You Decide

… that we simply can’t afford it?

The numbers are almost too outrageous to be believed, but the hard truth is that these days the United States spends as much on its military as every other country in the world combined does. This is despite the fact that Americans account for less than 5 percent of the world’s population.

As of mid-2008, the defense budget is estimated at $623 billion, but this may yet increase if more emergency funding is requested for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Already it accounts for more than half of the federal government’s discretionary funds and is the biggest single expense in the federal budget, costing more than mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

With dollar amounts adjusted to allow for inflation, the United States is now spending more on its military than at any time since World War II, including at the peak of both the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The increase in defense spending in the past year alone (a leap of at least $50 billion) is almost the same size as the entire $62.6 billion federal budget for education. And, unlike in the past, the government hasn’t levied a war tax to pay for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, relying instead on deficit financing. It is no surprise, then, that the projected deficit for 2008 is more than $400 billion.

Amazingly, this $623 billion total doesn’t even account for all our military spending. You can add to it a large proportion of the Department of Homeland Security’s $46.4 billion budget, a comparatively small $9.4 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (which is responsible for America’s nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors, but is financed through the Department of Energy’s budget) and $86.7 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which looks after our troops after the Defense Department is finished with them. Plus there is extra funding for certain secret services, other military medical expenses and so on.

Even without these additions, our defense spending dwarfs that of our friends and foes alike, in terms of both total cash amounts and per-capita spending. For example, our nearest competitors in terms of dollar amounts — the United Kingdom, France, China and Japan — each spend about a 10th of the U.S. total on defense. And the difference in per-capita spending is often even more striking, with the United States spending more than $2,000 per head of population in 2008, compared with Russia’s $262, Iran’s $110 and China’s official total of just $30. Even if you subscribe to the view that this last amount is an underestimate, doubling or quadrupling it doesn’t make much difference when compared with the U.S. figure.

And the numbers keep going up. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost us $850 billion (as of June 2008) in direct funding, but that figure is likely to be only a fraction of the final bill. One recent study, which factored in additional expenses such as long-term medical and disability bills for returning veterans, the price of replacing military equipment (which is used up and worn out much faster during active operations), and other costs to the U.S. economy, such as the growing budget deficit and the surges in oil prices the war in Iraq has caused, put the figure at closer to $3 trillion. That adds up to $26,200 for every single American household — and the study’s authors also say that their figure is an extremely conservative estimate.

Can you afford it?