POLITICS: Why Trump’s $1.5T ‘Dream Military’ budget is what America needs

Finally, the United States will follow through on its NATO commitments. 

That’d be the cheeky interpretation of President Donald Trump’s announcement, via Truth Social, that he wants a US defense budget of $1.5 trillion next year.

This would represent a stunning 50% increase over the current budget, and put US spending right around 5% of GDP — the target level that NATO counties recently adopted at Trump’s insistence. 

The details and follow-through will matter, but on its own terms, the Trump declaration is of epic significance.

Such a historic defense build-up would meet the moment — it’s never made sense for United States to enter a period of heightened risk of great power conflict at a time when it has difficulty replenishing its missile stocks. 

It would match the predilections of a president who enjoys throwing his weight around.

If Trump wants to speak loudly and carry a big stick — his even more bumptious version of Teddy Roosevelt’s axiom — it requires the resources to build and maintain the stick. 

And it would match his vision of a world-class military, which he covets as a matter of power and prestige.

You can’t have a Golden Dome — Trump’s project for an enhanced missile defense — or a Golden Fleet — his notion of a next-generation navy — without a Golden Defense Budget. 

The scale of spending Trump is contemplating is truly astounding.

A $500 billion increase would roughly match the total annual spending of all non-US NATO countries.

The percentage increase would be highest since the Korean War, and double the biggest annual increases of the Reagan years (25% in 1981 and another 20% in 1982). 

“We still talk about the Reagan buildup,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a speech last month to the Reagan National Defense Forum, “and my kids and yours will someday talk about the Trump buildup.”

The Trump proposal would not just be a down payment on that promise, but a big step toward fulfilling it. 

If our military is highly proficient — as demonstrated in the Venezuela raid — it also lacks the materiel to wage a protracted war against a major power.  

Defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglin of the American Enterprise Institute has long been ringing the alarm.

She recently noted that during the short Israel-Iran war, we fired 150, or 25%, of our THAAD missiles, exceeding our annual purchase rate by three times. 

The same dynamic has held in the Red Sea, where the Navy fired more Tomahawks in January 2024 than it bought in all of 2023. 

These shortfalls, as Eaglin points out, are especially disturbing when compared to the building capacity of our adversaries.

Whereas the Russians make more than 300,000 artillery shells a month, we make 40,000 155mm shells a month.

“Beijing builds six naval combatant ships,” she writes, “for every 1.8 ships the US builds.”

Even The New York Times — not ordinarily known for beating the drum for more defense sending — devoted a splashy editorial last month to the sorry state of our military-industrial base.

Headline: “America Can’t Make What the Military Needs.”

In his new book “War and Power,” scholar Phillips Payson O’Brien relates how wars between great powers are usually not won by brilliant battle plans, or by the commitment or proficiency of the troops.

Rather it is productive capacity, and the ability to degrade that of the enemy while maintaining or increasing your own, that makes the difference. 

The Nazis were going to have a hard time ever winning the Battle of Britain when the Brits were producing twice as many aircraft as Hitler. 

On top of this, a nation needs to make shrewd choices about what it is building (the Nazis also had the wrong planes for the Battle of Britain — bombers with payloads that were too small, and fighters with limited range). 

The United States needs to make sure that it’s not over-investing in the weapons systems of the past, although a defense budget on the scale that Trump is discussing would relieve some pressure from these choices.

We could very well have our traditional subs and jet fighters, and our cutting-edge drones, too.  

The Trump endorsement of a $1.5 trillion budget came as he rapped defense contractors for supposedly favoring dividends and stock buybacks over production.

It may be that he’s adopting a carrot-and-stick approach — the stick is jawboning contractors to produce with a greater sense of urgency; the carrot is providing the resources for bigger, more reliable weapons orders. 

Trump’s taste for gilding everything can be over the top.

It’d be in our national interest, though, if he manages to make the US defense budget golden.

X: @RichLowry