In the August 4 San Francisco Chronicle, Brett Wagner, formerly of the U.S. Naval War College, and now adjunct fellow at the weapons-funded Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes that the “Department of Defense” section of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” “envisions a world in which the U.S. slashes its military commitments and related funding to such draconian levels that we would cease to be a global superpower.” Its author, Christopher Miller (who was Secretary of Defense for three months under Trump), Wagner writes,
“has long argued that the Pentagon’s budget should be slashed by 40% to 50%, declaring that what our country needs is ‘someone with the courage and experience to get in there and get it done.’ In his Project 2025 document, he reveals just how he plans to ‘get it done.’”
Except that he doesn’t. The editors of the San Francisco Chronicle could have learned that by reading the thing. Miller lays out his goals for the U.S. military, with which Wagner strongly disagrees (I disagree with both of them), and then concludes: “The reality is that achieving these goals will require more spending on defense, both by the United States and by its allies.”
Wagner pretends that Project 2025 calls for “a huge drawdown of U.S. forces overseas, the likes of which we’ve never seen.” But where is anything resembling that in the actual document? I’ll grant you it’s some of the boringest claptrap ever written as guidance to a candidate who dozes off during his own trials and can hardly be expected to wade through this warmongering drivel. But the thing is broken into sections, each of which proposes stuff that costs more money. Miller wants more nukes, a bigger Army with a bigger budget, a bigger Navy with more ships plus robot ships, a more heavily funded Air Force, lots more F-35s, and so on. Never does he arrive at any section on cutting spending.
Nor does Miller’s Heritage Foundation writing bear any resemblance to what’s described in the promotional blurbs about his book (where he reportedly actually does back reducing military spending): “Part badass, part iconoclast, Miller is an irreverent, heterodox, and always-fascinating thinker whose personal journey through war and the White House has led him to some shocking conclusions about the state of American power in 2021.”
Now, it wouldn’t have been a completely crazy guess that slashing military spending was part of Project 2025. The “project” is in large part a demolition derby. The part about the Department of Education proposes eliminating the Department of Education. The part about the Environmental Protection Agency tells us that the “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government.” The part on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting tells us that “public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake.”
But why pretend that a document, especially one this predictable, strays so shockingly from the bipartisan Washington dogma of ever-more militarism? The main reason, I suspect, is the advantage that at least some militarists see in tying Donald Trump to peace and demilitarization. Each president increases military spending — Trump did, Biden did — even if each candidate promises to reduce it. Each president increases weapons sales. Each president increases military spending by NATO members — Trump more so than Biden. Two camps squabble over whether China or Russia is the top justification for the machinery of death. But they agree on all the fundamentals.
This reality doesn’t benefit any politicians or the military industrial complex. But tying Donald Trump to Russia has been of great benefit to warmakers, weapons dealers, and Democrats; tying Donald Trump to NATO opposition has been of great benefit to NATO; depicting Donald Trump as the enemy of the FBI and CIA has worked unbelievable wonders in the way of liberal support for those agencies. So, why not try making Donald Trump the enemy of military spending? Normally military spending is at odds with education and environment and health spending, peace and order, environmental protection, people’s lives, morality, the rule of law, government transparency, a healthy culture free of bigotry and violence. How much smarter to make military spending be at odds with Donald Trump! Why not run that scam on the liberals of San Francisco through what’s left of the San Francisco Chronicle and see if they bite?
But can anyone, even someone as odious as Donald Trump, compel me to become a supporter of senseless mass slaughter, even if he actually opposes it?
I should hope not, and I certainly don’t intend to allow a military stinktanker to impose such a perspective on me by pretending that a Trump-associated platform does something it doesn’t do.
Here’s a Nation article that presents Project 2025 honestly:
“Unfortunately, Miller the budget cutter is nowhere to be found here. Instead, Miller calls for expanding the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force and increasing the funding for nuclear weapons, missile defense, and offensive weapons in space. Perhaps that’s because, according to a number of veteran Pentagon watchers, he is the current favorite to serve as secretary of defense in the unfortunate event of a second Trump administration.
“Miller conveniently fails to mention how much all of his proposals will cost. At a minimum, they would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon’s spending plan for the next five years—and they would do so at the expense of everything else we need to protect the lives and livelihoods of the people of America and the world, from promoting public health to addressing climate change to rebuilding basic infrastructure to reducing poverty and hunger.”
Who better to oversee that catastrophe than someone who’s written a book opposing it but is willing to reverse course when offered a position of power?