Published March 29, 2022
President Biden’s budget request proposes a $31 billion increase in defense spending in the coming fiscal year. That may sound like a lot, but the 4 percent hike doesn’t even match our 7.9 percent inflation much less our urgent needs. At the very least, Congress should double that hike. Ideally, it would do much more.
The United States is the linchpin of global security for democracies everywhere. Its leadership role in NATO preserves Europe from Russian assault while a series of bilateral defense arrangements protects Asian democracies from Chinese aggression. The United States also has commitments in the Middle East and combats terrorism and drug trafficking in Africa and Latin America. That’s a heavy lift for any nation.
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Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Photo by Filip Andrejevic on Unsplash
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
