Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Chris Hellman.
When you hear Ron Paul talk about our military spending is now $1.2 trillion a year, he learned that from Chris Hellman.
He's a regular at Tom Dispatch and a senior research analyst at the National Priorities Project, the NPP, and that's nationalpriorities.org.
He's a member of the Unified Security Budget Task Force and the Sustainable Defense Task Force.
Prior to joining NPP, he worked on military budget and policy issues for the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and the Center for Defense Information.
He's also a 10-year veteran of Capitol Hill, where as a congressional staffer, he worked on defense and foreign policy issues.
Welcome back to the show, Chris.
How are you?
It's great to be here.
Thanks for having me on.
I'm really happy to have you here.
This is a very important piece just out at Tom Dispatch.
I'm sure it'll run under Tom Englehart's name tomorrow at antiwar.com.
How safe are you?
What almost $8 trillion in national security spending bought me?
What, Chris, did $8 trillion in national security spending buy me?
Well, not a whole heck of a lot as far as security goes.
It's funded an unprecedented explosion in annual Pentagon spending.
We're now spending, not including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than at any time since World War II.
That includes the wars in Korea and Vietnam and the height of the Reagan-era buildup.
So even absent the $150 billion we spend annually on war, we're spending higher than we have just through the Pentagon since World War II.
And then bundle into that the additional cost of these wars and the money that we've put into homeland security since 9-11, and you come up with a fairly staggering figure.
I think it was the Washington Post just yesterday.
I'm sorry, I'm almost positive it was the Post that said, what's the cost of the wars?
Nobody knows.
It's anyone's guess, I think.
Yeah.
And I mean, one of the things that we do at National Priorities through our project, through our cost of war website, is we try and track money that's already been allocated by the government to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But that's a very narrow construction of what the wars will actually cost us.
It's money that's actually been authorized and appropriated, and it deals with military operations and then the functions of some of the federal agencies like the Department of State that support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But it doesn't take into account a lot of other things, like, for instance, the cost of health care that we'll need to provide our veterans as they come out of Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, now and for the next 40 to 50 years, and other things of that nature.
So, but, you know, one point...
Let me make sure I understand you right.
You're telling me that the $8 trillion is just appropriated funds that does not include future obligations, like health care or the permanent occupation of Iraq?
No, that is what we've spent since 9-11 providing, quote-unquote, national security for the United States.
It doesn't project anything forward.
We could do that, but it's hard to, you know, it's hard to know, particularly, for instance, how long will the wars go on?
How many veterans are going to need care?
What level of care?
That types of things.
So, so we're just, we're just doing counting of what we numbers that we know.
Okay.
Well, the reason I stopped you there is because of course, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes wrote this important book called the $3 trillion war.
And then later they wrote an update in the newspapers saying, actually, we got that wrong.
It's going to be more like five, but they were talking about, you know, projecting into the future.
Although they were also only talking about the Iraq war and the costs associated with the Iraq war.
Whereas you're talking about a larger umbrella of things, but I just want to make sure the definitions are clear about what's being added.
It's important.
Now, my, my feeling is, is that first off they make certain projections and assumptions about the economic impact of the wars, which we at MPP, that's not, that's not the kind of work that we do.
But we felt that just by showing you the numbers that we, that we did know with absolute certainty, that they were large enough that, that it would be an aha moment for a lot of people who aren't, aren't, you know, well-versed in, you know, what, what national security costs us in this country.
And it, and it's a big number.
Yeah.
Well, and it's just amazing because when you talk about $8 trillion, almost $8 trillion spent that $8 trillion went somewhere and there are brand new entire segments of the economy that never existed before, or at least, you know, the, the domestic national security state has increased in size by what percent, a million percent or something.
Yeah.
I mean, for instance, one of the numbers that we looked at, which was with, and it's a hard number to find because of the way the government does the accounting is the amount we spend on quote unquote Homeland security, which in 2000, a year right before the, the, the nine 11 attacks was about $16 billion a year.
Now it's, it's over $70 billion a year.
So you're seeing, you're seeing, you know, a six fold increase annually.
And that has, as you, as you pointed out, fostered, you know, a new industry, Homeland security, providing Homeland security functions to the U.S. government and also to private industry, which is a number we don't look at.
There's a huge amount of money that's spent by private industry to provide security at things like power plants and those types of things.
We can't account for that number, but I suspect it's at least again, what, what, the, what the government spends on, on these types of things.
All right.
Now, if you could go down the list for us a little bit and break down some of these numbers of how, how you came up with almost 8 trillion spent so far.
Well, the biggest one of course is, is what we spend annually on the Pentagon.
It's what we refer to as the base budget.
It's, it's what we would be spending with or without wars.
It doesn't include the cost of wars.
It does include the nuclear weapons work that's performed by the department of energy.
And that's a $5.9 trillion over the last decade.
What's interesting about that is that the annual budget has grown from about 300 billion to almost 550 billion which is an 80% increase just for the, just for the, the annual Pentagon budget.
And if you look at that number adjusted for inflation, it's about $160 billion.
And interestingly enough, you know, if you've been following the whole story about the deficit commission, the debt commission and the amount of money that they're going to have to cut over the next decade it roughs out to about $150 billion a year that they're going to have to come up with.
So if you look at the increases in Pentagon spending, that would more than pay for the, the money that we're going to have to achieve over the next decade if we're, if we're going to meet the requirements of the recently passed budget deal.
Not even the current spending, but just the projected increases.
If we didn't give them the projected increases.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, so we're talking huge, huge amounts of money at a time when as everybody knows, you know, our, our government is scrambling for every tax dollar in order to reduce the annual deficit and, and economically, you know, we're, we're in, in, in really tough shape.
So it's, when you look at, you know, $6 trillion over the last decade spent on, on just the base defense budget one has to wonder if you know, even a portion of that had been allocated to job creation or something like that.
We might be in, in slightly better stead economically than we currently are.
Right.
Well, and you know, this whole thing is like the military calls their war in Afghanistan, a self licking ice cream cone, where it all comes to justify itself.
And all the, all these new companies that have government contracts to provide whatever, you know, business for Homeland Security and the national security state in general, the computer systems, the PSYAC and all the rest of it, who knows what, they all have lobbyists to make sure that they get to keep going no matter if Bin Laden's dead or not.
Well, that's absolutely true.
And, and, you know, as a former congressional staffer, I can, I can vouch for the, you know, the, the, the substance of what you're saying, which is that, you know, when a major employee, if you're an elected official and a major employer in your district who's, who's, you know, future is tied to the Pentagon budget calls you and says, look, you know, this program is important to us.
That's hard pressure to withstand.
It's true for every type of, of industry.
But it tends to be more true for the department of defense because it's hard to stand up and say, we don't need this weapon system and, and, and risk the, the, the possibility that you'll be accused of being soft on terrorism.
Yeah.
Or costing local jobs.
Well, that too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, ultimately a lot of this is about jobs or that, you know, you need, you need several hands to count the number of weapon systems that, that whose future is, is related solely to, you know, jobs that they create in critical districts.
Domestic politics.
All right.
Now hold it right there.
Everybody will be right back with Chris Hellman from the national priorities project.
That's nationalpriorities.org.
He's got a new one at tomdispatch.com.
All right, y'all welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Chris Hellman, senior research analyst at the national priorities project.
That's nationalpriorities.org.
And we're talking about the almost $8 trillion spent on the terror war and security since September 11th.
Uh, boy, I just have trouble even getting my head around that number.
Chris, how much money is $8 trillion?
Is that more money than all the governments have ever spent in the history of mankind before or what?
I don't think it's quite that, quite that.
More than the entire budget of the Roman Republic and empire combined, I think.
Yeah, probably true.
What I can tell you is, you know, we're, we're putting ourselves through an awful lot of pain and suffering in Washington right now because of our $14 trillion debt, which we've accumulated primarily over the last 60 years since World War II.
We did have some debt prior to that, but by and large, it's, we start accumulating large amounts of debt roundabout World War II.
When you look at $8 trillion, you're talking over half of that in the last decade alone, so, um, it, it represents even in an economy as large as the United States, uh, a very significant amount of money.
Um, and one has to wonder, um, as, as we speculate, um, in the, in the Tom dispatch piece, how much security have we actually bought ourselves?
Yeah, well, I mean, it seems like the only time there's so few Al Qaeda terrorists in the world, uh, the only times that they've ever tried to attack us, it was civilians who stopped them in Times Square, which I guess that guy was recruited by the Taliban.
But then, uh, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, uh, those guys were fought by civilians who had no help from the government whatsoever at the time.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the things that you hear repeatedly when, when we, when we talk about the appropriate amount of spending on, on, on security or Homeland security is this idea that an awful lot of the successes go unsung because, uh, for reasons of, you know, um, the way we gather intelligence or protecting our sources or law enforcement techniques, um, they, they can't tell us it's, it's what we describe as the, if I told you I'd have to kill you mentality.
Um, and yet, um, there are reasons to believe that that's not as accurate as, as, as one might think.
For instance, um, one, one of the big conservative think tanks in DC, the heritage foundation did an analysis of how, you know, terrorist attacks have been foiled and they looked at the 30 reported incidents over the last sort of five or six years.
And in the vast majority of cases, uh, all but two, in fact, um, it was performed, the, the, the attacks were foiled, not by national security apparatus, but by local, but by law enforcement and in many cases by local law enforcement.
So one has to wonder if, you know, all this money that we've put into Homeland security really has bought us that much more safety.
Well, and of course many of the FBI, probably I dare say most, but certainly many, many of the FBI cases of terrorism over the past decade have been completely bogus, you know, like Detroit and Lodi, California and the Miami seven and the paintball guys in Virginia, they were told either plead guilty or we'll turn you over to George tenant to be tortured.
And they were like, all right, we're guilty.
I mean, and all they were doing was playing paintball, you know, there was very clearly a lot of pressure on, on federal law enforcement agencies, be it the FBI or the other, the various intelligence gathering services to produce.
Um, and part of that is, uh, so that people do have examples of, you know, uh, success stories.
But another part of it is, uh, to, to continue to justify their, their existence in the annual battle of the budget.
I mean, one of the things that we see repeatedly, um, when we look at congressional testimony is this sort of, um, buying for position between competing federal resources, particularly in, you know, the current environment of austerity to make sure that they can maintain their budgets, um, at existing levels, if not expand them.
And, uh, this is true, you know, across the security apparatus and you see it time and again, and it's, it's very clearly an important component of the discussion about what's the appropriate level of spending.
All right.
Now, um, I want to ask you a little bit, you know, I want to find out what I can learn from you about the culture on Capitol Hill and the way things work there.
Um, you know, just beyond the obvious, uh, lobbying and what have you, uh, two things that have surprised me recently.
And I won't ask you to comment on either, uh, either of these examples.
They're just examples, but, uh, I've been shocked, uh, twice in the past week.
Uh, first by Rick Santorum, who said that the Iranians killed more Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan than the Iraqis or Afghans did.
And I thought, wow, he was in the Senate during the worst of the Iraq war.
And he really has no idea that they're fighting the Sunni based insurgency.
Remember all the hype about Al Qaeda in Iraq and all that didn't make an impression on him whatsoever.
And then, uh, general Peter Pace was asked by New York times reporter, you know, that people consider the Mujahideen, a totalitarian cult, right?
And general Peter Pace said, well, that's the first I ever heard of that.
Cause I guess he doesn't have Bing or whatever.
And so what occurred to me is that Washington DC is full of ignorant people that they look through the tiny little tunnel of here's what I need.
Like you said, for my budget next year or whatever, and they really don't know nothing about nothing.
Well, I think you raise a really interesting point there.
I think, you know, one of the most famous examples of this disconnect between politics and reality was the idea that, um, uh, the Bush administration, uh, foisted on the American people that, you know, after the invasion of, of Iraq in, in 2003, uh, us forces would be welcomed as liberators rather than conquerors.
Um, that, and that they literally had no plan for the morning after, uh, when combat operations, uh, ended on how to, you know, create, uh, a viable state in Iraq.
And it's something they're still struggling to do right now, even as we look at, you know, full, full withdrawal of us, the combat forces, you know, in the next year and a half.
Um, but this idea that, you know, we, you know, an invading army, uh, would be welcomed as liberators as opposed to, you know, um, invaders is just, how do you get there?
How do you intellectually, how do you, how do you get there?
And I think it was, you know, it was wishful thinking.
And as you, as you point out, um, a disconnect between, uh, reality and policy, right?
Yeah.
It's amazing.
I guess, you know, the average reader of antiwar.com, regardless of the opinion, just for the quantity of information on the side every day, maybe the less than average reader of antiwar.com probably has a much better understanding of what's going on in the world.
Chalmers Johnson, you say it's better than the CIA's daily brief.
Uh, you know, then, then the people who actually run the show up there, I'm reminded John McCain also, I'm having to be corrected by Joe Lieberman as to whether, uh, Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq, you know, live.
I mean, here's the guy who spends all his time campaigning and making money and, and flying on planes and whatever.
He doesn't sit around and read the news like we do.
He doesn't even know the first thing about the war that he's the world's greatest champion of it.
Yeah.
And you would expect better because as you know, where he's positioned through his committee as, as, uh, you know, uh, ranking Republican on armed services, certainly he has access to, um, rafts of information.
Um, one just has to wonder if, uh, you know, uh, a phrase my father used to use is they're selectively permeable is that things, you know, only certain things get through.
Yeah.
That's a good phrase.
I like that semi permeable, um, that, that membrane boatway around DC.
Um, well, and so on Capitol Hill, then a Lockheed lobbyist just walks up and says, Hey guys, you all know that a business has got to be done and we got to get our money for those planes.
Y'all don't need and whatever.
And it's just a done deal or is there, is there, it's not always a done deal.
It, um, I mean, it, it, it tends to be, that tends to be the business as usual, but it's not always a done deal.
There are, there are, um, instances where, um, particularly at the, at the urging of the military, um, Congress, you know, is, is able to maintain some level of control on spending on, on weapon systems, but it all almost inevitably happens only when the military is the one who's making the case that we desperately do not need this.
And by the way, it's taking away money from things that we really, really do need because the pressure to perpetuate, uh, weapons programs, uh, even the ones of dubious merit, um, at the congressional level is very, very strong.
And, and you can count the successes in terminating these programs, um, on maybe not one hand, but you probably wouldn't need fingers and toes, um, to look at the number of major weapon systems that have been terminated over the last decade.
Um, you know, I can give lots of different examples, some of which you've heard of and some of which you haven't, but the culture up there is that once a weapon system gets started, it, the momentum behind it is very hard to stop.
Yeah.
Well, we even saw that in, there was a fight over the F 22 versus the F 35, right?
Where Gates was telling the air force, you need to just, you know, be happy with the F 30 fives.
We know you want air to air combat, but we're more interested in bombing people in the countries we're occupying than fighting the Chinese or something.
So, and then the lobbyists came out and said, we've got to save these Georgia jobs, make F 22s.
Yep.
We were, we refer to them as the F 22 mafia.
And for, for weeks I had stacks of paper on my desk, uh, that were full page ads in the Washington post and the Hill and, and, uh, uh, a bunch of other Washington publications that must've cost, you know, literally tens of thousands of dollars.
And they were papering Capitol Hill with them just to keep this program going.
Yeah.
Well, they, he had a story yesterday about Boeing spends 4.4 million lobbying and I'm thinking, oh man, they get billions for that.
It's our money they're lobbying with in the first place.
And they just got to pay a pittance to run off with the bank, but I guess that's just the way it works.
All right.
I'm sorry.
We're all out of time.
Thank you so much, Chris, Chris Hellman, everybody.
Tom dispatch.com.
