Post Tagged with: "Military Spending"

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
Pentagon by gregwest98 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy Drives Record Military Spending

More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the U.S. Army War College and many other military institutions across the world. A passage from it describing an ultimatum Athens gave a weaker power has stayed with[Read More…]

by 16/01/2023 Comments are Disabled World
The Nightmare of Military Spending on an Overheating Planet

The Nightmare of Military Spending on an Overheating Planet

A Big Carbon Bootprint and a Giant Sucking Sound in the National Budget On October 1st, the U.S. military will start spending the more than $800 billion Congress is going to provide it with in fiscal year 2023. And that whopping sum will just be the beginning. According to the calculations of Pentagon expert William Hartung, funding for various intelligence agencies, the[Read More…]

by 23/09/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Costs of War (to You) – Where So Much of Our Money Really Went

The Costs of War (to You) – Where So Much of Our Money Really Went

As a Navy spouse of 10 years and counting, my life offers an up-close view of our country’s priorities when it comes to infrastructure and government spending. Recently, my husband, a naval officer currently serving with the Department of Energy, spent a week with colleagues touring a former nuclear testing site about 65 miles north of Las Vegas. Between 1951 and 1957, the U.S.[Read More…]

by 22/11/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Why Is U.S. Military Spending Increasing to New, Outlandish Levels?

Why Is U.S. Military Spending Increasing to New, Outlandish Levels?

Although critics of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan to increase funding for U.S. education, healthcare, and action against climate catastrophe say the United States can’t afford it, there are no such qualms about ramping up funding for the U.S. military. This May, the Pentagon asked Congress to fund a $715 billion budget for Fiscal 2022—an increase of $10[Read More…]

by 25/10/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Social Security Versus National Security – Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?

Social Security Versus National Security – Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?

These days my conversations with friends about the new administration go something like this: “Biden’s doing better than I thought he would.” “Yeah. Vaccinations, infrastructure, acknowledging racism in policing. A lot of pieces of the Green New Deal, without calling it that. The child subsidies. It’s kind of amazing.” “But on the military–” “Yeah, same old, same old.” As my friends and[Read More…]

by 16/06/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Photo credit: ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

Squad & Co: Unite as a Block to Downsize Biden’s Military Budget

Written by Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd Imagine this scenario: A month before the vote on the federal budget, progressives in Congress declared, “We’ve studied President Biden’s proposed $753 billion military budget, an increase of $13 billion from Trump’s already inflated budget, and we can’t, in good conscience, support this.” Now that would be a show stopper, particularly if they[Read More…]

by 03/05/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Amidst pandemic and economic sufferings, 2020’s global military spending reached highest level in decades

Amidst pandemic and economic sufferings, 2020’s global military spending reached highest level in decades

Military spending around the world has increased to unprecedented level since 1988 despite economic suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the U.S. was ahead of all the countries again, finds Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2020, the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In 2020, nations were struggling to support their economies through the times[Read More…]

by 27/04/2021 Comments are Disabled World