Since his first term, we have grown used to President Donald Trump badgering governments of fellow NATO countries to increase their “defense” spending to five percent of their respective GDPs. Quote marks are used in the preceding sentence because such spending by these governments, or the US, will largely be used for offense, feeding the military-industrial complex, and other purposes far removed from defense.
So far, fellow NATO members have steered clear of achieving this spending goal. Their residents should be happy that is the case as the money can instead be left in their pockets or at least be hoped to be spent by government on something that may provide them with some benefit instead of furthering death and destruction — butter, not guns.
Interestingly, the US government, despite all its hectoring, has also refrained from reaching that five percent of GDP figure for its spending on the Department of Defense. The targeted spending level would come in at nearly double current spending on what is already a top area of government spending. That increase would drop down some if various spending beyond the Defense Department spending is included as “defense” spending.
Comments made last week by US Secretary of Defense Marco Rubio indicated the goal is for the US to also reach this spending level. Rubio declared ahead of a NATO meeting that “we do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway, to every single one of the [NATO] members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up to five percent of spending; that includes the United States will have to increase its percentage.”
Hopefully, this is just talk. To follow through on this course would be to invite disaster.
With a huge and growing debt, the US cannot afford the increase. Such an increase will help bring the nation more quickly toward financial disaster. It will likely even help ensure increased spending in other areas as was experienced during the Ronald Reagan administration when the executive branch bargained with legislators for more military spending by agreeing to increased spending in other areas too.
More war can be expected as a result as well. The temptation for politicians to use a “new and improved” military brought into being by the increased spending would be immense.
More debt and more war is a literally killer combination for America.
