It’s generally assumed that with the Iraq War officially over and troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, US defence spending will drop. Obama’s reference in his State of the Union address to ‘saving half a trillion dollars’ from the defence budget encouraged this assumption, as have Republican complaints that such cuts would ‘decimate’ the nation’s defences. But, as the president himself pointed out when introducing the new strategy, the Pentagon will get more money, not less: ‘Over the next ten years, the growth in the defence budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this, it will still grow.’ In the past five years the US has spent $2.59 trillion on defence. The new plans call for an allocation of $2.725 trillion between 2013 and 2017 – less than the $3 trillion envisaged in previous budget plans but still an increase of 5 per cent.

LRB 8 March 2012 | PDF Download