Only 23 percent of U.S. respondents favored increasing U.S. military spending
...But this is only part of the story, for, although many Americans support ramping up U.S. military spending, most Americans don’t. A July 2020 opinion survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that only 23 percent of U.S. respondents favored increasing U.S. military spending, while 66 percent either favored maintaining the current level (38 percent) or cutting it (28 percent). A February 2021 Gallup Poll revealed similar opinions.
A more powerful driver of military spending increases lies is the enormous influence of self-interested corporate contractors. These private companies work hard to ensure that the U.S. military budget—and thus their income—keeps rising. Over the past two decades, U.S. weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying, employing over 700 lobbyists per year to sell new, immensely expensive high-tech missiles, warplanes, warships, and other implements of destruction to the U.S. government. Most of these corporate lobbyists have moved through a revolving door of jobs at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, Congress, and other key agencies. Indeed, four of the past five U.S. Secretaries of Defense have come from one of the top five arms contractors. Military contractors also lavishly fund major think tanks and, of course, make very substantial campaign contributions to friendly politicians—an estimated $285 million over the last two decades.
Such investments have paid off handsomely, enabling military contractors to rake in roughly half of the Pentagon’s lavish annual spending. Since fiscal year 2001, U.S. weapons manufacturers have secured $4.4 trillion in U.S. government contracts, with a quarter to a third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years going to just five major weapons companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. In fiscal 2020, Lockheed Martin alone received $75 billion from the Pentagon. Furthermore, enormous Pentagon contracts are also handed out to military logistics, reconstruction, and “security” corporations.
In response to these pressures, the U.S. government all too often bypasses other approaches to international security—including forging cooperative agreements with other nations and strengthening multilateral institutions—while increasing its military spending to new, outlandish levels.
[Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).]
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