The Ugly Truth about the Permanent War Economy

Despite ever growing Pentagon budgets, the national security establishment has expressed concerns about insufficient spending to deter or win a great power conflict. But war is not inevitable, and the consequences of a military buildup are grave. Decisionmakers must consider the strategic and fiscal challenges that will face their successors in thirty years – not the interests of corporations and their spokespeople, today.

Introduction

National security spending has grown nearly 50% since 2000, and the Pentagon budget alone will soon reach the trillion-dollar threshold.¹ Still, lawmakers, Pentagon officials, and defense industry spokespeople alike routinely sound the alarm about what they perceive as insufficient national security spending.² They argue the budget isn’t large enough to maintain deterrence and that Pentagon processes are too slow and rigid for the United States to respond to emerging threats, or if necessary, to prevail in a potential great power conflict.

Proponents of these arguments justify a military buildup by inflating the Pentagon’s ability to address foreign threats to national security. The Pentagon’s core issue, however, is a lack of clear or realistic strategic guidance. No amount of money will resolve issues that are ultimately matters of strategic overreach. Policymakers must scrutinize higher spending proposals and consider their long-term economic impacts. A military build-up would further entrench generations of Americans in the permanent war economy, which already does little to safeguard their security, much less their collective prosperity.

This paper explores the leading arguments for the United States to increase security spending in anticipation of a potential great power conflict. As the sections below will outline, they rarely include details about how the United States will pay for spending increases. The final sections of this paper outline the potential consequences of a military buildup. Excessive national security spending harms rather than helps the U.S. economy, in part by drawing resources away from more productive industries as Pentagon budgets grow ever larger.

Proposals to Increase the National Security Budget

The narrative dominating national security discourse in Washington is that the United States must drastically increase spending to deter or win a great power conflict.³ From this perspective, there are two critical pain points for the Pentagon: a purportedly underfunded defense industrial base and a “rigid” budgeting and weapon acquisition process.⁴ These claims resurface throughout the national security establishment, which is comprised of the arms industry, Congress, the Pentagon, think tanks, lobbyists, and industry-sponsored media outlets.⁵

The Pentagon calls for “generational changes” to catalyze the defense industrial base and “meet the strategic moment” in the first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS).⁶ The department does not specify how the United States would pay for such investment in the industrial base, nor does it offer a thorough accounting of the returns on previous investments. Still, many lawmakers echo the Pentagon’s call to significantly increase national security spending without investigating how previous investments impacted the defense industrial base.

In a May 2024 report titled “Peace through Strength,” a direct reference to Reagan’s Cold War buildup of the 1980s, Senator Roger Wicker of Alabama proposed a “generational investment” to raise military spending to at least 5% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the next five to seven years. In July 2024, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a $25 billion increase to the president’s Pentagon budget request by a vote of 22-3.⁷ Senator Wicker is set to chair the committee in the next Congress, so it is likely to raise the Pentagon topline beyond the administration’s request again next year.⁸

This year, however, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS) went even further than SASC. Congress created the commission in 2022 to examine the NDS and make recommendations to improve it, focusing heavily on Pentagon spending.⁹ In July 2024, the commission’s members urged a “bipartisan call to arms,” suggesting that the Pentagon budget account for the same share of GDP that it did during the Cold War – far beyond 5% of GDP.¹⁰ A simple analysis shows that such a budget boost would cost taxpayers anywhere between $5 and $10 trillion in additional Pentagon spending over the next decade, beyond the $9.3 trillion already projected.¹¹

Justifications for Higher Spending

The NDS Commission and many other advocates of increased security spending do not provide cost estimates for their proposals. Instead they cite potential foreign threats to cultivate support for higher Pentagon spending. Indeed, both the NDS Commission and Senator Wicker justify a military build-up by arguing that the United States faces “the most challenging and most dangerous security environment since World War II.”¹² The Center for Strategic and International Studies promotes the expansion of domestic weapon production capacity “to deter, and if deterrence fails, fight and win at least one major theater war – if not two.”¹³

Assertions about the threats posed by other great powers warrant significant skepticism, as do notions that the military is the best or the primary tool for the United States to respond. There are grave economic, strategic, and social implications of a military build-up, of which an informed public should be aware.

Senator Wicker argues that politicians have failed to convince U.S. taxpayers of the need to invest in the military because Washington suffers from a “collective failure” to imagine potential future conflicts.¹⁴ Given the amount of attention official Washington pays to a potential war with China, this line of argument is debatable. But it is through this lens that budget boosters promote a generational investment in the military and significant expansion of the defense industrial base.

They ignore the question of when and how the United States would de-mobilize industry in the future. There are no clear off ramps to increased weapon production and little discussion about the long-term economic consequences of increasing national security spending, particularly if a great power conflict does not occur.

Instead, Washington suggests that the next generation of Americans invest ever more in national security, touting an ideal level of military spending as an arbitrary percentage of GDP.¹⁵ It remains unclear how GDP determines the needs of the U.S. military.¹⁶ Still, NDS commissioners argue that since the United States spent more as a percentage of GDP during the Cold War, the United States could now do the same to counter China. But just because Congress can do so does not mean it should.

Efforts to Reform the Pentagon’s Budgeting and Acquisition System

According to the NDS Commission, the Pentagon should have more than just a bigger budget. Departmental leadership should also have greater ability to advance weapon acquisition programs with more limited oversight. Indeed, NDS commissioners support efforts to replace the Pentagon’s current budgeting and acquisition system with one much less accountable to U.S. taxpayers, but far more accommodating to contractors.¹⁷ A looser budgeting and acquisition system would enable the Pentagon to funnel more money to military contractors, faster.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform has spearheaded this effort. PPBE is the process through which military leaders develop programmatic goals based on strategic guidance documents like the National Defense Strategy. The process culminates in the President’s budget request for Congress and, eventually, military contracts to acquire weapons. Congress created the Commission on PPBE Reform in 2022 to evaluate and reform the PPBE system.¹⁸ Lawmakers subsequently filled the commission with individuals currently or formerly affiliated with military contractors, who may be incentivized to advance a system that prioritizes the defense industry’s financial interests over U.S. national interests.¹⁹

In its final report, the Commission on PPBE Reform wrote that while “[PPBE] produces an executable budget, and the DoD and congressional workforces accomplish their missions” it is “insufficient to the demands and realities of today’s strategic and technological environment.”²⁰ In designing a new system, however, the commission removed almost any incentive for military leaders to make difficult but necessary strategic and budgetary tradeoffs.

For example, commissioners encouraged the Pentagon to increase rapid weapon acquisition through the Other Transaction Authority (OTA) and Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) pathways. According to the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office, these pathways are largely exempt from procurement laws and regulations designed to protect the taxpayer from unreasonable prices or fraud.²¹

The Commission on PPBE Reform made nearly thirty other recommendations to advance a new defense resourcing system, prioritizing speedy weapon development at the expense of oversight.²² Commissioners’ recommendations, along with others to boost spending, reflect the national security establishment’s myopic focus on the size of the Pentagon budget and the speed of its budgeting and acquisition process.

The Core Issue

Unclear and unrealistic strategy is the root cause of many acquisition challenges, and more money will not resolve them. The PPBE Reform commission even suggests this, writing that strategic guidance documents like the National Defense Strategy and Defense Planning Guidance are too vague to provide military leaders sufficient “top-down guidance” during the programming phase of PPBE – when military leaders make decisions about the manpower and acquisition programs required to deliver “future capabilities and forces” within the defense budget topline for a given fiscal year.²³ As a result, commissioners note that decisionmakers are hesitant to make “hard choices at an early stage in the [defense] resourcing process.”²⁴

A bigger Pentagon budget and a looser weapon acquisition system may further complicate military leaders’ ability to make hard choices. With more funding and leniency in the acquisition process, military leaders would have little incentive to choose between acquisition programs based on the capability gaps they fill, the complexity of their designs, their reliability, and their costs. This is problematic because the Pentagon already struggles to make tradeoffs, a fact acknowledged by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. says that the department often confuses companies “because they don’t understand what [DOD’s] priorities are… The organization that wins is often the one that has the loudest voice and the most money. But that is not the capability [that the DOD] may need.”²⁵ A looser acquisition process would exacerbate this issue and spark further strategic overreach, not more discerning thinking about what the military needs and why.

The United States may have managed to avoid strategic and budgetary tradeoffs at the peak of its power, but the United States cannot maintain the status quo forever. An increasingly multipolar world requires tradeoffs.²⁶ In fact, some analysts have already declared strategic insolvency, urging the United States to abandon the Cold War mindset of maintaining U.S. military dominance in all parts of the globe.²⁷ This mindset will further cement itself in DC if the United States hikes national security spending and loosens the weapon acquisition process.

Financial Health of the Arms Industry

Much of Washington operates as though the United States can hold onto the unipolar moment forever, if only the Pentagon has enough money and power. In so doing, Washington insiders do not seriously interrogate the viability of fulfilling U.S. strategic aspirations with more Pentagon spending. Nor does the national security establishment grapple with the negative consequences of a bloated Pentagon budget. As a result, Washington discounts the fundamental nature of the defense industry.

Military contractor executives maximize financial returns, not production capacity or efficiency. According to a 2023 Pentagon study on contract finance, military contractors increased cash paid to shareholders by 73% from the first decade of this century to 2010-2019.²⁸ Contractors inflated shareholder returns by significantly reducing spending on capital investments and internal research and development, even given increased profit margins and cash flow over the same period.²⁹

Despite this track record, the NDIS suggests that increased Pentagon spending will enable contractors to make “longer-term production and resource allocation commitments” to capital investment, research and development, and manufacturing capacity.³⁰ But security spending has steadily grown for decades, and research clearly shows that for the first twenty years of this century, contractors prioritized payments to shareholders at the expense of investments in their businesses.³¹

It’s true that the arms industry relies on government demand for its products and services. Contractors are unlikely to make long-term investments without government contracts, but not necessarily because they cannot afford to. The industry is financially healthy and improving.³² In fact, researchers who contributed to the 2023 Pentagon study found that publicly traded U.S. military contractors “generate substantial amounts of cash beyond their needs for operations or capital investment,” noting that “the bulk is returned to shareholders.”³³

Defense industry leaders spend their money on shareholders while reaping the financial returns of government investments in their businesses.³⁴ Indeed, the government often reimburses contractors for capital investments and internal research and development spending.³⁵ Still, contractors have claimed that that profitability is insufficient to finance investments.³⁶ The Pentagon questioned this claim in its study. Researchers pointed out that while defense firms’ profit margins may be lower than commercial counterparts, they lag behind the defense industry in most other financial metrics.³⁷

The Pentagon study argues that these metrics, including higher returns on invested capital, are much better indicators of the arms industry’s financial health than profitability. Another metric is total return to shareholders. From 2000 to 2019, defense firms’ annual total return to shareholders significantly exceeded that of their commercial counterparts – at some points, by as much as ten or eleven percentage points.³⁸

The Reality of Financialization

Contractors’ priorities are clear, and they are unlikely to change with a cash infusion. In this regard, the defense industry may exemplify the most damaging impacts of financialization.³⁹ Sometimes referred to as shareholder capitalism, financialization is best described by its founding father, Milton Friedman. In 1970, he wrote that the primary responsibility of a corporate executive is “to conduct the business in accordance with [shareholders’] desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible.”⁴⁰ Financialization accelerated in the years that followed, but it did not start there.

Industrial production capacity deteriorated after World War II as business school-educated managers infiltrated factories, prioritizing investments in new industries, products, and manufacturing facilities. They acquired subsidiaries to dress up their books, inflating quarterly earnings reports by running down subsidiaries’ equipment and claiming losses. In the process, corporate managers reduced their tax liability and increased profits at the expense of building production capacity.⁴¹ This history is essential to understanding the state of U.S. manufacturing today.

The impacts of financialization are particularly egregious in the defense industry because it would not exist without the government. The largest U.S. military contractor, Lockheed Martin, generated 73% of its consolidated net sales from U.S. government contracts in 2023. The F-35 program alone accounted for 26%.⁴² Yet due to industry consolidation, defense contractors have significant leverage against the government due to its limited options.

A larger Pentagon budget may boost weapon production. However, trillions of dollars in additional military spending is unlikely to yield a proportional increase in military industrial output. If history is any indication, military contractors will dedicate an outsized portion of that money to maximize cash paid to shareholders, not to increase production capacity or efficiency. Moreover, such investment in the military may be more damaging to the U.S. economy in the long term than it is useful in fighting wars that will hopefully never happen.

The Economic Consequences of Higher Spending

As RAND analysts note, supporters of Pentagon budget increases don’t typically see tradeoffs between security spending and economic growth.⁴³ This may be partly attributed to the economic legacy of the Second World War, which impressed upon Americans the notion that military spending bolsters the economy. Indeed, history credits World War II spending with lifting the United States out of the Great Depression.⁴⁴ In reality, any substantial level of government spending stimulates economic growth. And while U.S. industrial mobilization was critical to the Allied victory, the decision to mobilize for war was a serious one with negative consequences for generations of Americans.

In his most recent book, the economist Alexander Field argues that industrial mobilization for the second World War retarded potential U.S. economic growth long-term.⁴⁵ He bases his argument, in part, on the decline in manufacturing productivity, or output per unit of input. Production output drastically increased during the war, but manufacturing productivity never fully recovered to its pre-war growth rate.⁴⁶ Indeed, the rate of productivity growth from 1919 to 1941 significantly outpaced that from 1948 to 1973, what is generally considered to be the end of the post-war boom period.⁴⁷

Field’s work is significant because it challenges the popular notion that the United States experienced a “productivity miracle” due to wartime industrial mobilization.⁴⁸ In so doing, he disputes the broader belief that military spending ultimately strengthens the economy by boosting long term economic growth. According to Field, “the consumer sector experienced limited beneficial spillovers from the wartime experience of mass-producing military goods.” Indeed, industrial mobilization for the war “distorted capital accumulation, crowding out investment in sectors of the economy not critical for the military effort.”⁴⁹ Workers developed new skills through their wartime learning experiences, but there was little opportunity to leverage those skills in the post-war economy.⁵⁰

Industrial mobilization for World War II was not the boon to the economy romanticized by many historians. The United States managed to increase military industrial output in a short period of time, but doing so ultimately hampered U.S. economic prospects because the United States had little use for weapon production facilities after the war ended.⁵¹ Yet the sheer scale of war spending and the country’s subsequent ascent to superpower status had such a profound impact on society that, 80 years later, mainstream discourse about military spending remains relatively unchanged from what it was in the early post-war era.

Unproductive Investment

Officials in Washington frame military spending as a jobs program strengthening the economy, in part by promoting U.S. manufacturing.⁵² But such claims cannot explain the deterioration of U.S. manufacturing in the past several decades, when military spending was high. Other industries far outpace defense in jobs creation.⁵³ There is even evidence that suggests a positive relationship between poverty and local economies’ dependency on the arms industry, though more research is needed to evaluate this interaction.⁵⁴ Globally, research suggests that military spending depresses long-term economic growth in most countries.⁵⁵ This trend can be at least partly attributed to the unproductive nature of military spending, a long-established concept.

Adam Smith explained the military’s drain on the economy in his seminal text on economic theory published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations. He wrote that the military establishment produces nothing of value in peacetime, and in wartime it acquires “nothing which can compensate the expense of maintaining [it], even while the war lasts.”⁵⁶ Put another way, civilians cannot consume weapons or produce anything with them. They are useless in the economy.

The intrinsic unproductivity of national security spending requires the United States to ruthlessly prioritize its acquisition needs. In so doing, the United States is likely to address many of the acquisition challenges it currently faces, including schedule slippages and cost overruns. These issues are likely to worsen with higher national security spending, a looser acquisition process, and a bigger defense industrial base because they will encourage superfluous weapon development. The United States is better off making tradeoffs today than it is demobilizing in the future.

Economic Conversion

As Ethan Kapstein writes in The Political Economy of National Security, the United States spent millions of dollars converting weapon production facilities to civilian use after World War II. U.S. workers dedicated thousands of labor hours to the effort, and the conversion process was still underway when the Korean war began. ⁵⁷ Economic conversion is incredibly costly and time intensive, and the United States should avoid adding to the burden as much as possible.

The industrial engineer, economist, and peace activist Seymour Melman dedicated much of his career to the task of economic conversion. Like Smith, he argued that investing in unnecessary weapon production harms the economy. This idea is central to Melman’s argument against what he characterizes as parasitic growth of the Pentagon budget. Parasitic budget growth rapidly depletes resources, but it does not contribute to taxpayers’ quality of life.⁵⁸ Most often, it does not increase potential future production, either. Productive growth in other industries achieves one or both these ends.

Melman warned that if parasitic growth of the Pentagon budget continued, the United States would eventually reach a point of no return. At the point of no return, production competence and productivity in the United States would decay to a degree impossible to reverse without a wholesale reorientation of the U.S. economy. This shift would require the United States to make a “firm ideological commitment” to industrial and economic renewal, which necessarily involves significant divestment from the permanent war economy. ⁵⁹

Divestment would require Washington to look toward the future and abandon tired, misguided narratives about the role of military spending in the economy. The reality is that a military buildup would catapult the United States toward Melman’s point of no return. Generations of Americans would pay for trillions of dollars in excessive national security spending through their tax dollars, but also in potential jobs, infrastructure, productivity, and thus, economic growth. Now is the time to make the shift toward economic renewal, for posterity’s sake.

Conclusion

The United States is unlikely to fight a war at home, and a potential great power conflict abroad would likely be a choice rather than an inevitability. Yet Washington demands that Americans make a generational investment in the military without naming the costs or identifying the conditions in which the United States would decrease security spending in the future. Arms industry spokespeople and government officials promote a military buildup in the name of great power competition, but they neglect to define its contours – or make a compelling case for how it advances core national interests.⁶⁰

At this moment, inflating the Pentagon budget appears to be an end itself rather than a means to building an effective national defense. The military is not, in fact, the best or the only way for the United States to address national security threats. So as decisionmakers digest proposals to increase national security spending, expand the defense industrial base, and loosen weapon acquisition, they should consider the strategic and fiscal challenges that might face their successors in thirty years.

In 2024, interest payments on the debt will exceed the Pentagon base budget for the first time.⁶¹ In the next decade, personnel and weapon sustainment costs will exceed the rate of inflation – accounting for nearly 70% of Pentagon budget growth.⁶² These problems will only compound with time, with future generations forced to shoulder the economic burden if the United States does not change course.

Notes

1
Dan Grazier, Julia Gledhill, and Geoff Wilson, “Current Defense Plans Require Unsustainable Future Spending,” (Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center, July 2024), https://www.stimson.org/2024/current-defense-plans-require-unsustainable-future-spending/; Stephen Semler, “A Pentagon budget of $1 trillion is looming. Here’s how to stop it,” The Hill, accessed September 20, 2024, https://thehill.com/opinion/4623255-a-defense-budget-of-1-trillion-is-looming-heres-how-to-stop-it/.
2
U.S. Government, Senate Armed Services Committee, “Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” (Washington, DC: Senate), iii, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#PAGE=3.
3
Ibid, vii, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=7; “National Defense Industrial Strategy,” (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense), i, https://www.businessdefense.gov/docs/ndis/2023-NDIS.pdf#page=3; Senator Roger Wicker, “Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the Military,” (Washington, DC: Senate), i, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0#page=3.
4
U.S. Government, Senate Armed Services Committee, “Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” (Washington, DC: Senate), 17, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=35; U.S. Government, Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, “Defense Resourcing For The Future: Final Report,” (Washington, DC: Senate, 2024), 3, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#page=10.
5
Dan Grazier, “Time to retire the phrase ‘Military Industrial Complex,’ Responsible Statecraft, last modified July 24, 2024, accessed November 11, 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/military-industrial-complex-2668809022/.
6
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, “National Defense Industrial Strategy,” (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense), 9, https://www.businessdefense.gov/docs/ndis/2023-NDIS.pdf#page=9.
7
“SASC Completes Markup of National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025,” U.S. Senate Committee of Armed Services, last modified July 8, 2024, accessed September 30, 2024, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/press-releases/sasc-completes-markup-of-national-defense-authorization-act-for-fiscal-year-2025.
8
Svetlana Shkolnikova, “Wicker, supporter of Ukraine and more military spending, set to become chairman of Senate armed services panel,” Stars and Stripes, last modified November 6, 2024, accessed November 8, 2024, https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-11-06/senate-armed-services-committee-chairman-wicker-15762340.html.
9
U.S. Government, Senate Armed Services Committee, “Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” (Washington, DC: Senate), 19, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=19.
10
Ibid, viii, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=8.
11
Christopher Preble and Julia Gledhill, “Hawks want a new Cold War but are cagey about the cost. So we did the math., The Hill, last modified September 6, 2024, accessed September 9, 2024, https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4864413-hawks-want-a-new-cold-war-but-are-cagey-about-the-cost-so-we-did-the-math/amp/.
12
U.S. Government, Senate Armed Services Committee, “Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” (Washington, DC: Senate) 69, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=87; Senator Roger Wicker, “Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the Military,” (Washington, DC: Senate), i, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0#page=3.
13
Seth G. Jones, “The U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China,” (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic & International Studies), https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-to-deter-conflict-with-China/;
14
Senator Roger Wicker, “Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the Military,” (Washington, DC: Senate), 5, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0#page=10.
15
Ibid, 8, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0#page=13; U.S. Government, Senate Armed Services Committee, “Commission on the National Defense Strategy,” (Washington, DC: Senate), x, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf#page=9.
16
Travis Sharp, “Tying US Defense Spending to GDP: Bad Logic, Bad Policy,” Parameters 38, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 6, accessed November 7, 2024, doi:10.55540/0031-1723.2443.
17
Julia Gledhill, “DOD budget reform panel’s elephant in the room: Bad strategy,” Responsible Statecraft, accessed September 30, 2024, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/pentagon-budget-2667739439/.
18
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, Pub. L. No. 117-81, 135 Stat. 1884.
19
Julia Gledhill, “Reform – or Repeat? Congress Fills New Pentagon Reform Panel with Revolving Door Regulars,” Project On Government Oversight, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.pogo.org/analysis/reform-or-repeat-congress-fills-new-pentagon-reform-panel-with-revolving-door-regulars.
20
U.S. Government, Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, “Defense Resourcing For The Future: Final Report,” (Washington, D.C.: Senate, 2024), 22, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#page=29.
21
Ibid, 72, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#page=79; U.S. Government, Congressional Research Service, “Department of Defense Use of Other Transaction Authority: Background, Analysis, and Issues for Congress,” https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R45521.pdf#page=2; U.S. Government, Government Accountability Office, “Middle-Tier Defense Acquisitions: Rapid Prototyping and Fielding Requires Changes to Oversight and Development Approaches,” 1, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105008.
22
U.S. Government, Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, “Defense Resourcing For The Future: Final Report,” (Washington, D.C.: Senate, 2024), 17, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#PAGE=17.
23
U.S. Government, Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, “Defense Resourcing For The Future: Final Report,” (Washington, D.C.: Senate, 2024), 17, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#page=24.
24
Ibid, 27, https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Commission-on-PPBE-Reform_Full-Report_6-March-2024_FINAL.pdf#page=34.
25
Ben Wolfgang, “Joint Chiefs head eyes tough choices in unsettled threat environment: ‘I might p— some people off,’” Washington Times, accessed October 17, 2024, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/may/9/i-might-p-some-people-off-but-im-ok-with-that-join/.
26
Christopher Preble, A Credible Grand Strategy: The Urgent Need to Set Priorities (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, January 2024), https://www.stimson.org/2024/a-credible-grand-strategy-the-urgent-need-to-set-priorities/.
27
David A. Ochmanek, Anna M. Dowd, Stephen J. Flanagan, et al., Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence (Washington, D.C.: RAND, July 2023), 7, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2555-1.html.
28
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, “Contract Finance Study Report,” (Washington, D.C.: DOD, 2023) 18, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=18.
29
Ibid.
30
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, “National Defense Industrial Strategy,” (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense), 38, https://www.businessdefense.gov/docs/ndis/2023-NDIS.pdf#page=38.
31
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, “Contract Finance Study Report,” (Washington, D.C.: DOD, 2023) 20, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=20.
32
Ibid, 25, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=25.
33
Ibid, 21, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=21.
34
Ibid, 18.
35
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, “Contract Finance Study Report,” (Washington, D.C.: DOD, 2023), 33, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=33.
36
Ibid, 19, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=19.
37
Ibid, 18-19, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=18.
38
Ibid, 24, https://www.acq.osd.mil/asda/dpc/pcf/docs/finance-study/FINAL%20-%20Defense%20Contract%20Finance%20Study%20Report%204.6.23.pdf#page=24.
39
Shana Marshall, “Theorizing the Intersection of Financialization and Militarism,” Security in Context, accessed September 19, 2024, https://www.securityincontext.org/posts/theorizing-the-intersection-of-financialization-and-militarism#:~:text=Other%20markers%20of%20financialization%20are,capital%20funds%20that%20invest%20in.
40
Milton Friedman, “A Friedman doctrine— The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” The New York Times, accessed September 19, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html.
41
Seymour Melman, Profits Without Production (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 26.
42
Lockheed Martin Corporation, “2023 Annual Report,” (Bethesda, Maryland: Lockheed Martin Corporation) 16, https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/eo/documents/annual-reports/lockheed-martin-annual-report-2023.pdf#page=16.
43
Bryan Rooney, Grant Johnson, Miranda Priebe, How Does Defense Spending Affect Economic Growth?, (Washington, D.C., RAND, 2021) 2, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA700/RRA739-2/RAND_RRA739-2.pdf#page=2.
44
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
45
Alexander J. Field, The Economic Consequences of U.S. Mobilization for the Second World War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2022), 16.
46
Ibid, 16, 50.
47
Ibid, 19, 23.
48
Ibid, 16.
49
Ibid, 277, 62, 372.
50
Ibid, 277.
51
Ibid, 372.
52
Joe Gould and Connor O’Brien, “Biden has a new message about the war. There’s an America First twist.,” Politico, last modified October 21, 2024, accessed November 13, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/21/bidens-ukraine-aid-buy-american-00122823.
53
Heidi Garrett-Peltier, “Job Opportunity Cost of War,” Costs of War: Watson Institute at Brown University, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2017/Job%20Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20War%20-%20HGP%20-%20FINAL.pdf.
54
Miriam Pemberton, “From a Militarized to a Decarbonized Economy: The Case for Conversion,” Costs of War: Watson Institute at Brown University, 3, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2023/Pemberton%20-%20Military%20Conversion%20Costs%20of%20War%20-Final.pdf#page=3.
55
Giorgio d’Agostino, J. Paul Dunne and Luca Pieroni, “Does military spending matter for long-run growth?,” Defence and Peace Economics 28, no. 4, (April 2017),: 7, accessed September 23, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2017.1324723.
56
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Hazleton, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2005), accessed September 11, 2024, 280, https://www.rrojasdatabank.info/Wealth-Nations.pdf#page=280.
57
Ethan Barnaby Kapstein, The Political Economy of National Security: A Global Perspective, (USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1992), 85.
58
Seymour Melman, Our Depleted Society (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 5.
59
Seymour Melman, Profits Without Production (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 245.
60
Ali Wyne, America’s Great-Power Opportunity (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022), 45.
61
Aimee Picchi, “U.S. interest payments on its debt to exceed defense spending. Should we be worried?” CBS, March 1, 2024, accessed July 3, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-debt-interest-payments-defense-medicare-children/.
62
U.S. Government, Congressional Budget Office, “Long-Term Implications of the 2024 Future Years Defense Program,” (Washington, D.C., CBO, 2023), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59703.