The Pentagon’s Budget Follies Come at a High Price
by Julia Gledhill and William D. Hartung The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11th, and the news was depressingly familiar: $895 billion for the Pentagon…
Pentagon
Cutting the Pentagon Down to Size
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom…
The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You)
2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s…
Imagining a Progressive Pentagon
A progressive Pentagon? Talk about an oxymoron! The Pentagon continues to grow and surge with ever larger budgets, ever more expansive missions (for example, a Space Force to dominate the heavens and yet more bases in…
How A Simple USA Budget Reform Can Save A Million Human Lives in A Year
A simple reform of diverting some of the highly excessive and wasteful military budget to civilian and health priorities can achieve the highly desirable objective to saving about one million…
Throwing More Money at the Pentagon
by William D. Hartung and Julia Gledhill On June 3rd, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that lifted the government’s debt ceiling and capped some categories of government spending. The big winner was —…
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…
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful…
Can the Military-Industrial Complex Be Tamed?
Cutting the Pentagon Budget in Half Would Finally Force the Generals to Think My name is Bill Astore and I’m a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex (MIC). Sure, I…
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…
What It Means for Hunger to Burn Through the Pentagon’s Ranks
By any standard, the money the United States government pours into its military is simply overwhelming. Take the $858-billion defense spending authorization that President Biden signed into law last month. Not only…
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,…
A Military Rich in Dollars, Poor in People
The American military is now having trouble recruiting enough soldiers. According to the New York Times, its ranks are short thousands of entry-level troops and it’s on track to face the worst recruitment…
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…
Exorbitant military spending sacrifices public well-being
President Dwight Eisenhower gave his first major presidential speech, The Cross of Iron, on April 16, 1953. He laid out several important precepts guiding US conduct in world affairs as…
Top Gun: Maverick: The Pentagon Recruitment Drive
Hollywood, like the US press, has not been spared the influential hand of government. Under the mask of various projects, the defence establishment has sought to influence the narrative of…
World Military Expenditure Passes $2 Trillion For First Time, Finds SIPRI
The military spending of all nations combined set a new record in 2021, exceeding the $2 trillion mark for the first time ever, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)…
Will the Pentagon Budget Ever Shrink?
What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down? A Thought Experiment on the Military-Industrial Complex I have a question for you: What would it take in…
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…
Why It’s Time to Make Deep Cuts at the Pentagon
Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical…
Washington’s National Security Spending Follies
by Mandy Smithberger & William D. Hartung President Biden’s first Pentagon budget, released late last month, is staggering by any reasonable standard. At more than $750 billion for the Defense Department and…
Games the Pentagon plays
Modern warfare is waged with high-tech weapons. Each battle fought eats up loads of ammunition and modern weapons systems need spare parts and fuel. All this meaning that no military…
Why the Pentagon Budget Never Goes Down
Joe Biden's First 100 Days Were a Pentagon Prize The first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the…
Why Pentagon Weapons Programs Rarely Get Canceled Despite Major Problems
Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and…
More Money for the Pentagon in the Pandemic Moment?
This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans…
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…
National (In)Security and the Pentagon Budget
A Post-Coronavirus Economy Can No Longer Afford to Put the Pentagon First The inadequate response of both the federal and state governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating…
Robot Generals: Will They Make Better Decisions Than Humans — Or Worse?
With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known…
Extraterrestrial Fascinations: The Pentagon And UFOs
Conspiracies in the extraterrestrial department have always constituted the residue of superstition in a secular age. Chase away a Christ figure, or ward off God, and the mind still wanders,…
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