Dave DeCamp
March 12, 2024
antiwar.com

President Biden has requested a record $895 billion in military spending for the 2025 fiscal year. Of that amount, about $850 billion will go to the Pentagon, and the remaining funds will go to other US federal agencies for military programs, including the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program.

While a massive figure, the request likely would have been bigger if not for the debt ceiling deal reached between House Republicans and the White House last year, which capped military spending for 2024 and 2025. The $895 billion is a 1% increase from the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which still hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.

The debt ceiling deal did not cap “emergency supplemental” military spending, which is how the US has been funding the proxy war in Ukraine. President Biden is also urging the House to pass a $95 billion supplemental foreign military aid bill that includes funding for Ukraine, Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and Taiwan.

Factoring in other costs, including the Veterans Affairs budget and interest paid on national security-related debt, the true cost of military spending for 2025 will easily exceed $1.5 trillion.

Much of the Pentagon’s massive spending is justified by hyping the threat of China, which the US military has named as its top threat. “We must continue to adapt, advance and innovate at speed and at scale across all domains, prioritizing China as the pacing challenge and Russia as an acute threat. Our strategy-driven budget does just that,” said Adm. Christopher Grady, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Pentagon budget includes $500 million in military aid for Taiwan in the form of Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the US to send weapons straight from US military stockpiles. The US gave its first PDA package to Taiwan last year, which marked a significant escalation in US support for the island.

The US has sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 but has never financed the purchases or provided arms free of charge until 2023.

President Biden’s 2025 budget request also includes $100 million for Taiwan through the State Department in the form of Foreign Military Financing, which provides money to foreign governments to purchase US arms. The US announced its first FMF package for Taiwan in 2023 as well…

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Cardinal Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII and John XXIII, wrote in 1947:

“The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever… No conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails”.—-Relationes societatum perfectarum in statu conflictus… More

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. “The talk, “Youth and Sex,” pinpoints the moral turning point of country to “8:15 in the morning, the 6th of August, 1945,” when, he says, the world changed. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, and the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half dead. So we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me. … You want no restraint, no boundaries. I have to do what I want to do.” — Catholic World Report

Will Donald Trump be any different? I doubt it.