President Trump announced on March 23 that he was going to sign the spending bill that Congress passed because “my highest duty is to keep America safe.” He then proceeded to list some of the equipment that we will get with the increased, $700 billion Defense Department budget. My favorite is one of the smallest expenditures on his list — $1.1 billion to upgrade 85 Abrams tanks. I spent five years in Afghanistan, one of those years working with the military, and never saw a tank there. It turns out that in January 2017 (yes, under President Obama) the largest shipment of tanks since the Cold War landed in … Germany, headed for the Baltic countries. At least we are keeping Latvia safe.
The largest expenditure that Trump mentioned is $23.8 billion for 34 Navy ships. Wikipedia tells us that the last time Americans were involved in a naval battle was in 1991, when British forces “destroyed the bulk of the Iraqi navy.” Shortly before that, in the “largest U. S. naval engagement since World War II,” the U. S. Navy defeated the Iranian navy in retaliation for the mining of a U. S. frigate.
We will build 90 F-35 fighters, at about $113 million each. These will be, Trump tells us, “the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, jet fighters.” Presumably, they will be even better than Russian and Chinese fighters, which will not be able to shoot them down. (For the record, no U. S. fighter planes have been shot down in the last 20 years by Russia or China.)
The State Department’s allocation in the budget is $50 billion, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This is significantly more than the $39 billion that Trump asked for, but only about 7 percent of the defense budget, and significantly less than the increase in the overall defense budget.
USAID carries out development, known informally as foreign aid. Even in a city as educated as Boulder, few people are familiar with the activities of USAID. (Full disclosure: I worked indirectly or directly for USAID for roughly 10 years between 1994 and 2014). Much of USAID’s budget goes to health and education, but the agency also supports humanitarian assistance, economic development, agriculture, and democracy — things that, as a rule, improve the standing of the United States in those countries. It seems pretty obvious that if developing countries are on our side, the world (and the United States) is a much safer place, especially given today’s instability in many of those countries. Sadly, Donald Trump apparently disagrees with that concept. He is a win/lose president, so if we are spending money on foreigners, we are “losing.” We only win when we spend money on ourselves, defeating them.
As the saying goes, we always try to win the last war. In this case, I fear that Trump is fighting World War II. It would have been nice if President Trump had told us how much we are spending to protect the U. S. from cyber attack, although it is understandable that he may want to avoid the subject.
But President Trump didn’t pass this budget, Congress did. Why does the American public support so much military spending? There is still a guilty conscience about how veterans were treated during and after the Vietnam War, when returning soldiers were vilified by anti-Vietnam protesters. So now we thank veterans for their service at every opportunity. We can and should thank veterans for their service, but unfortunately, that gratitude has led to a glorification of the military.
Here’s an idea. How about occasionally at a football game, we honor a State Department official for negotiating a treaty to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons? Or, if you think that is a “really bad deal,” maybe thank the USAID health and education officer for pushing forward a project to train teachers in Afghanistan, or conducting programs to eliminate polio.
Doesn’t it make sense that we spend more time and money helping people around the world than we spend killing them?
Rett Ertl lives in Boulder County and is a former member of the Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board. During his professional career, which included a stint with the USAID, he has lived and worked in Munich, Paris, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
