Why Trump’s America First Doesn’t Require A $1 Trillion National Security Budget

If Donald Trump’s “America First” focused foreign policy means anything at all, it’s that the current $1 trillion national security budget is double the size that a muscular homeland defense shield actually requires. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that in relentless pursuit of its own self-serving aggrandizement, the military/industrial/intelligence complex has massively inflated America’s Warfare State into an “extra-large” when what is really needed in the world of 2024 is a snug-fitting “small.”The basis for that stunning disconnect goes back deep into cold war history and its aftermath. The post-WWII policy of collective security, extensive alliances through NATO and its regional clones and globe-spanning military power projection capabilities and a network of 750 foreign bases was an epic historical mistake. It fostered the opposite of America First and permanently broke faith with Thomas Jefferson’s wise admonition urging,

“…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

At length, Washington became the War Capital of the World and the seat of an Empire First policy regime embraced by both elected officialdom and the multitudinous nomenklatura of the Warfare State that took up permanent residence on the banks of the Potomac. In fact, the Empire First policy regime became so deeply-rooted that even 33 years after the Soviet Union disappeared into the dustbin of history, it refuses to go quietly into the good night.The reason, of course, is that America’s elephantine Warfare State never was grounded in an objective external threat. Even during Soviet times, the exaggerated girth of America’s military machine was based on vast threat inflations emanating from a resource-heavy national security bureaucracy seeking to secure its own future funding and to relentlessly expand its missions and remit.That Washington’s trillion-dollar Warfare State is rooted in internal self-perpetuation rather than external threats is evident from the post-cold war dog that didn’t bark. That is, the Soviet archives are now open, but there’s absolutely nothing there to validate the cold war axiom that the Soviet Union—along with the affiliated menace of Maoist China—was hell-bent on world military domination, starting with western Europe, Japan and then extending to the lesser lands all around them.In fact, the Soviet archives make clear that Moscow never had a plan or even faint aspiration to fortify and offensively unleash the Red Army toward Bonn, Paris and London. The closest thing to a plan for military mobilization westward was the “Seven Days to the Rhine” blueprint, but that was a defensive action plan explicitly formulated as a contingency plan to respond to a theoretical NATO first strike.According to the plan, if NATO were to launch a nuclear attack on Poland, the Warsaw Pact would respond with a massive counterattack aimed at quickly overwhelming NATO forces in Western Europe. The goal was to reach the Rhine River within seven days, effectively splitting Europe and preventing NATO reinforcements from reaching the front lines in Eastern Europe and potentially embarking upon yet a fourth post-1800 invasion of Mother Russia.Indeed, what the Soviet archives actually show is not the deliberations of a menacing Colossus, but the record of a chronic struggle to hold together with economic bailing-wire and bubble-gum a lumbering communist state that didn’t function and couldn’t last.Nevertheless, it was the false fear of a red tide descending over Europe and ultimately the Western Hemisphere, too, that enabled Empire First to trump the natural and proper tendency of Washington politicians and policy-makers to retreat behind America’s secure ocean moats after WWII. In fact, for a brief interlude a sweeping military demobilization did occur, when the peak $83 billion defense budget of 1945 plunged to just $9 billion by 1948.But that sensible attempt for the second time in the 20th Century at post-war demobilization and a return to peacetime normalcy was reversed in 1949 when the Soviet Union got the A-bomb, and Mao won the civil war in China. Thereafter, the spread of bases, troops, alliances, interventions and Forever Wars proceeded relentlessly on the grounds that the rickety communist states domiciled in Moscow and Beijing posed an existential threat to America’s survival.They did not. Not by a long shot. As the great Senator Robert Taft held at the time, the modest threat to homeland security presented by the war-ravaged corpus of the Soviet Union and the collectivist disaster imposed on China by Mao could have been readily handled with—

That eminently correct Taftian framework never did change through the end of the Cold War in 1991, even as the technology of nuclear and conventional warfare evolved apace. For modest military spending Washington could have kept its nuclear deterrent fully effective and maintained a formidable Fortress America defense of the homeland without any of the apparatus of Empire and no American boots on foreign soil, at all. And after 1991, the requirement would have been even less demanding.In fact, the case for a true America First policy—that is, returning to the 1948 status quo ante and a proper Fortress America military posture—has powerfully strengthened during the last three decades. That’s because in today’s world, the only theoretical military threat to America’s homeland security is the possibility of nuclear blackmail. That is to say, the threat of an adversary with a First Strike capacity so overwhelming, lethal and effective that it could simply call out checkmate and demand Washington’s surrender.Fortunately, there is no nation on earth that has anything close to the First Strike force that would be needed to totally overwhelm America’s triad nuclear deterrent and thereby avoid a retaliatory annihilation of its own country and people if it attempted to strike first. After all, the US has 3,700 active nuclear warheads, of which about 1,800 are operational at any point in time. In turn, these are spread under the seven seas, in hardened silos and among a bomber fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52s—all beyond the detection or reach of any other nuclear power.For instance, the Ohio class nuclear submarines each have 20 missile tubes, with each missile carrying an average of four-to-five warheads. That’s 90 independently targetable warheads per boat. At any given time 12 of the 14 Ohio class nuclear subs are actively deployed, and spread around the oceans of the planet within a firing range of 4,000 miles.So at the point of attack that’s 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads cruising along the ocean bottoms that would need to be identified, located and neutralized before any would be nuclear attacker or blackmailer even gets started. Indeed, with respect to the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of it, the sea-based nuclear force alone is a powerful guarantor of America’s homeland security. Even Russia’s vaunted hypersonic missiles couldn’t find or take out by surprise the US sea-based deterrent.And then there are the roughly 300 nukes aboard the 66 strategic bombers, which also are not sitting on a single airfield Pearl Harbor style waiting to be obliterated either, but are constantly rotating in the air and on the move. Likewise, the 400 Minutemen III missiles are spread out in extremely hardened silos deep underground across a broad swath of the upper Midwest. Each missile currently carries one nuclear warhead in compliance with the Start Treaty but could be MIRV’d in response to a severe threat, thereby further compounding and complicating an adversary’s First Strike calculus.Needless to say, there is no way, shape or form that America’s nuclear deterrent can be neutralized by a blackmailer. And that gets us to the heart of the case for drastically downsizing America’s military muscle. To wit, according to the most recent CBO estimates the nuclear triad will cost only about $75 billion per year to maintain over the next decade, including allowances for periodic weapons upgrades.That’s right. The core component of America’s military security requires only 7% of today’s massive military budget as detailed on a system-by-system basis in the table below. Thus, in 2023 the nuclear triad itself cost just $28 billion plus another $24 billion for related stockpiles and command, control and warning infrastructure.Moreover, the key component of this nuclear deterrent—the sea-based ballistic missile force—is estimated to cost just $188 billion over the entire next decade. That’s only 1.9% of the $10 trillion CBO defense baseline for that period.
 10-Year Cost Of US Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Per CBO Estimates, 2023 to 2032
So the question recurs with respect to CBO’s current $989 billion baseline spending level for defense in our target year of 2029. After setting aside $75 billion for the strategic nuclear triad, how much of the remaining $900 billion+ would actually be needed for a conventional Fortress America defense of the continental shorelines and airspace?The starting point is that in the present world order there are no technologically-advanced industrial powers who have either the capability or intention to attack the American homeland with conventional forces. To do that you need a massive military armada including a Navy and Air Force many times the size of current US forces, huge air and sealift resources and humongous supply lines and logistics capacities that have never been even dreamed of by any other nation on the planet.You also need an initial GDP of say $50 trillion to sustain what would be the most colossal mobilization of weaponry and material in human history. And that’s to say nothing of needing to be ruled by suicidal leaders willing to risk the nuclear destruction of their own countries, allies and economic commerce in order to accomplish, what? Occupy Denver?The entire idea that there is a post-cold war existential threat to America’s security is just nuts. For one thing, nobody has the GDP or military heft. Russia’s GDP is a scant $2 trillion, not the $50 trillion that would needed for it to put invasionary forces on the New Jersey shores. And its defense budget is $75 billion, which amounts to about four weeks of waste in Washington’s $900 billion monster.As for China, it doesn’t have the GDP heft to even think about landing on the California shores, notwithstanding Wall Street’s endless kowtowing to the China Boom. The fact is, China has accumulated in excess of $50 trillion of debt in barely two decades!Therefore, it didn’t grow organically in the historic capitalist mode; it printed, borrowed, spent and built like there was no tomorrow. The resulting simulacrum of prosperity would not last a year if its $3.6 trillion global export market—-the source of the hard cash that keeps its Ponzi upright—were to crash, which is exactly what would happen if it tried to invade America.To be sure, China’s totalitarian leaders are immensely misguided and downright evil from the perspective of their oppressed population. But they are not stupid. They stay in power by keeping the people relatively fat and happy and would never risk bringing down what amounts to an economic house of cards that has not even a vague approximation in human history.Indeed, when it comes to the threat of a conventional military invasion the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats are even greater barriers to foreign military assault in the 21st century than they so successfully proved to be in the 19th century. That’s because today’s advanced surveillance technology and anti-ship missiles would consign an enemy naval armada to Davy Jones’ Locker nearly as soon as it steamed out of its own territorial waters.The fact is, in an age when the sky is flush with high tech surveillance assets a massive conventional force armada couldn’t possibly be secretly built, tested and mustered for surprise attack without being noticed in Washington. There can be no repeat of the Japanese strike force—the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku—steaming across the Pacific toward Pearl Harbor sight unseen.Indeed, America’s ostensible “enemies” actually have no offensive or invasionary capacity at all. Russia has only one aircraft carrier—a 1980s era relic which has been in dry-dock for repairs since 2017 and is equipped with neither a phalanx of escort ships nor a suite of attack and fighter aircraft—and at the moment not even an active crew.Likewise, China has just three aircraft carriers—two of which are refurbished rust buckets purchased from the remnants of the old Soviet Union, and which carriers do not even have modern catapults for launching their strike aircraft.In short, neither China nor Russia will be steaming their tiny 3 and 1 carrier battle groups toward the shores of either California or New Jersey any time soon. An invasionary force that had any chance at all of surviving a US fortress defense of cruise missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack submarines and electronics warfare would need to be 100X larger.Again, there is also no GDP in the world—$2 trillion for Russia or $18 trillion for China—that is even remotely close in size to the $50 trillion, or even $100 trillion, that would be needed to support such an invasionary force without capsizing the home economy.Yet and yet. Washington still maintains a globe-spanning conventional war-fighting capability that it never really needed even during the cold war. But now, fully one-third of a century after the Soviet Empire collapsed and China went the Red Capitalist route of deep global economic integration, it amounts to utterly extraneous and unneeded muscle.We are referring, of course, to the 173,000 US troops in 159 countries and the network of 750 bases in 80 countries. All told, Washington equips, trains and deploys an armed force of 2.86 million not for purposes of homeland defense but overwhelmingly for missions of overseas offense, invasion and occupation all over the planet.As depicted in the graphic below, this obsolete Empire First military posture still includes among others—

All of this unnecessary military muscle stands as costly monument to the hoary theory of collective security, which led to the establishment of NATO in 1949 and it regional clones thereafter. And, yes, there were sizable local communist parties in Italy and France in the late 1940s, and the Labor Party in England had a reddish hue. But, again, the now open archives of the old Soviet Union prove conclusively that Stalin had neither the wherewithal n0r intention to invade western Europe.What military capacity the Soviet Union did resurrect after the bloodletting with Hitler’s armies was heavily defensive in character and lumbering in capabilities. So the communist threat in Europe could have been wrangled out by these nations at the polls, not on the battlefield. They did not need NATO to stop an imminent Soviet invasion.Of course, what NATO did accomplish was to reduce dramatically the burden of defense spending in Western Europe, even as most of these nations opted for an expansive and expensive Welfare State. That is to say, the bloated Warfare State that America didn’t need from 1950 through 1990 ultimately enabled the Welfare States that Europe couldn’t afford, either then or now.Needless to say, once the Washington based-Empire of bases, alliances, collective security and relentless CIA meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries was established, it stuck like glue—even as the facts of international life proved over and over again that the Empire wasn’t needed.That is to say, the alleged “lessons” of the interwar period and WWII were falsely played and replayed. The aberrational rise of Hitler and Stalin did not happen because the good people of England, France and America slept through the 1920s and 1930s.Instead, they arose from the ashes of Woodrow Wilson’s intervention in a quarrel of the old world that was none of America’s business. Yet the arrival of two million American doughboys and massive flows of armaments and loans from Washington enabled a vindictive peace of the victors at Versailles rather than an end to a pointless world war that would have left all the sides exhausted, bankrupt and demoralized, and their respective domestic war parties subject to massive repudiation at the polls.As it happened, however, Wilson’s intervention on the stalemated battlefields of the Western Front gave birth to Lenin and Stalin, and his machinations with the victors at Versailles fostered the rise of Hitler.To be sure, the former in the end did fortunately bring about the demise of the latter at Stalingrad. But that should have been the end of the matter in 1945, and, in fact, the world was almost there. After the victory parades, demobilization and normalization of civilian life proceeded apace all around the world.Alas, Washington’s incipient War Party of military contractors and globe-trotting operatives and officialdom gestated in the heat of World War II was not about to go quietly into the good night. Instead, the Cold War was midwifed on the banks of the Potomac when President Truman fell under the spell of war-hawks like Secretary James Byrnes, Dean Acheson, James Forrestal and the Dulles brothers, who were loath to go back to their mundane lives as civilian bankers, politicians or peacetime diplomats.So, in the post-war period world communism was not really on the march and the nations of the world were not implicated in falling dominoes or gestating incipient Hitler’s and Stalin’s. But the new proponents of Empire insisted they were just the same, and that the national security required the far-flung empire that is still with us today.So here is no mystery, therefore, as to why the Forever Wars go on endlessly. Or why at a time when Uncle Sam is hemorrhaging red ink like never before, a large bipartisan majority sees fit to authorize $1.1 trillion per year for vastly excessive military muscle and wasteful foreign aid boondoggles that do absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security.In effect, Washington has morphed into a freak of world history—a planetary War Capital dominated by a panoptic complex of arms merchants, paladins of foreign intervention and adventure and Warfare State nomenklatura. Never before has there been assembled and concentrated under a single state authority a hegemonic force possessing such enormous fiscal resources and military wherewithal.Not surprisingly, the War Capital on the Potomac is Orwellian to the core. War is always and everywhere described as the promotion of peace. Its jackboot of global hegemony is gussied-up in the beneficent-appearing form of alliances and treaties. These are ostensibly designed to promote a “rules-based order” and collective security for the benefit of mankind, not simply the proper goals of peace, liberty, safety and prosperity within America’s homeland.As we have seen, however, the whole intellectual foundation of this enterprise is false. The planet is not crawling with all-powerful would-be aggressors and empire-builders who must be stopped cold at their own borders, lest they devour the freedom of all their neighbors near and far.Nor is the DNA of nations perennially infected with incipient butchers and tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. They were one-time accidents of history and fully distinguishable from the standard run of everyday tinpots which actually do arise periodically. But the latter mainly disturb the equipoise of their immediate neighborhoods, not the peace of the planet.So America’s homeland security does not depend upon a far-flung array of alliances, treaties, military bases and foreign influence operations. In today’s world there are no Hitler’s, actual or latent, to stop. The whole framework of Pax Americana and the Washington based promotion and enforcement of a “rules-based” international order is an epic blunder.In that regard, the founding fathers got it right more than 200 years ago during the infancy of the Republic. As John Quincy Adams approvingly held,

“[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings…She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Needless to say, peaceful commerce is invariably far more beneficial to nations large and small than meddling, interventionism and military engagement. In today’s world it would be the default state of play on the international chessboard, save for the Great Hegemon on the banks of the Potomac. That is to say, the main disturbance of the peace today is invariably fostered by the self-appointed peacemaker, who, ironically, is inherently the least threatened large nation on the entire planet.The starting point for an America First military posture, therefore, is the drastic downsizing of the nearly one-million man standing US Army. The latter would have no uses abroad because there would be no cause for wars of foreign invasion and occupation, while the odds of any foreign battalions and divisions reaching America are virtually non-existent. With a proper coastline garrison of missiles, attack submarines and jet fighters any invading army would become shark bait long before it saw the shores of California or New Jersey.Yet the 462,000 active-duty army soldiers at $112,000 each have an annual budget cost of $55 billion while the 506,000 army reserve forces at $32,000 each cost upwards of $16 billion. And on top of this force structure, of course, you have $77 billion for operations and maintenance, $27 billion for procurement, $22 billion for RDT&E and $4 billion for everything else (based on the FY 2025 budget request).In all, the current Army budget totals nearly $200 billion, and virtually all of that massive expenditure–nearly 3X the total defense budget of Russia—is deployed in the service of Empire, not homeland defense. It could readily be cut by 70% or $140 billion—meaning that the US Army component of a $450 billion Fortress America defense budget would absorb just $60 billion annually.Likewise, the US Navy and Marine Corps spends $55 billion annually on 515,000 active-duty forces and another $3.7 billion on 88,000 reserves. Yet if you look at the core requirements of a Fortress America defense posture, these forces and expenses are way over the top, as well.By core missions were refer to the Navy component of the strategic nuclear triad and the Navy’s large force of attack- and cruise missile submarines. As it happens, here are the current manpower requirements for these key forces:

In short, the core Navy missions of a Fortress America defense involve about 30,000 officers and enlisted men or less than 6% of the current active-duty force of the Navy/Marine Corps. On the other hand, the totally unnecessary carrier battle groups, which operate exclusively in the service of Empire, have crews of 8,000 each when you count the escort ships and suites of aircraft.So, the 11 carrier battle groups and their infrastructure require 88,000 direct military personnel and 140,000 overall when you include the usual support and overhead. Likewise, the active-duty force of the Marine Corps is 175,000, and that’s entirely an instrument of invasion and occupation. It’s totally unnecessary for a homeland defense.In short, fully 315,000 or 60% of the current active-duty force of the Navy/Marine Corps functions in the service of Empire. So, if you redefine the Navy’s missions to focus on strategic nuclear deterrence and coastal defense, it is evident that more than half of the Navy’s force structure is not necessary for homeland security. Instead, it functions in the service of global power projection, policing of the sea-lanes from the Red Sea to the East China Sea and platforming for wars of invasion and occupation.Overall, the current Navy/Marine Corps budget stands at about $236 billion when you include $59 billion for military personnel, $81 billion for O&M, $67 billion for procurement, $26 billion for RDT&E and $4 billion for all other. A $96 billion or 40% cut, therefore, would still leave $140 billion for the core missions of a Fortress America defense.Among the services, the $246 billion contained in the Air Force budget is considerably more heavily oriented to a Fortress America versus Empire-based national security posture than is the case with the Army and Navy. Both the Minuteman land-based leg of the strategic triad and the B-52 and B-2 bomber forces are funded in this section of the defense budget.And while a significant fraction of the budget for the manning, operations and procurement of conventional aircraft and missile forces is currently devoted to overseas missions, only the airlift and foreign base component of those outlays inherently function in the service of Empire.Under a Fortress America defense, therefore, a substantial part of the conventional airpower, which includes upwards of 4,000 fixed wing and rotary aircraft, would be repurposed to homeland defense missions. Accordingly, upwards of 75% or $180 billion of the current Air Force budget would remain in place, limiting the savings to just $65 billion.Finally, an especially sharp knife would be brought down upon the $181 billion component of the defense budget which is for the Pentagon and DOD-wide overhead operations. Fully $110 billion or 61% of that huge sum—again more than 2X the total military budget of Russia—is actually for the army of DOD civilian employees and DC/Virginia based contractors which feast upon the Warfare State.In terms of homeland security, much of these expenditures are not simply unnecessary—-they are actually counter-productive. They constitute the taxpayer-funded lobby and influence-peddling force that keeps the Empire alive and fully funded on Capitol Hill. Even then, a 38% allowance or $70 billion for the Defense Department functions would more than provide for the true needs of a Fortress America defense.Overall, therefore, downsizing the DOD muscle would generate $410 billion of savings on a FY 2025 basis. Another $50 billion in savings could also be obtained from eliminating most funding for the UN, other international agencies, security assistance and economic aid. Adjusted for inflation through 2029 the total savings would come to $500 billion.Fortress America Budget Savings:

The resulting allowances (FY 2025 basis) of $60 billion for the Army, $140 billion for the Navy, $180 billion for the Air Force and $70 for DOD-wide operations would shrink the defense component of the Warfare State to $450 billion per year. In current dollars of purchasing power that happens to be exactly what Eisenhower thought was more than adequate for national security when he warned of the military-industrial complex during his farewell address 63 years ago.At the end of the day, the time to bring the Empire home is long overdue. The $1.3 trillion annual cost of the Warfare State (including international operations and veterans) is no longer even remotely affordable—-and it has been wholly unnecessary for homeland security all along.More By This Author:Why The US Can Not Print, Borrow, or Spend Their Way to a Strong EconomyThe Coming US Election And What It Means For America’s Fiscal Future Mother Of All Housing Bubbles