The President's military budget is 30 percent higher than last year's, the biggest budget hike since the Vietnam War. It's 15 percent higher in constant dollars than the nation spent on average during the cold war, according to Lawrence Korb in testimony before the House Budget Committee. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan and now speaking for Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, pointed out that this year's "increase of $48 billion alone is more than the total military budgets of every nation in the world." Yet Congress will probably give Bush what he wants--and more--because of his high popularity ratings and the fear of being branded soft on terrorism.

This budget abandons all hope of reforming wasteful military procurement and distorts America's priorities at home and abroad. And who benefits? The military-industrial complex, pork-minded legislators and an Administration that puts the interests of military contractors ahead of the nation's, knowing the increases will be paid for with money filched from Social Security, Medicare, education, social programs and people who aren't rich enough to get a tax cut.

Remember when Donald Rumsfeld touted his plans to transform the military? He vowed to cancel a generation of cold war-era weapons, slash waste and forge a quicker, smarter, more mobile force to meet future threats. A year and a war later, emboldened by its victory over the Taliban, the Administration has restored the cold war weapons. It's embarked on what appears to be wars without end. To justify its stratospheric military spending it manufactures a menace--the axis of evil. There is no pretense that any of these countries were connected with the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks. Yet, as Jonathan Schell wrote here, "a radically new policy was presented as a mere expansion of an existing one.... it turns out that phase two is not a war on terrorism at all but a whole series of much larger wars to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction--history's first disarmament wars." Politically, Bush has apparently decided that phase one, the war on Osama bin Laden, no longer has legs. He needs a permanent conflict if he is not to suffer the precipitous drop in popularity his father did after the Gulf War.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.