The World is burning while the US Senate votes no on reducing the US Military Budget

Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, to reduced the US military budget by 10%. The Senate voted against the proposal, with 88 Senators voting no, 11 voting yes and 1 choosing to not vote. 

This a similar proposal that Senator Sanders introduced in 2021, also resulting is a defeat. The 2024 US Military Budget, which has yet to be adopted, is currently $886 Billion dollars, which is the largest US military budget ever. 

The 2023 US Military Budget is $877 Billion, and according to the National Priorities Project, the US Military Budget is larger than the 10 next largest military budgets combined, which includes China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and the Ukraine, seen in the graph here below.

Now, if the US were to reduce the military budget by ten percent, for 2024, that would be a reduction of $88.6 Billion, leaving the US with $800 Billion, which would be slightly less than the 10 next largest military budgets combined, which is $849 Billion. The US would still be the most powerful US military force in the world and now the US could divert $88.6 Billion to things like the construction of affordable housing, health care, the creation of more renewable energy systems, paying off student debt or any number of other things that would greatly benefit people living in the US.

In addition, a reduction in the US military budget by $88.6 Billion, would mean that the US military would have to cut some existing programs, such as the purchase of certain weapons systems, like cluster bombs, which the most of the world has agreed are illegal.The US could also close several overseas military bases, which to be honest, most of those bases, if not all, have been used to control resources, repress civilian uprisings, provide support for dictatorships and to constantly threaten other nations with military intervention. (See David Vine’s book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World) A reduction of US military bases would also greatly benefit civilians all over the globe. 

A third major reason why reducing the US military budget would be a benefit for humanity, is that it would reduced the burning of fossil fuels, thus the impact of Climate Change. I first came across this link when I read the book, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, published in 2009. There has been so much more investigation into the link between US military spending and Climate Change, such as the recent report, No Warming, No War: How Militarism Fuels the Climate Crisis – and Vice Versa. Here are the key findings of this report: 

• The Pentagon is a major polluter. U.S. Militarism degrades the environment and contributes directly to climate change. The Pentagon is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum; just one of the military’s jets, the B-52 stratofortress, consumes about as much fuel in an hour as the average car driver uses in seven years. Plans to confront climate change must address militarization, but “greening the military” misses the point entirely. Militarism and climate justice are fundamentally at odds. 
• The United States has a well-known history of fighting wars for oil. The fossil fuel industry relies on militarization to uphold its operations around the globe. Oil is the leading cause of war: An estimated one-quarter to one-half of all interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil. And all over the world, those who fight to protect their lands from extractive industries are often met with state and paramilitary violence. 
• Climate change and border militarization are inextricably linked. It is clear that on a warming planet, cross-border migration will rise. Estimates project that around 200 million people will be displaced by the middle of century due to climate change. As the U.S. continues to ramp up border security, so do threats to all people’s freedom to move and stay. Immigrant justice is climate justice, and challenging militarism is critical to achieving both. 
• Over-investment in the military comes at the high cost of under-investing in other needs, including climate. For decades, the U.S. has invested in military adventurism and prioritized military threats above all over threats to human life. Compared to the $6.4 trillion spent on war in the past two decades, the cost of shifting the U.S. power grid to 100% renewable is an estimate $4.5 trillion. The bloated U.S. war economy presents an opportunity to redirect significant military resources, including money, infrastructure, and people, toward implementing solutions to climate change. 
• Workers need a way out. The fossil fuel and military sectors mirror each other in the way that workers frequently end up funneled into lethal work due to limited options. We need a Just Transition for workers and communities in both sectors. In order to rapidly transition to a green economy, we must fund millions of jobs in the green economy. Funding the green economy instead of a bloated military budget would be a net job creator; for the same level of spending, clean energy and infrastructure create over 40% more jobs and energy efficiency retrofits create nearly twice the level of job creation. 
• Racism and racial oppression form the foundation for both the extractive fossil fuel economy and the militarized economy. Neither could exist without the presumption that some human lives are worth less than others, and racial justice would undermine the foundations of both.

The fourth, and last reason why the recent Senate vote against reducing the US military budget is fundamentally flawed, because more military spending does not make people safer. William Hartung, who has been writing about US Military spending for several decades, recently released a report entitled, More Money, Less Security: Pentagon Spending and Strategy in the Biden Administration. Here is part of the introductory comments from this report: 

These enormous sums are being marshaled in support of a flawed National Defense Strategy that attempts to go everywhere and do everything, from winning a war with Russia or China, to intervening in Iran or North Korea, to continuing to fight a global war on terror that involves military activities in at least 85 countries. Sticking to the current strategy is not only economically wasteful, but will also make America and the world less safe. It leads to unnecessary conflicts that drain lives and treasure and too often contribute to instability in the regions where those conflicts are waged, as occurred with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, elevating open–ended military commitments over other security challenges, from climate change to pandemics, risks intensifying the human and security consequences of those threats by reducing the resources available to address them.

Michigan Senators Peters and Stabenow also voted for more militarism instead of human needs

As was mentioned at the beginning of this post, the majority of the US Senate voted against the proposal to reduce US military spending by 10%. Both of Michigan’s Senators, Senator Debbie Stabenow and Senator Gary Peters voted no on cutting the US military budget.

Last week, Senator Peters sent out a Press Release on why he voted to support the $886 Billion US Military Budget. Peters provides several reasons, but two of his talking points are worth noting here, since they are the dominant arguments for a bloated US military budget – investing in Michigan Military Installations and Supporting Michigan’s Defense Sector.

Investing in Michigan Military Installations means that Senator Peters would rather spend $96 Million on two Michigan Military installations than provide critical relief to people who are housing insecure, people who are suffering from Climate Change, people who can’t afford heath care and families who are food insecure. 

Supporting Michigan’s Defense Sector means that Senator Peters would rather provide massive Corporate Welfare to military contractors in Michigan, companies that pocket millions to make weapons and weapons systems, while hundreds of thousands of families in Michigan experience the brutality of poverty. Senator Peters supporting Military contractors makes sense, especially since he has been the recipient of $450,838 in campaign contributions from the weapons contractor sector.

In the end, the majority of members of the US Senate would rather see an increase in US Militarism, US Imperialism, the human suffering of war, all while the planet is burning and becoming hotter with Climate Change. You can’t separate US military spending from the human cost of war and the human cost of not having basic needs met. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated in his Beyond Vietnam speech in 1967, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”