Bankruptcy or bombs: Sprawling defense budget sets US up for financial and military ruin
Defense Priorities' Daniel L. Davis argues the US should spend all the money necessary to keep the country safe and enable its armed forces to meet its global treaty obligations – but not to become the force of first resort for any nation on earth.
By DANIEL L. DAVIS
on April 11, 2022 at 1:33 PM
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Pentagon officials have argued that the incursion is the clearest sign yet that the robust budget for America’s military is more than justified. But in the op ed below, retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis argues that Russia’s failures on the ground suggest quite the opposite, and that if anything, the budget should shrink along with America’s international military footprint.
National defense is enshrined in the US Constitution, with Congress being given the obligations of raising and sustaining the military, giving it oversight, and having sole power to declare war; the president is required to serve as commander-in-chief. But it is dangerously past time to recognize the Constitution obligates American defense, not the defense for any country on the planet that desires to use Americans for its own security.
The current path could very well destroy our country: We will either go bankrupt trying – or worse – will eventually get sucked into a major war that we should never have fought, suffering egregious and unnecessary military losses, and, in a worst-case scenario, suffer nuclear weapons being detonated over American cities. None of that needs to happen.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/04/bankruptcy-or-bombs-sprawling-defense-budget-sets-us-up-for-financial-and-military-ruin/
