military budget Archives - Foreign Policy In Focus

Mass Transit Helps Cut Global Warming and War

by Miriam Pemberton | Jul 16, 2009

Two subway cars on Washington, D.C.’s Red Line — which I usually ride to work — recently collided. It was the worst accident in this subway’s history, killing nine D.C. residents and injuring scores of others. The National Transportation Safety Board’s advice to the local transit authority soon came to light: Replace older-model subway cars, including the ones that crashed. The NTSB had said this three years ago, but the transit authority hadn’t had the money to do it.

Budget Makes No ‘Sweeping Shift’ in Security Spending Yet

by Miriam Pemberton, Suzanne Smith | Feb 26, 2009

In December, The New York Times reported that Obama’s Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Defense Secretary had all “embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena…a rebalancing of America’s security portfolio after a huge investment in new combat capabilities during the Bush years.”

A Fat Budget for Weapons, Thin for Diplomacy

by Miriam Pemberton | Oct 7, 2008

In their first debate, Barack Obama and John McCain will audition for the role of change agent. Here’s one thing the moderator needs to ask: how they would change the military-led foreign policy of the past eight years.

U.S. Should Boost Nonmilitary Security

by Lawrence Korb, Miriam Pemberton | Sep 29, 2008

At a time when national consensus on anything is rare indeed, here’s one example: The balance between our spending on military forces and other security tools – like diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid and homeland security – needs to change.

A Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2009

by Lawrence Korb, Miriam Pemberton | Sep 22, 2008

In this fifth annual edition of the “Unified Security Budget,” as with the previous four editions, a non-partisan task force of military, homeland security, and foreign policy experts laid out the facts of the imbalance between military and non-military spending. The ratio of funding for military forces vs. non-military international engagement in the Bush administration’s proposed budget for the 2009 fiscal year has widened to 18:1 from 16:1 in the 2008 fiscal year, according to the report.

Raiding the War Chest

by Miriam Pemberton | Jun 1, 2008

An economy slouching toward recession, or—depending on who you talk to—already there, has produced two seemingly contradictory effects. It has pushed the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history off the top of the list of citizen concerns. And it has simultaneously gotten those citizens, and even their members of Congress, talking much more about that disaster’s economic costs.

A Climate Change Industrial Policy

by Miriam Pemberton | May 14, 2008

A new looming threat has caught the military’s attention, namely the security implications of climate change. As early as 1997, the CIA set up an Environmental Center that examined the degradation of land and water as a major source of armed conflict around the world. Such niche efforts within the U.S. security establishment have now gone mainstream.

The Iraq Supplemental: A Three Ring Circus

by Erik Leaver | May 8, 2008

After weeks of backroom negotiations, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) finally unveiled the latest plan for funding the Iraq War late Tuesday night. As the plan was unveiled, anti-war groups ranging from United for Peace and Justice to Win Without War to the Iraq Campaign 2008 joined voiced for the first time in their call to urge members to vote no on the funding. But while their messages are clear on the funding, the actual content and implications of the other provisions in the bill needs careful examination.

Shape Up and Ship Out

by John Cavanagh, Anita Dancs, Miriam Pemberton | Apr 2, 2008

Goosing fear with menacing—and vague—portraits of global terrorist threats has worked remarkably well to buttress the Bush administration’s militarized foreign policy, especially since 9/11. This policy, as enshrined in the current National Security Strategy and articulated by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, is based on the “ability to act militarily anytime, anywhere to defend our global interests.” Though fear remains a powerful force in American politics, large majorities of Americans are no longer buying what the administration is selling. They are no longer equating the presence of violence-minded groups in Somalia and the Philippines with the idea of an America “surrounded in the world by violent extremists.” According to a Pew Research Center study, one-third of Americans believed in 2006 that military force can reduce the risk of terrorism, down from half in 2002.

The China Syndrome

by John Feffer, Michael Klare | Mar 5, 2008

On February 4, President Bush announced a baseline military budget of $515.4 billion for the next fiscal year, not including funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the largest one-year Pentagon request in real, uninflated dollars since World War II. This Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 figure represents a 7.5% increase over the 2008 appropriation of $479.5 billion and is expected to be the first of many rising requests supposedly needed to replace equipment lost and damaged in Iraq and to gear up for the security threats to come. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen explained last October, “we’re just going to have to devote more resources to national security in the world we’re living in right now.”