Trumps Vision of a Militarized America - What happens when all we have left is the Pentagon?
by WILLIAM HARTUNG
With a budget over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds. If Pres. Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers. He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered.
The new administration is reportedly considering a plan — modeled on proposals from the military-industrial-complex-backed think tank The Heritage Foundation — that would cut a staggering $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, Transportation and State might see their budgets slashed to the bone. In addition, Trump’s team might privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and — though the money saved would amount to chicken feed — eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities altogether. In the meantime, the ranks of the U.S. Army and Marines would expand, the U.S. Navy would launch a huge ship buildup and the Pentagon would develop a new Star Wars-style missile defense system — all at a combined cost of up to $1 trillion beyond the already munificent existing plans for that same decade.
We won’t know full details until Trump’s first budget becomes public in perhaps April or May 2017. But as we wait for it, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman and Republican senator for Arizona John McCain has just taken the unusual step of releasing his own spending blueprint for the military. This suggests that a key senator and the president and his team are on the same page when it comes to military funding. At an extra $430 billion over the next five years, the numbers in McCain’s plan are similar to the potential Trump buildup.
One thing is already clear. This drastic tilt toward yet more Pentagon spending and away from investment in diplomacy abroad and civilian needs at home will only further militarize American society, accelerate inequality and distort the country’s already highly questionable foreign policy. After all, if your military is the only well-funded, well-stocked arm of the government, it’s obvious whom you’re going to turn to in any crisis.
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