Over 130 events planned in 39 countries on Tuesday, April 17. Actions come as new global military spending data released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Action coincides with U.S. tax day.
Can we close the Futenma U.S. Marine Base in Japan Without Constructing Additional Marine Bases in Okinawa?
President Barack Obama ordered up yet another strategic review last year. This one explicitly aimed at bringing the nation’s military posture into line with something we can afford.
It may not be much consolation to most Americans, but cuts to our nuclear-weapons program are a silver lining to our economic crisis.
Even if sequestration cuts across all military programs, this sort of ham-handed approach is safely doable.
By the time you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, the 12-member congressional supercommittee will have succeeded in meeting its November 23 deadline to approve a plan to shrink the budget deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Or it will have failed – and produced a turkey instead.
The Association of the United States Army packed hundreds of exhibitors into two halls the size of football fields at its annual convention. Companies from around the world came to the event, recently held at the Washington Convention Center, to sell the Army everything from mammoth tanks to micro-thin wires. Corporations such as Raytheon and KBR erected multi-level installations nearly big enough to generate their own zip code, complete with conference rooms and coffee bars.
Communities all over the United States are reeling from budget cuts. Military contractors, meanwhile, have remained fat and well-fed on the one part of federal spending that so far hasn’t been touched by budget-cutting fever: the Pentagon. One community recently decided to call attention to this disparity. In Montgomery County, a relatively wealthy Maryland suburb of Washington, DC, Peace Action Montgomery got together with a group of City Council members to craft a simple, straightforward resolution.
The recent deficit deal includes potentially deep cuts in U.S. security spending. One likely but perhaps counterintuitive outcome would be staffing reductions in foreign development programs and in diplomatic missions. The deal will also hit the budgets of domestic security programs like border patrols, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. These are not the sort of security cuts decried by hawkish lawmakers who fear that potential cuts to the military will hollow out the U.S. armed forces and cripple the military industry.
No one thinks that Republicans are truly concerned with excessive military spending, but with their posturing about spending cuts, they may have unleashed something they can’t control.