Is Excessive Pentagon Spending Stealing Our Future?

Seventy years ago this spring, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave an extraordinary address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors entitled “The Chance for Peace.” It was an appeal to chart a new path for U.S.-Soviet relations. It also underscored the devastating domestic costs of growing Pentagon budgets:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Sadly, Eisenhower’s observation is as true now as it was when he made his speech to the newspaper editors in 1953. Spending on the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy is slated to receive at least $886 billion for Fiscal Year 2024 under the terms of the recent budget deal, that would have been unimaginable in Eisenhower’s day. The $886 billion planned for next year is more than twice what was spent for military purposes when Eisenhower gave his speech, and nearly $300 billion more than America spent at the height of the Korean war, adjusted for inflation.

An important factor in sustaining massive Pentagon budgets is the notion that spending on weapons has unique economic benefits. But a new study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University demonstrates that this is not the case. In fact, excess Pentagon spending drains public investment from addressing the urgent needs of the present, from public health to housing to environmental protection. Perhaps even more importantly, it undermines the capacity of America to seed the industries of the future, from the provision of modern, sustainable infrastructure to the development of green energy sources. And it is the least effective way to create jobs compared to any other expenditure of government funds.

The job gap between military spending and alternatives is stunning. Other uses of the same funds produce anywhere from 9% to 250% more jobs than throwing more money at the Pentagon. Spending on education and health care far outstrip Pentagon spending in jobs per amount spent. The differentials with infrastructure development and solar and wind energy are smaller, but these activities can have huge long-term economic and environmental benefits that will not be provided by devoting over half of the federal discretionary budget to military and security-related activities.

Overspending on the Pentagon also distorts America’s ability to pursue what the Biden administration has described as a “diplomacy first” foreign policy. As the new Costs of War study notes, the Pentagon takes the lion’s share of the U.S. government’s discretionary budget, compared to just 2% for the Department of State. And the Pentagon employs over 746,000 civilian employees versus 12,825 at the State Department. Ultimately, elevating diplomacy is a policy decision, but the vast gulf in resources between the Pentagon and the State Department will make it harder to make that shift.

There is much more to consider in the Costs of War report, but one of its most important contributions is its observation that there is an alternative economic future to be had by moving some funding from the Pentagon to urgently needed activities like green energy development. An earlier Costs of War study demonstrated that shifting $125 billion a year from the Pentagon to green energy development would yield a net increase of 250,000 jobs nationwide. In other words, privileging the Pentagon over other needed public investments is actually costing jobs in the long-term.

Skeptics will no doubt argue that spending large sums on the Pentagon to address current challenges to U.S. security is necessary regardless of the economic impacts. But as I point out in a new report for the Quincy Institute, a new, more restrained approach to security could save $1.3 trillion or more over the next decade while providing a more effective defense of the U.S. and its allies. That new approach would abandon America’s overly ambitious “cover the globe” military strategy, which is backed up with 750 overseas military bases and counter-terror operations in at least 85 countries; take a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by Russia and China while relying on allies to do more in their own defense; roll back the Pentagon’s $2 trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles in line with a “deterrence only” nuclear strategy; pursue diplomacy as the primary tool for curbing nuclear proliferation; and cut back on the department’s cadre of over 500,000 private contractors. I will elaborate on these points in more detail in a future column. But the bottom line is that America can be safer and more prosperous by spending less on the Pentagon and more on the urgent needs of the present and the most promising industries of the future.