The U.S military budget

The U.S Military budget
The united states military budget is 597 billion dollars (Adesnik) The world's largest military budget to the point where it is a source of massive stress on the coffers of the U.S government coupled with the government's unbalanced budget and massive debt, this is the recipe for economic duress. The lion's share of the discretionary funding goes to the DOD, this amount of funding for the armed forces has had some drastic impacts on the American populace as budget cuts are being proposed in order to secure more funding for the military. The U.S Department of defense spends more money on the military than the next 7 countries combined. But the need for such a massive military budget is questionable as many of those countries are our allies. Furthermore, the united states military is optimized to deal with other sovereign threats such as Russia and China. But threats such as China and Russia can be controlled with diplomacy and the international network of U.S allies. There are three noticeable reasons for this immense funding.


First, the political gains of supporting the military are to be noted as “Our safety requires a long-term military presence in the Middle East because that's where the plans to attack us are emanating.” (Rudy Giuliani). The thoughts of war gain support because it is done in self-defense a righteous war to protect out people is a political plus but a financial negative.


The second reason that the current administration supports the defense industry is the 1.5 million people who are on active service and the 1.5 million who are working in the defense industry and a military budget cut would see these workers lose their job or have their quality of life lowered. and haveing 1.5 angry individuals and their families would not bode well for any politician.

The third reason I discovered while researching the defense budget is the lobbying budget for the defense industry is around 127 million dollars annually every year. This lobbying leads to the election of politicians who have a viewpoint that the lobbyists agree with, or even a downright opinion switch. The systematic political backing of the weapon industry directly contributes to the massive amounts money spent on the weapons industry. This coupled with the political incentive and mounting pressure to keep people satisfied with a massive military budget has the political system prime for increasing the military budget in order for politicians to ensure a reelection.