America's (Military) Shopping Addiction

It's no secret that the United States spends enormous amounts of money on its military. In June of this year, the U.S. Senate approved a military budget of $716 billion for 2019. The new budget passed with an 85-to-10 vote and is one of the most massive military budgets in the history of the world. Despite the rapid growth of the federal deficit, the United States is en route to spend $106 billion more on its defense than it did in 2017. Jumping up by 9.3 percent from 2017 to 2019, this raise is one of the most substantial budget increases in U.S. history.

Compared to the rest of the world, America spends dramatically more on its budget than any other country. In 2017, America alone spent more than the next seven countries combined. China, the second largest spender in the world, spent a modest $228 billion on its defenses—that's $382 billion less than the United States.

Proponents of increased spending claim that the defense budget is necessary to prevent other countries from attacking the United States, a belief in "spending for peace, not for war," but by expanding its military, America is actually doing the opposite: it's sending a signal to the world that it is preparing to go to war. William Hartung, director at the Center for International Policy in Washington D.C., stated "This is not only wasteful, it's dangerous: It tells other countries that the nuclear arms race is back on,"

Additionally, defense officials stated that the funds are necessary for military preparedness and crisis intervention, but as demonstrated by the disaster following the invasion of Iraq, critics doubt the assumption that the United States can use military force to solve international political problems at all. Shortly after the U.S. Budget was passed, President Trump urged European nations at a NATO summit in Brussels to similarly increase their military budget. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas publicly responded that "military spending will, however, not make our world any more secure... Instead, we urgently need more respect to the international rules and order,”

With the national deficit rapidly worsening, it's clear that the United States needs to spend less money, and at the very least, it needs to reallocate its money into more productive and lucrative investments such as the education and welfare of its citizens. How the government should reduce military spending is a controversial and confusing topic, but it doesn't need to be.

In 2015, the Pentagon requested an internal study be performed by the Defense Business Board in order to streamline their bureaucracy. The findings, outlined in this study, were that the Pentagon could save  $125 billion in administrative waste. The report revealed that the Pentagon was spending twenty-one percent of its $580 billion budget on unnecessary overhead such as accounting, human resources, logistics, and property management. Ironically, this meant that the salaries supplied by the U.S. defense establishment and the Pentagon had become America's most extensive social program. Mckinsey and Company stated that the investigative report laid out “a clear path” for the Pentagon to save $125 billion over the next five years.

In addition to streamlining the bloated bureaucracy of the Pentagon, the United States could also save significant money through a strategy of restraint in foreign affairs. By remaining out of international troubles, the United States could reduce the necessity of military power and create reductions in spending. It's no surprise that a less active military is also a cheaper military.