One of the most urgent problems facing the United States is the persistence of excessive and wasteful military spending by the federal government. These massive public expenditures on the military and war are not necessary for any legitimate defense needs of the country and have a devastating impact on the social fabric of our society. President Eisenhower, a former general, described the destructive consequences of military spending very well in a 1953 speech:   

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.[i]

KNOW believes that excessive military spending must be challenged and that drastic cuts must be made to the militarized federal budget and redirected to critical social needs.

How much does the United States government spend on war and the military every year? Here are some figures from the Office of Management and Budget for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Discretionary Federal Budget (tax money Congress is free to spend, as opposed to Trust Funds like Social Security and Medicare which are mandated).[ii] 

Program

• Military—$920.8 billion

• Department of Defense (DOD)—$848.8 billion

• Nuclear weapons—$31.6 billion

• Foreign military aid—$29.5 billion

• Other (intelligence, etc.)—$10.9 billion 

• Veterans’ Benefits—$135.4 billion

• Homeland Security—$51.1 billion

• Federal Law Enforcement—$31.5 billion

Total Militarized Spending—$1.14 trillion (62% of the Discretionary Federal Budget)

On the other hand, non-militarized federal spending (Health, Education, Housing and Community, Transportation, Energy and the Environment, Science, International Affairs, Unemployment and Labor, Food and Agriculture) totaled only $685 billion (38% of the Discretionary Federal Budget)

And it gets worse. Early in 2024, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that will increase the DOD budget to $895 billion; and the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill that would total $923 billion for the Pentagon.[iii] And the Trump/MAGA shaped Project 2025 (Presidential Transition Project) at the Heritage Foundation calls for a massive military expansion above and beyond these exorbitant numbers with severe cuts to social programs.[iv]

U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined.[v] The Sustainable Defense Task Force of the Center for International Policy has conservatively identified cuts to the military budget that would result in savings of more than $ 1.2 trillion over the next decade. The Task Force report, Sustainable Defense: More Security, Less Spending, also makes the case for a more expansive view of national security: 

The most urgent threats to U.S. security are non-military, and the proper national security tools ought to be non-military as well. The threats include climate change, which undermines frontiers, leads to unpredictable extreme weather, and fosters uncontrollable migration…global disease epidemics, which pose societal risks to all nations; income and wealth gaps, which foster insecurity and conflict.[vi]

Why does the United States spend so much money on war and the military? There are three major explanations: 1) an obsession with world dominance and empire,[vii] 2) the institutional and organizational interests of the military-industrial-congressional complex,[viii] and 3) cultural narratives such as American Exceptionalism, nationalism, and patriotism.[ix] These structural and cultural forces make it difficult to challenge excessive military spending, but a large-scale progressive peace and justice movement (of which KNOW is a part) must take on this difficult task. As the National Priorities Project argues, we must fight “for a U.S. federal budget that prioritizes peace, economic security and shared prosperity.”[x]

[Written by Ronald C. Kramer, 2024]

Sources:

[i] James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. Yale University Press (2011).

[ii] These data are from The National Priorities Project, “The Warfare State: How Funding for Militarism Compromises Our Welfare” (May 24, 2023). https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2023/warfare-state-how-funding-militarism-compromises-our-welfare/

[iii] Lindsay Koshgarian, “There’s No Good Reason to be Spending Nearly $1 trillion on Our Military Budget.” In These Times (July 16, 2024). https://inthesetimes.com/article/military-budget-contracts-ukraine-gaza

[iv] Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes, “Project 2025: A New Pax Romana.” (July 28, 2024) Tom Dispatch. https://tomdispatch.com/project-2025/

[v] National Priorities Project, “U.S. Military Spending vs. the World” https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/

[vi] https://static.wixstatic.com/ugd/fb6c59_59a295c780634ce88d077c391066db9a.pdf

[vii] Andrew Bacevich, Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War.  Metropolitan Books (2010).

[viii] Christian Sorensen, Understanding the War Industry. Clarity Press (2020).

[ix] Carl Boggs, Origins of the Warfare State: World War II and the Transformation of American Politics. Routledge (2017).

[x] The National Priorities Project (May 24, 2023).