The Bloated Pentagon Budget Isn’t Just Wasteful. It’s Racist
In this era of racial reckoning, national security policy and defense budgets cannot be exempt from the scrutiny of their effects on communities of color.
By Diana Ohlbaum
Foreign policy director, Friends Committee on National Legislation
April 22, 2021
It should shock no one that President Biden’s first budget request continues a long tradition of protecting the Pentagon from budget cuts. The administration’s “skinny budget” proposes $753 billion for national defense – a $12 billion increase from current levels. Despite sustained pressure from groups across the political spectrum, faith leaders, and members of Congress, Biden has never indicated any enthusiasm for reducing military spending.
But in this era of racial reckoning, it’s absurd that national security policy and defense budgets should be exempt from the scrutiny of their effects on communities of color. Too often we create artificial divisions between domestic and foreign policy and apply a racial-equity lens only to the former.
Pentagon spending is higher now than at the peak of the Vietnam War or the Cold War, adjusted for inflation, and more than the next 10 countries combined. These excessive levels of military spending both reflect and perpetuate white supremacy in four major ways.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/04/bloated-pentagon-budget-isnt-just-wasteful-its-racist/173547/
