Hendrix's Eccentric Commentary

4/22/2026

The United States flat cannot afford a $1.5 Trillion Defense budget:  the size of the public debt, the unwillingness of the Republicans, in particular, to find ways to raise revenue, and the demands of infrastructure and health care, among other things, simply will not support that level of defense spending.

We need to freeze our defense spending while at the same time get more bang for our bucks.  No, eliminating “waste. fraud, and abuse” will not get us there and in any case is not possible.  It is time to take a hard look at big ticket items like aircraft carriers, main battle tanks, and manned aircraft and the overall size of the force and make some choices — we no longer can say yes to everything.  It is also time to start taking a realistic look at how much overseas commitment we can can afford and where that has to be. 

Historians like John Brewer (_Sinews of Power_), and others coined the phrase “the Fiscal-Military State” and have documented that the rise to prominence of small population states like England and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century was crucially dependent on their ability to raise money.  Conversely, the decline of Spain and Bourbon France over the same period can largely be explained by a failure to raise the necessary revenue. Indeed, the defeat of Spain in the Eighty-Years War against the emerging Dutch Republic can largely be explained by the fact that they couldn’t pay their soldiers.

The United States is not there– yet, but there are the first hints that we might be hitting the limits of our ability to borrow.  We cannot project power if we cannot pay for the power we are trying to project.  Making ourselves one of the most unpopular superpowers on the planet and poisoning our alliance system is not likely to help either our ability to raise money and to find friends when we finally have to fight.