Meaningful Pentagon Cuts Will Require Rethinking What ‘Defense’ Means
In 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government spent $916 billion on “defense,” which was more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, France, and Japan. On the face of it, that is an astonishing sum for a country that is at peace and faces no plausible military threats anywhere near its borders. And since military spending accounts for about 13 percent of the federal budget, it is an obvious target for anyone who wants to reduce the annual deficit and control the ever-expanding national debt.
The 2024 Republican platform nevertheless provided little reason to hope that Donald Trump would be inclined to curb military spending. Its “twenty promises” included a Trumpian all-caps commitment to “STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD.” That language defied reality, implying that the U.S. military, despite the enormous resources devoted to it, was not already “THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD.” And whatever “STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE” might mean, it certainly did not imply that Trump was contemplating spending cuts. In this context, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to reduce military spending, assuming it amounts to more than a reallocation that has no net effect on the total, is a pleasant surprise.
Hegseth “has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years,” The New York Times reports. But the story notes that Hegseth’s memo “listed some 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.” The Times adds that “one senior official said the cuts appeared likely to be part of an effort to focus Pentagon money on programs that the Trump administration favors, instead of actually cutting the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget.”
That’s a pretty confusing summary, since it implies that cutting “8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years” somehow would leave total spending unchanged. But taken at face value, such cuts would be substantial, amounting to nearly $1 trillion in cumulative savings over five years and a decrease in annual spending of nearly $300 billion by the end of that period, ultimately reducing the total budget by about one-third.
It’s not clear whether that is what Hegseth actually has in mind. But if so, the country’s legitimate defense needs surely could be met with a military budget of half a trillion or so. Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly equivalent to what the Pentagon was spending in the early 1980s, a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In light of those developments, one might argue that an even bigger reduction is justified. But that would require reimagining the role of the U.S. military based on a narrower understanding of national security.
Hegseth has signaled that the Trump administration may be inclined to do that. “Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the securi
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