Articles by: William D Hartung

Pentagon by gregwest98 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell

On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were — or at least should have been — stunning, even by the standards of a department that’s used to getting what it wants when it wants it. The new Pentagon budget would come in at $842 billion. That’s the highest level requested since World[Read More…]

by 27/03/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Going Down the Military Drain

Going Down the Military Drain

Late last month, President Biden signed a bill that clears the way for $858 billion in Pentagon spending and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy in 2023.  That’s far more than Washington anted up for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or even during the peak years of the Cold War. In fact, the $80 billion increase[Read More…]

by 18/01/2023 Comments are Disabled World
A Hall of Shame of U.S. Weapons Sales

A Hall of Shame of U.S. Weapons Sales

Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total global weapons market and there’s nothing new about that. It has, in fact, been the top arms dealer in every year but one for the past three decades. And it’s a remarkably[Read More…]

by 18/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Pentagon by gregwest98 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

Contractors Cash in as Congress Adds Billions to the Pentagon Budget

by Julia Gledhill & William D. Hartung Congress has spoken when it comes to next year’s Pentagon budget and the results, if they weren’t so in line with past practices, should astonish us all. The House of Representatives voted to add $37 billion and the Senate $45 billion to the administration’s already humongous request for “national defense,” a staggering figure that includes both the[Read More…]

by 12/09/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Pentagon by gregwest98 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

America’s $1.4 Trillion “National Security” Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe

This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the[Read More…]

by 08/07/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Ukraine and the Profits of War

Ukraine and the Profits of War

by William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: U.S. arms contractors. Even before[Read More…]

by 18/04/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Washington Should Think Twice Before Launching a New Cold War

Washington Should Think Twice Before Launching a New Cold War

by William D. Hartung, Taylor Giorno and Nick Cleveland-Stout A growing chorus of pundits and policymakers has suggested that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks the beginning of a new Cold War. If so, that means trillions of additional dollars for the Pentagon in the years to come coupled with a more aggressive military posture in every corner of the world. Before this country succumbs to calls for[Read More…]

by 23/03/2022 Comments are Disabled World
What a Waste! $778 Billion for the Pentagon and Still Counting

What a Waste! $778 Billion for the Pentagon and Still Counting

2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for. It can’t be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon. That department’s astronomical[Read More…]

by 03/02/2022 Comments are Disabled World
      Baz Ratner/Reuters US troops in Afghanistan, June 2011

How Corporations Won the War on Terror

The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War project. The question of who has benefited most from such an orgy of military spending has, unfortunately, received far less attention. Corporations large and small have left the[Read More…]

by 21/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales)

America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales)

When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America. In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for[Read More…]

by 25/05/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Shrinking the Pentagon

Shrinking the Pentagon

Co-Written by William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger Will the Biden Administration Dare Cut Military Spending? Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes to how he handles[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 Comments are Disabled World
How to Stuff the Middle East With Weaponry

How to Stuff the Middle East With Weaponry

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are[Read More…]

by 14/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Defunding America’s Wars at Home and Abroad

Defunding America’s Wars at Home and Abroad

Think of it as a war system that’s been coming home for years. The murder of George Floyd has finally shone a spotlight on the need to defund local police departments and find alternatives that provide more genuine safety and security. The same sort of spotlight needs soon to be shone on the American military machine and the wildly well-funded[Read More…]

by 08/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
 Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection?

 Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection?

Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he’s spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad: “The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment.[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
America’s Arms Sales Addiction

America’s Arms Sales Addiction

  The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as[Read More…]

by 18/11/2019 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
A Trillion-Dollar Future Pentagon Budget?

A Trillion-Dollar Future Pentagon Budget?

Co-Written by William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger For the Pentagon, happy days are here again (if they ever left). With a budget totaling more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high, even as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come. With such enormous sums now locked[Read More…]

by 26/09/2019 1 comment World
The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids 

The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids 

  When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the[Read More…]

by 17/07/2019 1 comment World
 Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget

 Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget

Co-Written By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities, an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will, in fact, be one of the largest military budgets in American history, topping peak levels reached during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And keep[Read More…]

by 08/05/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Weapons For Anyone: Donald Trump and the Art of the Arms Deal 

Weapons For Anyone: Donald Trump and the Art of the Arms Deal 

It’s one of those stories of the century that somehow never gets treated that way. For an astounding 25 of the past 26 years, the United States has been theleading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolisticfashion. Its major weapons-producers, including Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, regularly pour the latest in high-tech arms and munitions into the most explosive[Read More…]

by 02/04/2018 1 comment Imperialism
Castle Romeo (yield 11 Mt) - an atmospheric nuclear test carried out by the U.S. on 1 March 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshal Islands. (Photo: The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization/cc/flickr)

 Massive Overkill : Brought To You By The Nuclear-Industrial Complex 

[This piece has been updated and adapted from William D. Hartung’s “Nuclear Politics” in Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation, edited by Helen Caldicott and just published by the New Press.] Until recently, few of us woke up worrying about the threat of nuclear war. Such dangers seemed like Cold War relics, associated with outmoded practices like building fallout shelters[Read More…]

by 15/11/2017 1 comment Imperialism
There’s No Business Like The Arms Business

There’s No Business Like The Arms Business

When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it.  Not so with the global arms trade.  It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out. It’s not that no one writes about[Read More…]

by 26/07/2016 1 comment Imperialism