OPINION:
The New York Yankees, one of the premier sports franchises on Earth, are in last place in the American League East division. This is the latest date they have been in last place in more than 30 years, but the truth is that the Yankees have not been very good for a long time. They have won only one World Series in the last 23 years, the worst stretch since the franchise began in 1901.
This is despite the fact that the franchise is routinely in the top two or three in Major League Baseball with respect to the amount spent on payroll, scouting, management and whatnot.
The current state of the Yankees came to mind during the recent and ongoing consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act. This year, the defense establishment argued that it simply could not provide for the common defense of the United States for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1 for less than $886 billion.
That amount — which doesn’t count the extra $50 billion or so that the Senate will add through an emergency supplemental (we’ll figure out the emergency later) — makes the United States tops on the planet with respect to spending on “defense.”
The next nearest nation is China at about $300 billion. The feared Russians, who are involved in an actual shooting war? About $90 billion, the same as India.
In fact, the United States spends as much on defense as the next 10 nations combined.
A rational assessment of defense spending would start with a simple question: What are we buying for all that cash? The answer probably ranges from not very much to no one really knows.
The United States has not experienced a legitimate conventional military threat to its homeland (or even its overseas territories or possessions) from another nation since 1945.
At the moment, the wolves are pretty far from the door, and the greatest threat we face from our principal adversary — China — is not military, but rather commercial and diplomatic. Even if the principal threat from China were military, no one involved in the defense authorization or appropriations process could explain how current spending might address that threat.
We are now almost 35 years on from the end of the Cold War. In the intervening three decades, we have endured a string of military misadventures, mostly in or around the Middle East.
The trillions of dollars spent in the last 35 years does not seem to have made the world a more peaceful place, nor a place more hospitable to Americans or our interests.
Indeed, we are now — through our de facto allies in Ukraine — locked in the most substantial war in Europe in more than 75 years. The impressive capabilities of our military-industrial complex did not deter the Russians from invading Crimea in 2014 or Ukraine proper in 2022.
The Russian invasion has highlighted the tenuousness of our ability to supply our own troops in the event of a shooting war. We are running out of ammunition because we are sending it to Ukraine. We have been reduced to giving Ukraine cluster bombs, which are outlawed by every decent nation.
So, despite the world’s largest defense and national security budget, we can’t keep the peace, can’t resist the steady march of China, can’t resupply our own stocks of ammunition and are essentially a pariah state with respect to weapons of war.
In addition to these pathologies, our readiness to fight other nations’ battles for them has meant that NATO — an alliance whose current members are already indifferent to their defense obligations — will expand to include Sweden and Finland, who will no doubt be mighty allies of the United States in the event we are attacked.
One of the great things about the United States is that even in this late moment in the republic, the people who pay for things eventually expect results. That’s true for Yankees fans who want the general manager and coach fired.
It’s true for taxpayers who will, at some point, insist upon improvements with respect to how we defend ourselves.
Until those things happen, however, we will all keep overpaying for mediocrity.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.