War Taxes Are Making You Poorer

Both Trump and Harris have nothing to say about it

Global military spending, already over $2.4 trillion a year, is out of control. Not only has the U.S., the world’s top military spender, increased nearly 10 percent over the past ten years, but now countries like Japan are making commitments to spend more on their militaries. Much more.

The line item expenses are an endless 30-car pileup of “threats”: from China, Russia, the ongoing wars in the Middle East with Iran and its supposed proxies, Hamas, the Ukraine War, North Korea, Islamist-based threats in other regions like Africa, cyber threats and the new threats in space, transnational criminal organizations, drones, climate change, looming conflict in the Arctic. But no matter how much the Pentagon spends, none of these issues are ever resolved. The only security that results is financial security for the military.

The most recent example came on Friday, when Japan’s Ministry of Defense requested a record $58.7 billion budget. The request is part of the country’s plan to increase its military spending by over 60 percent in five years. Once a defeated World War II enemy that had a highly controlled and domestic “self defense” force, Japan is now joining the new Cold War with China. It’s an audacious move given Japan’s declining economy. (Tokyo had previously held its military spending steady for over a decade due to its economic struggles.) This is basically the playbook for countless militaries: more for me, less for thee.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), last year military spending went up in every geographical region on Earth for the first time in nearly a decade, with major increases in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Oceania.,  SIPRI attributed the record global military budget of $2.4 trillion last year to the long list of “threats.” What I see is that the national security establishment that failed to prevent these wars and crises in the first place, far from facing accountability,  gets exactly what it wants. The U.S., already the world’s top military spender, increased its military spending by 9.9 percent from 2014 to last year, SIPRI says, a never ending upward climb that took place in every administration from Obama to Biden, and despite “ending” a war in Afghanistan.

There’s no pushback from our political leaders. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris criticized the country’s military spending levels in their convention speeches this year. Recall that in his first convention speech in 2016, Trump bitterly condemned the military machine:

“After fifteen years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before…The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them.”

In his convention speech this year, Trump does acknowledge that “We’re in a planet of war,” but he has nothing to say about the military money pit and how little we have to show for it.

Kamala Harris has said nothing about military spending. Nothing.

As the global war on terror formally ended in 2018, an endless parade of generals told  Congress that wartime spending levels remained necessary for “deterrence.” How did that work out? 

Anti-missile systems, nuclear umbrellas, the Space Force, artificial intelligence, information warfare, drones, global bases and war games, the “next” generation of you-fill-in-the blank; on and on the Pentagon spends. And for what? Having the largest military in the world didn’t deter Putin from invading Ukraine in the first place. $3.8 billion dollars in military aid each year to Israel didn’t deter Hamas from invading or Hezbollah and Houthis from attacking. A constant Middle East presence doesn’t prevent “Iran-backed” militias aligned from killing three American troops in Jordan, or dozens of other attacks on U.S. troops in the region. 

What we need is to deter the military, from dictating to the public yet another failed and costly national security strategy. That’s supposed to be what politicians are for (civilian control of the military and all that), but if the 2024 presidential election is any indication, they aren’t much interested in controlling anything. Former President Trump continues to advocate for keeps calling for increased defense spending among NATO member countries, suggesting this would alleviate financial pressure on the American taxpayer. In practice, though, there’s no evidence that bigger allied military budgets result in reduced U.S. military spending. Nor that it ever would.

“Even with Japan’s new commitments, the United States should expect its defense burden in the Indo-Pacific to remain largely unchanged for some time,” a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis says of Japan’s spike in military spending. That’s always the case: The “threat,” whoever they are, spend more, we spend more in response, and nothing ever ends or is resolved.

—Edited by William M. Arkin