Follow us on social

Shutterstock_640283920-scaled-e1641332560191

Another gratuitous defense budget highlights absurdity in US priorities

Throwing more billions of dollars at the Pentagon (that it didn’t even ask for) won’t do anything to vaccinate the world from COVID-19.

Analysis | Military Industrial Complex

While we were cursing the old year and steeling ourselves for the new, the status quo was replicating itself last week when President Biden signed a record-high $778 billion National Defense Authorization Act into law, preserving the new weapons programs of the Trump era and going well beyond even the administration’s initial request of $715 billion.

The U.S. defense industry has come to seem like part of the scenery — an unshakeable force on the global economic and political scene. A vote against the NDAA by a member of Congress, in terms of its actual prospects for effecting change in U.S. policy, remains purely symbolic. The inability of legislators to mount even a moderate challenge to the power of defense companies to determine U.S. policy should be absolutely chilling to anybody who believes that the most consequential problems of human society can be addressed by changing policy. For a body whose members receive tens of millions of dollars in contributions from the defense industry every year, there can be no deviation from this, the most well-funded bipartisan consensus.

The familiar refrain is that the defense industry is a jobs program — the only such program that consistently receives substantial federal funding, despite clear evidence that it is among the worst industries at creating jobs.

The consensus that places funding the military above any other policy priority exists independent from any assessment of actual defense needs, too. The United States has shown that it can make the most and the biggest planes and bombs, but it cannot or will not address a pandemic that — in its scope, effects, and the demands it places on U.S. healthcare facilities —resembles the possible consequences of a biological or chemical weapon. 

U.S. companies rapidly produced the COVID vaccine and treatments by putting public money toward a record jump in private profits. But without making the vaccine available for manufacture elsewhere in the world by breaking the patents held by these companies, the administration doomed its own efforts to control the pandemic and showed its unwillingness, or its inability, to prioritize basic security over private profit.

That’s a profound weakness in a world where other states have proven much more effective at coordinating their COVID responses to protect their populations and serve their political interests. The status quo of maxed-out defense spending as the priority for U.S. policymakers shortchanges American workers and the U.S.’s own interests for the sake of the bottom line.

It’s not too late to change course. Legislators taking a less destructive approach to future defense budgets can choose to cancel some of the unnecessary programs funded by this year’s budget. These include the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, a nearly $300 billion commitment to replace all land-based nuclear missiles in the United States. Experts agree that these weapons are a profound vulnerability for the United States, increasing the risk of nuclear war without contributing to the U.S.’s ability to defend itself. That money could vaccinate the entire world against COVID — six times.

Another year defined by the suffering and uncertainty of life during a global pandemic has ended. In 2022, we can lift the curse of COVID with even moderate shifts in U.S. spending priorities. Let’s make this the last year defined by a crisis we have the tools to prevent.


Image: zimmytws via shutterstock.com
Analysis | Military Industrial Complex
Kim Jong Un
Top photo credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the construction site of the Ragwon County Offshore Farm, North Korea July 13, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS

Kim Jong Un is nuking up and playing hard to get

Asia-Pacific

President Donald Trump’s second term has so far been a series of “shock and awe” campaigns both at home and abroad. But so far has left North Korea untouched even as it arms for the future.

The president dramatically broke with precedent during his first term, holding two summits as well as a brief meeting at the Demilitarized Zone with the North’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, engagement crashed and burned in Hanoi. The DPRK then pulled back, essentially severing contact with both the U.S. and South Korea.

keep readingShow less
Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one
Top photo credit: U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to guests at the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one

Middle East

If accounts of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities this past month are to be believed, the president’s initial impulse to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict failed to survive the prodding of hawkish advisers, chiefly U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Michael Kurilla.

With Kurilla, an Iran hawk and staunch ally of both the Israeli government and erstwhile national security adviser Mike Waltz, set to leave office this summer, advocates of a more restrained foreign policy may understandably feel like they are out of the woods.

keep readingShow less
Putin Trump
Top photo credit: Vladimir Putin (Office of the President of the Russian Federation) and Donald Trump (US Southern Command photo)

How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire

Europe

In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.