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The military budget is the price we pay for the nation’s foreign policy. The U.S. currently is spending nearly as much as the rest of the world. In real terms, Washington is spending more today than at any time during the Cold War, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War.Using 2000 for constant dollars, the U.S. devoted $774.6 billion to the military in 1945, the last year of World War II. In 1953, the last year of the Korean War, military outlays ran $416.1 billion. Peak expenditures during the Vietnam War hit $421.3 billion in 1968.Expenditures as a percentage of GDP have fallen because the U.S. economy has grown, not because military outlays have dropped.U.S. outlays per capita dramatically outpace those of other nations. My Cato Ins ute colleague Chris Preble figures that in 2010 citizens in America will devote more than five times as much as Germans, about eight times as much as Japanese, and more than 27 times as much as Chinese.America possesses the most sophisticated nuclear arsenal and most powerful conventional force. Washington’s ability to intervene is unparalleled: the U.S. possesses 11 carrier groups. Russia has one. India has one. There are no others.
