Image by Sandra Seitamaa.
US military spending mocks global norms with such salacious excess that we might imagine our country as being in the throes of a perpetual addictive seizure. Our national binge has been stoked with a chaotic hodgepodge of threats that leave us jonesing for a harder hit – we tremble, in our hallucinatory fears, about China, Al Qaeda, MS 13 and Hamas, all lined up to storm US beaches from Coney Island to Big Sur. Voters have been so pumped up with the relentless backwash of media jingoism that a recent Gallup poll had 83 percent of the public opining that US military spending is “not strong enough” or “about right.” Only 14 percent of those polled felt that the US military is “stronger than it needs to be.” Recall that Donald Trump labeled a collection of bedraggled refugees seeking asylum at the Texas border – the majority being women and children – invaders requiring military force. We might think of Trump as an addled fool with no connection to reality, but he has read the room well – the longstanding US propensity to equate safety with military strength did not originate with Trump. Like with any addiction, the US has built up tolerance – withdrawal can only be assuaged with more bombs and planes to “keep us safe.” The world is a giant feedback loop – every dollar of US military spending buys more anti-American hatred. In keeping with the metaphor of addiction, many of us have embraced denial as a means of managing anxiety. Few of us confront the utterly bizarre, grotesque nature of our military fixation
The US fetish for gadgets of war uniquely sets us apart from all other nations. The US owns half of the 134 nuclear submarines menacing the future of the earth’s biosphere. America and Russia together control 90 percent of the more than 12,000 existent nuclear warheads – more than enough to cleanse the planet of living things. The US outspends the next top nine also-rans in its effort to hoard lethal military hardware and mobilize soldiers. Yet popular media productions frighten us with accusations of our lax military readiness for a Russian/Chinese invasion. The Heritage Foundation – the source of America’s planned transition to fascism- has issued warnings about the US tendency to deprioritize military spending. The ill-advised strategy of diverting military dollars to social spending, according to Heritage Foundation policy wonks, leaves us vulnerable to attack in an increasingly technological world of drones and AI that allegedly gives less powerful countries the means to destroy us.
Think of the US military industrial complex as a global aberration, a three headed frog, a crocodile with wings, a hybrid creature, half fish and half lion. We ought to gaze upon our “fighting forces” and deadly technology with open mouthed astonishment, but we rather regard our hypertrophied military with a shoulder shrug. In 2023, Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed 10% cut to military funding was voted down 89-11 in the US senate. 40 Democratic senators balked at cutting the dangerously excessive US military budget by 10%! Military spending is never a presidential campaign issue other than as a performative competition for candidates to ritually confirm their obligatory devotion to maximizing armed forces strength. Democratic candidates may, from time to time, interrupt their confessed fidelity to second amendment principles just long enough to support background checks, but how many US politicians trace our astronomical gun homicide rates to the larger issue of US military culture? How often do the media pause to assess the monstrous scope of military influence on every facet of our lives?
We have an underground cult lauding men with restless trigger fingers – think of Kyle Rittenhouse, an ad hoc, self -appointed, teenage militia of one, choosing who to gun down in Kenosha during the George Floyd protests, and being exonerated in court. His night of vigilantism landed him a spot on Tucker Carlson’s show with 4 million YouTube views. A YouTube video defending Rittenhouse has 9 million views. On the other side of the isle we have MSNBC pundit, former four-star general Barry McCaffrey, legitimizing the Democratic Party media sphere with the stamp of military approval. 20 percent of January 6th insurrectionists had military affiliations. When the Democratic Party nominated Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz as the vice-presidential candidate, the media swooned because of his military history. As you travel across the expanse of US political thought, one hoary idea resists revision of any sort – the world is held in place by the stabilizing might of US military superiority.
Here is that very thought posted on the website of the Brookings Institute over a decade ago by William Galston:
“As Vladimir Putin rips up the post-Cold War rules and menaces the portion of Ukraine he has not yet devoured, the American people are signaling their desire to withdraw from the world. According to today’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, far more Americans than in recent decades want the United States to be less active in global affairs, a desire that crosses party lines.
After more than a decade of unsuccessful wars and an economy that has yet to recover fully from the Great Recession, this sentiment is understandable. It is also very dangerous. The entire world order rests on a United States that is willing and able to ensure the freedom of the seas and deter would-be regional hegemons. The American people are well aware of the burdens of leadership. It has been a long time since anyone has reminded them of the benefits.”
Galston was lamenting that the military budget was dropping from an expenditure of $664 billion in 2010 to $649 billion in 2018. Left out of the discussion was a tiny detail that still holds fast in 2025 – no country in global history has ever spent even half of $649 billion annually for military expenses save the USA.
Galston is not a raging fascist maniac, but a rather generic Democratic Party apparatchik – a man once employed by the Clinton and Mondale campaigns and a longtime contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and The New York Times. Galston recognized, I assume, that US military spending has nothing to do with repelling an invasion of Marin County, but rather, that gargantuan military mobilization keeps the world in check. The last time a foreign army set foot on US soil was 1812. Galston lives and breathes mainstream American political jargon and its animating myth: the evil, chaotic threat to world order must be held at bay by US military force.
This frankly nonsensical perspective is premised on the belief of America’s alleged global benevolence, a hard concept to swallow after the US has attempted to bomb Southeast Asia into the stone age, methodically bombed civilians throughout the middle east, overthrown democratically elected regimes in Latin America, funded death squads, military coups, and supported genocides in Indonesia, Guatemala and now, in Gaza.
What do normal, generic nations spend on military power annually? That may seem to be an absurd question – we seldom attempt to envision the US as a “normal” member of the international community, a nation that prioritizes military strength no more than it prioritizes education, medical care, affordable housing or decarbonization. If we use the other G-7 nations – Germany, France, The UK, Japan, Italy and Canada – as models of normal military spending for affluent, industrialized countries, we get a rare picture of our own bloated, metastatic military vision. The other six G-7 nations have a combined population of 445 million people – about 105 million more than the US population. These countries, however, spend a combined 275 billion on troops and weaponry, barely more than a quarter of our new trillion dollar outlay. This additional bloat prepares the US, perhaps, for invasions of Canada, Greenland and Panama, as well as brand new military adventures within recalcitrant cities on the US mainland. We have already seen federal troops in Los Angeles and now on the streets of Washington DC.. Trump promises that this is only the beginning.
What about our so called global enemies – China and Iran? China spends less than a third of the US military budget and has not fought in major combat since it bungled an attempted invasion of Vietnam in 1979 – 46 years ago. Keep in mind that China has almost four times the US population and spends about a twelfth as much as the US on military per capita. Iran, a frequent source of US fears, has a quarter of the US population, but spends less than a hundredth of the US military budget. As the world’s greatest weapons manufacturing exporter, the US sells seven times more armaments globally than does China. We not only beef up our own military to engage in an ungodly posture of global threat, we export the instruments of war as a matter of opportunistic zeal. War anywhere in the world can be traced to US munitions profits.
The US affinity for obsessive military growth long predates our shiny, new fascist Trump regime. The 750 US military bases on foreign soil have nothing to do with Trump, but now we add fascism to an established system designed to employ force to further corporate interests. The obvious worries concern military might directed at home against immigrants, political dissidents and Democratic Party controlled state governments. We are experiencing the terrorism of Trump unleashed on the streets of LA, DC, and in ICE raids across the country as the boundaries between local police, paramilitary and federal troops become increasingly obscured, but there is another urgent worry – the psychological ramifications of the “Golden Dome.”
The Golden Dome is summarized by arms contractor, Lockheed Martin:
“Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength and President Trump’s vision for deterring adversaries from attacks on the homeland. This next generation defense shield will identify incoming projectiles, calculate trajectory and deploy interceptor missiles to destroy them mid-flight, safeguarding the homeland and projecting American Strength.”
One is struck by the bizarre fear of foreign attack upon a country that hasn’t been invaded in over two centuries. Of course Lockheed Martin stands to profit from hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, but there is a bigger issue to consider than ongoing munitions profiteering. The US military has had a longstanding fantasy about total global domination, and the Golden Dome, whether or not it does what Lockheed Martin advertising spinners claim it will do, regenerates the dream of obliterating enemies with ease. If the US can – in the minds of MAGA authorities – launch a nuclear attack with no fear of retaliation, we have entered a seemingly new nightmare, but not without precedent.
After WW II, the US, under President Truman, sought to exploit our status as the only nation having nuclear weapons. We made plans to bomb, and invade the Soviet Union in an act of war that would have exterminated most of the USSR population. According to journalist, Ekaterina Blinova, quoting from the book by Michio Kaku (who you might recognize as being a pop super star in the genre of astrophysics explained to layman) and Daniel Axelrod, “To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans”:
“The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged that the US would attack Soviet Russia and drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In addition, the planners offered to kick off a major land campaign against the USSR to win a “complete victory” over the Soviet Union together with the European allies. According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.”
The world has managed to avoid nuclear war via the stalemate of “mutually assured destruction.” The “Dropshot “ plan was allegedly aborted because the USSR developed their own nuclear weapons before the US had achieved the nuclear stockpiles needed to carry out the attack.
I have previously written that the US model of warfare – bombing civilian populations with little risk of retaliation – has been hardwired into our military strategy as a result of the original euphoria of Hiroshima. The nuclear obliteration of Japanese cities, with no risk to the US, has generated an ongoing fantasy – total domination of enemy regimes and populations. The Golden Dome planned by Trump and Lockheed Martin may renew that mindset. We ought to be terrified of a US fascist regime that believes it can win a nuclear war simply by employing a protective shield. Do not underestimate the stupidity and impulsive speed of fascist hubris – the neo-fascist regime already has inexorably bought in to hothouse earth for $219 million dollars of oil lobbyist campaign donations.
We are at the brink of fascist consolidation and the focal point for mass resistance must prioritize the goal of destroying the Trump fascist regime. President Eisenhower warned us seventy years ago to beware of the military industrial complex. He did not understand, as we now do, that unchecked military growth resolves eventually into fascism. Any hope of creating a nominally democratic system begins with restraining the military and its adjunctive profiteers. This, obviously cannot happen while Trump has control of the means of violence.
This piece first appeared on Nobody’s Voice.
The post The US Bloated Military Budget is the Mother of Fascism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Phil Wilson.