Words are cheap - unless they happen to be euphemisms.
Once again, I find myself in agreement with Larison, who encourages us to make the critical distinction between "defense" spending and "military" spending.
This goes back to 1949 when the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense. I'm not sure what the reasons behind this change were at the time, but one consequence, intended or not, is that it makes it easier to justify military spending.
It's hard to argue with spending on defense - after all, isn't it only prudent to do everything possible to keep our country safe from foreign menaces?
War spending is a different matter.
How many billions does this euphemism cost us annually? Our annual "Defense" budget now exceeds $700 billion, and accounts for 54% of all military expenditures globally. That's worth repeating: the US accounts for more than half of all military expenditures on planet Earth each year.
The combined military budgets of every single nation on Earth amount to less than what we spend on "defense".
The constituencies that strongly support reductions in military spending are progressives, libertarians and deficit hawks, which also happen to be three constituencies with the least influence in their respective parties when it comes to national security policies. Obama’s military budgets are huge because there are no significant political obstacles to making them that way and there are no political incentives to make them smaller. A first, small step in changing the way we talk about military spending involves referring to military spending as just that. If military spending is ever going to be reduced, most Americans will need to acknowledge that the vast majority of military spending has a tenuous or non-existent relationship to the defense of the United States. At the very least, critics of that spending should avoid casually referring to it as defense spending, when that is not the purpose of most of these expenditures.(h/t Sullivan)
This goes back to 1949 when the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense. I'm not sure what the reasons behind this change were at the time, but one consequence, intended or not, is that it makes it easier to justify military spending.
It's hard to argue with spending on defense - after all, isn't it only prudent to do everything possible to keep our country safe from foreign menaces?
War spending is a different matter.
How many billions does this euphemism cost us annually? Our annual "Defense" budget now exceeds $700 billion, and accounts for 54% of all military expenditures globally. That's worth repeating: the US accounts for more than half of all military expenditures on planet Earth each year.
The combined military budgets of every single nation on Earth amount to less than what we spend on "defense".