Meaningful Pentagon Cuts Will Require Rethinking What 'Defense' Means
If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is serious about reducing military spending, he will need to embrace a narrower understanding of national security.
In 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government spent $916 billion on "defense," which was more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, France, and Japan. On the face of it, that is an astonishing sum for a country that is at peace and faces no plausible military threats anywhere near its borders. And since military spending accounts for about 13 percent of the federal budget, it is an obvious target for anyone who wants to reduce the annual deficit and control the ever-expanding national debt.
The 2024 Republican platform nevertheless provided little reason to hope that Donald Trump would be inclined to curb military spending. Its "twenty promises" included a Trumpian all-caps commitment to "STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD." That language defied reality, implying that the U.S. military, despite the enormous resources devoted to it, was not already "THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD." And whatever "STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE" might mean, it certainly did not imply that Trump was contemplating spending cuts. In this context, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's plan to reduce military spending, assuming it amounts to more than a reallocation that has no net effect on the total, is a pleasant surprise.
Hegseth "has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years," The New York Times reports. But the story notes that Hegseth's memo "listed some 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border." The Times adds that "one senior official said the cuts appeared likely to be part of an effort to focus Pentagon money on programs that the Trump administration favors, instead of actually cutting the Defense Department's $850 billion annual budget."
That's a pretty confusing summary, since it implies that cutting "8 percent from the defense budget over each of the next five years" somehow would leave total spending unchanged. But taken at face value, such cuts would be substantial, amounting to nearly $1 trillion in cumulative savings over five years and a decrease in annual spending of nearly $300 billion by the end of that period, ultimately reducing the total budget by about one-third.
It's not clear whether that is what Hegseth actually has in mind. But if so, the country's legitimate defense needs surely could be met with a military budget of half a trillion or so. Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly equivalent to what the Pentagon was spending in the early 1980s, a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In light of those developments, one might argue that an even bigger reduction is justified. But that would require reimagining the role of the U.S. military based on a narrower understanding of national security.
Hegseth has signaled that the Trump administration may be inclined to do that. "Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe," he told European leaders in Brussels last week. "The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must—and we are—focusing on security of our own borders."
Whatever your view of Trump's immigration crackdown, this conception of national security is decidedly more modest than one that requires the deployment of U.S. military personnel in Europe and across the world. Hegseth qualified that message by adding that "the U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail." But at least he is talking about setting priorities in light of the U.S. government's limited and manifestly overstretched financial resources.
"Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO," Hegseth said. "As part of this, Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine." That means "donating more ammunition and equipment," "leveraging comparative advantages," "expanding your defense industrial base," and "leveling with your citizens about the threat facing Europe," he added. "This threat can only be met by spending more on defense. Two percent [of GDP] is not enough; President Trump has called for 5 percent, and I agree."
Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a similar message at the Munich Security Conference two days later. "It's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense," he said. "President Trump has made [it] abundantly clear [that] he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent….We think it's an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger."
Like Hegseth's reference to China, Vance's concern about "areas of the world that are in great danger" left the door open to military intervention that extends far beyond our borders. But at least he sees one part of the world where the United States should be doing less.
This scolding of NATO allies for failing to spend enough on defense jibes with Trump's longstanding grievances: As the president sees it, the United States is always getting screwed over by other countries. But while that complaint makes little sense in the context of international trade, it is eminently reasonable when it comes to insisting that wealthy European countries stop relying on the United States to protect them against threats in their own backyard.
That does not necessarily mean those countries should be devoting at least 5 percent of GDP to defense—the target that Trump and Hegseth are pushing. But it definitely means they should be spending more than they do now.
In 2023, the United States spent 3.4 percent of its gross domestic product on "defense," accounted for 69 percent of military spending by NATO members. With the exception of Poland, every other NATO member spent less as a share of GDP, ranging from less than 1 percent for Luxembourg to 3.2 percent for Greece. France and the U.K. barely met the longstanding NATO target of 2 percent, while most NATO countries fell short, including Belgium (1.2 percent), Canada (1.3 percent), Germany (1.5 percent), Spain (1.5 percent), the Netherlands (1.5 percent), Turkey (1.5 percent), the Czech Republic (1.5 percent), and Italy (1.6 percent).
Despite the manifest failure of NATO countries to pull their weight, Hegseth and Vance's warnings provoked predictable panic among people who see the alliance as crucial even though its original raison d'être collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. "Trump's Whirlwind Now Blows Through Europe," says the headline above a "news analysis" that the Times ran last week. The subhead says the Trump administration "has brought a dizzying message to European allies" that "has already left many angered and chagrined."
Another Times "news analysis" published this week, headlined "Trump Team Leaves Behind an Alliance in Crisis," says "Europe's first encounter with an angry and impatient Trump administration" signaled "an epochal breach" in NATO that forced European leaders to confront "a new world where it was harder to depend on the United States." The Times ran yet another "news analysis" the same day under the headline "Europe's Leaders, Dazed by an Ally Acting Like an Adversary, Recalculate."
This hyperbolic consternation glides over the possibility that it should be "harder to depend on the United States," meaning it makes sense for those dizzied, angered, chagrined, and dazed politicians to "recalculate" their responsibility for protecting their own territory. Maybe it is encouraging rather than alarming that French President Emmanuel Macron, who this week convened leaders of "the main European countries" with "the objective of bringing together partners interested in peace and security in Europe," is floating the idea of a "true European army."
While a 5 percent target is arbitrary and may not make sense for any given country, Trump "is right to push US allies in [NATO] to do more for collective defense," Peterson Institute for International Economics senior fellow Cullen Hendrix says, noting that "the wolf is at the door in Ukraine." Trump's proposed target "may be notional and a signal that Europe (and Canada) need to be doing more to ensure the readiness and robustness of the alliance," Hendrix writes. "I agree. NATO should be doing more in terms of defense."
Just as it is reasonable to wonder why the United States should bear the brunt of defending European countries that can't be bothered to spend the money required even by the current NATO target, it is reasonable to question the national security justification for U.S. aid to Ukraine, which totaled $183 billion as of September 30. Leaving aside Trump's perverse revisionism regarding the cause of a war that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he is right to ask whether the U.S. investment is a sensible use of American money. As even the Times concedes, "many Americans might understandably oppose investing taxpayer dollars in someone else's war."
It is by no means clear that Trump's strategic vision, such as it is, precludes military interventions that have little or nothing to do with U.S. national security. Even as he pulls back from Europe and brags about keeping the United States out of senseless wars, for example, he blithely contemplates a U.S. occupation of Gaza. But to the extent that his administration rethinks U.S. military commitments and asks whether "defense" spending actually qualifies for that label, it will be moving in the right direction.
