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Somehow, when it comes to Congress and the mainstream media, the true strangeness of the Pentagon budget always is missing in action. Despite arguments about the small things, just about everyone accepts that the United States must have a monstrous, all-powerful military and a military budget beyond compare (beyond, in fact, all comprehension). And nothing seems to truly dent that sensibility. Somehow, the fact that the Pentagon has been utterly incapable of winning -- yes, actually winning! -- a war that matters (or even half matters) since World War II never fully seems to penetrate, not even on the 20th anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq, America's own Ukraine. (Only former president George W. Bush, who launched that invasion, gets it, however subliminally.)
The lesson is all too clear: the more that's spent on our military and the more potentially destructive it gets, the less it's actually able to accomplish. Despite all but obliterating North Korea from the air, it couldn't beat that country's military (aided by China's) in the early 1950s; it lost disastrously to distinctly under-armed rebels in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s; and did so again more recently to the half-baked forces of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The response of Congress to such disasters in this century: rewarding the Pentagon with yet more barrels of money.
Think of it this way: in a world where billionaires are running rampant and grabbing ever more wealth, the Pentagon is going to outdo them all and, if nothing changes in the coming years, as TomDispatch regular William Hartung notes today, become the world's first trillionaire. Imagine that! Something that might once have seemed inconceivable is now almost unstoppable, a future trillion-dollar military budget. And with that in mind, let Pentagon expert Hartung introduce you to that imposing trillionaire-in-the-making that has had just one great success in the twenty-first century: taking Congress captive. Tom
Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry
And We're Paying the Price (and What a Price It Is!)
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 War II, except for the peak moment of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when the United States had nearly 200,000 troops deployed in those two countries.
$1 Trillion for the Pentagon?
It's important to note that the $842 billion proposed price tag for the Pentagon next year will only be the beginning of what taxpayers will be asked to shell out in the name of "defense." If you add in nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy and small amounts of military spending spread across other agencies, you're already at a total military budget of $886 billion. And if last year is any guide, Congress will add tens of billions of dollars extra to that sum, while yet more billions will go for emergency aid to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia's brutal invasion. In short, we're talking about possible total spending of well over $950 billion on war and preparations for more of it -- within striking distance, in other words, of the $1 trillion mark that hawkish officials and pundits could only dream about a few short years ago.
The ultimate driver of that enormous spending spree is a seldom-commented-upon strategy of global military overreach, including 750 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 -- no, that is not a typo -- countries (a count offered by Brown University's Costs of War Project). Worse yet, the Biden administration only seems to be preparing for more of the same. Its National Defense Strategy, released late last year, manages to find the potential for conflict virtually everywhere on the planet and calls for preparations to win a war with Russia and/or China, fight Iran and North Korea, and continue to wage a global war on terror, which, in recent times, has been redubbed "countering violent extremism." Think of such a strategic view of the world as the exact opposite of the "diplomacy first" approach touted by President Joe Biden and his team during his early months in office. Worse yet, it's more likely to serve as a recipe for conflict than a blueprint for peace and security.
In an ideal world, Congress would carefully scrutinize that Pentagon budget request and rein in the department's overly ambitious, counterproductive plans. But the past two years suggest that, at least in the short term, exactly the opposite approach lies ahead. After all, lawmakers added $25 billion and $45 billion, respectively, to the Pentagon's budget requests for 2022 and 2023, mostly for special-interest projects based in the states or districts of key members of Congress. And count on it, hawks on Capitol Hill will push for similar increases this year, too.
How the Arms Industry Captures Congress
The $45 billion by which Congress increased the Pentagon's budget request last year was among the highest levels on record. Add-ons included five extra F-35 jet fighters and a $4.7 billion boost to the shipbuilding budget. Other congressional additions included 10 HH-60W helicopters, four EC-37 aircraft, and 16 additional C-130J aircraft (at a cost of $1.7 billion). There were also provisions that prevented the Pentagon from retiring a wide array of older aircraft and ships -- including B-1 bombers, F-22 and F-15 combat aircraft, aerial refueling planes, C-130 and C-40 transport aircraft, E-3 electronic warfare planes, HH-60W helicopters, and the relatively new but disastrous Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), referred to by detractors as "little crappy ships."
The lobbying effort to prevent the Navy from retiring those problem-plagued ships is a case study of all that's wrong with the Pentagon budget process as it works its way through Congress. As the New York Times noted in a detailed analysis of the checkered history of the LCS, it was originally imagined as a multi-mission vessel capable of detecting submarines, destroying anti-ship mines, and doing battle with the kinds of small craft used by countries like Iran. Once produced, however, it proved inept at every one of those tasks, while experiencing repeated engine problems that made it hard even to deploy. Add to that the Navy's view that the LCS would be useless in a potential naval clash with China and it was decided to retire nine of them, even though some had only served four to six years of a potential 25-year lifetime.
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