Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending — David Swanson

It's not straightforward. David Swanson explains the nuance.

Counterpunch
Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending
David Swanson

America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East — Michael Hudson

The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control o Near Eastern oil as a buttress o the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down. 

I sat in on discussions of this policy as it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.) 

The media and public discussion have diverted attention from this strategy by floundering speculation that President Trump did it, except to counter the (non-)threat of impeachment with a wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or simply to surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome. The actual context for the neocon’s action was the balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy....

Michael Hudson as his best.

The Vineyard of the Saker
America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East

Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Thomas Spoehr — Why the U.S. Military Is In Serious Trouble

The report notes that the United States now faces five rising challenges—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism—yet has fewer military forces than at any time since the end of World War II. “Simply put,” it observes, “the United States needs a larger force than it has today if it is to meet the objectives of the strategy.”...

Message: The US needs to spend more on military — a lot more.

The National Interest
Why the U.S. Military Is In Serious Trouble

Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr (ret.) iDdirector of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense

Jason Ditz — Russia’s Military Spending Declines; US Now a Third of Global Spending

Worldwide military spending was slightly up over the last year, with the US amounting to more than a third (35%) of global military spending.

AntiWar
Russia’s Military Spending Declines; US Now a Third of Global Spending

Jason Ditz

Eric Zuesse — Trump Now Increases ‘Defense’ Budget 37% Above Obama’s

The Washington Post headlined on January 26th, “Trump plans to ask for $716 billion for national defense in 2019 — a major increase”, and reported that when President Trump had entered the White House in January 2017, the ‘Defense’ budget was $521 billion, but that President Trump will propose in his upcoming State-of-the-Union speech, a 2019 ‘Defense’ budget of $716 billion, which, if it becomes law, would mean a 37% increase, above Obama’s last Pentagon budget (for 2017).

This is in line with President Trump’s recently announced strategic change, away from Obama’s military budget, which was focused mainly against radical Islamic terrorism, now to target, instead, mainly Russia and China, and, secondarily, Iran and North Korea. As CBS News summarized on January 20th, “There is a major change in U.S. military strategy. On Friday [January 19th], more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said terrorism is no longer the No. 1 priority. … Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis’ top priority.”

Where is the money going to come from? (rhetorical question). Growth stimulated by the Trump tax cuts. (Trump economic team).

Should make for some interesting politics in a country where the conventional wisdom is that everything needs to be paid for (even though that is a false belief).

Washington's Blog
Trump Now Increases ‘Defense’ Budget 37% Above Obama’s
Eric Zuesse

Reuters — Senate backs massive increase in military spending

"Affordability"? No problem.

Reuters
Senate backs massive increase in military spending

The Hill News
Senate passes $700B defense bill
Jordain Carney

Also

One of the most controversial proposals put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign was a pledge to make tuition free at public colleges and universities. Critics from both parties howled that the pie-in-the-sky idea would bankrupt the country. Where, after all, would the money come from?

Such concerns were brushed aside on Monday night, as the Senate overwhelmingly approved an $80 billion annual increase in military spending, enough to have fully satisfied Sanders’ campaign promise....

To put that in further perspective: if the package becomes law, U.S. military spending would exceed the total spending of its next 10 rivals put together, going off of 2016 military spending estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Put another way, with a $700 billion military budget, the U.S. would be spending more than three times as much as China on its military, and ten times as much as Russia.

According to SIPRI, the U.S. already accounts for more than a third of all military spending:The share of world military expenditure of the 15 states with the highest spending in 2016. (Credit, SIPRI)

Or, to think about it another way, with $80 billion a year you could make public colleges and universities in America tuition-free. In fact, Sanders’ proposal was only estimated to cost the federal government $47 billion per year....

The Intercept
The Senate’s Military Spending Increase Alone Is Enough to Make Public College Free
Alex Emmons

Colby Goodman and Taner Bertuna — Debunking Myths that Fuel Irresponsible U.S. Defense Policy

As President Trump continues to authorize record-breaking U.S. arms deals to Saudi Arabia and many other countries around the world and propose major increases in Pentagon spending, he is positioning himself to claim wins on two of his campaign promises: build a military that is “gonna be so strong nobody’s gonna mess with us,” and increase U.S. jobs. According to a relatively new book, however, it is critical that Americans question these increases as they may not help improve U.S. security or the U.S. economy. They are also likely to increase U.S. corruption.

LobeLog
Debunking Myths that Fuel Irresponsible U.S. Defense Policy
Colby Goodman, director of the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy where he leads research and analysis on U.S. foreign security assistance around the world, and Taner Bertuna, Security Assistance Monitor

Zaid Jilani — Neoconservatives Declare War on Donald Trump

With Trump’s ascendancy, it’s possible that the parties will re-orient their views on war and peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards greater support for war.

Good article. The battle lines are being drawn, people are switching sides of the aisle, and green ammunition is pouring in.

The Intercept
Neoconservatives Declare War on Donald Trump

Zaid Jilani

Tom Engelhardt — It’s a $cam! — The American Way of War in the Twenty-First Century

In other words, in the post-9/11 years, “reconstruction” and “war” have really been euphemisms for what, in other countries, we would recognize as a massive system of corruption.

TomDispatch
It’s a $cam! — The American Way of War in the Twenty-First Century
Tom Engelhardt

Daniel L. Davis — Increasing U.S. Defense Spending: When Addition is Subtraction

In an attempt to bolster their military cred among conservative voters, many of the Republican candidates at last Tuesday’s debate in Milwaukee tried to outdo one another in supporting the Defense Department. None of the candidates gave much more than superficial examples of how they’d strengthen the military, but there was one specific concept about which most were energetic: the need for an increase in spending. It would seem obvious that the nation’s military apparatus would be stronger if Congress increased the Department of Defense (DoD)’s budget. Counterintuitively, however, unless significant reforms are implemented, increasing the budget might actually degrade our ability to secure American interests.…

But the military’s declining effectiveness isn’t primarily a factor of shrinking budgets. It is how the DoD mismanages the money it does have. There are two major ways this mismanagement has manifested itself in recent years.

First is the sometimes spectacular failure of DoD’s acquisition systems. Each Service has been egregiously guilty of mismanagement and outright failure to produce new and effective warfighting technology.…

However, as bad as the financial mismanagement has been, there is a second major failure that continues to hamper America’s national defense capabilities: bloated military overhead and archaic organizational structures.…

The US is focused on building an offensive forces as an empire must. The potential adversaries of the US named in military policy are Russia and China, both of which spend a fraction of what the US does. But their focus is defensive, countering each expensive iteration toward offense that the US makes. An offense has to win. A defense just has to deter by making it too costly to attack to be worthwhile trying. So Russia ad China need to spend much less to accomplish their objective of deterrence. They just need to spend smarter.

The National Interest
Increasing U.S. Defense Spending: When Addition is Subtraction
Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, US Army (ret)