and unintended consequences such as punishing people for working and skyrocketing the cost of healthcare and tuition.
I used to have this argument all the time with my ex-wife, so I know it well. The amount that you love or care for somebody is not measured by how much you spend on them. Everybody knows a family that can shop at Goodwill on double-coupon day and manage to do their back-to-school shopping for their eight kids using a single 20 dollar bill.
Citizens and private companies know how to efficiently use every dollar they have in smart and innovative ways to meet their needs. But bloated monopolies and governments can spend literally trillions of dollars and almost bankrupt their country and still have little to show for it.
For example, the British people just marched in the streets demanding more money for the National Health Service (NHS), yet it is running out of hall space for their sick population. They spend roughly 25 percent of every pound collected in taxes on those programs but still have problems treating the flu and just cancelled all non-emergency surgeries.
The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018
The Verdict
The new budget goes a long way to addressing some devastating cuts to the military from the last few years, and it is valuable in protecting lives against aggressive adversaries that manipulate their budgets. But as OpsLens has reported, RAND and other analysts say the US doesn’t need much more spending than its current levels to meet the threats it faces.
In contrast to the $686 billion per year by 2019 suggested by the Trump budget, Rand suggested the US needs as little as $624 billion by 2024. In short, while the spending is justified compared to the real military budgets of other countries and social spending, this is an extravagant blank check to the military that a lean and more efficient military wouldn’t need.
