The Trillion-Dollar Blob

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

In 2018, the Pentagon failed its first audit. In 2024, it failed its seventh audit in a row. The Pentagon has been “punished” for failing seven audits – and losing track of roughly $2 trillion in gear, weapons, and similar “assets” – with more money. Whether under Presidents Trump or Biden, the Pentagon budget has continued to soar toward a trillion dollars. That is the reward for total fiscal incompetence.

Congress says the Pentagon must achieve “a clean audit” by 2028. Imagine telling the IRS that you can’t account for your financials for seven straight years – and probably at least three more – but you hope to have a “clean” tax return after a decade of effort. And the IRS responds by giving you ever higher tax refunds that you haven’t earned. Nonsensical, isn’t it?

It’s a measure of the power of the MICIMATT, the national security blob, that failure brings so many rewards. That handy acronym of Ray McGovern explains a lot. The Military, all its weapons makers (Industry), Congress, the Intelligence “community,” the Media, Academe, and various Think Tanks: when you add all that up, all its cultural authority as well as its vast resources, it’s no wonder the blob is so difficult to tackle, let alone contain. Plus the blob is further supported by two powerful shapers of culture and opinion, the sports world (consider the NFL’s “Salute to Service” campaign) and Hollywood (consider all the movies made featuring military weaponry and storylines that celebrate military prowess, not forgetting all the TV shows centered on special forces, CSI, and the like). Think of all those “Call of Duty” video games as well.

Here’s the crux of the matter: even if the Pentagon finally passes an audit, we need much more than an efficient military. It’s not enough to cut the Pentagon budget slightly, or to claim that waste, fraud, and abuse can be reduced. Sure, it’s a step, but if the military is still imperial, still fighting wars it shouldn’t be fighting, still funding legacy weapons systems that were obsolete fifty years ago, a more efficient force doing brutally dumb things is hardly an improvement.

That’s why I’m not encouraged by Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) with its supposed mandate to make even the blob more efficient. A quicker, leaner, blob that’s “indestructible” (as in the movie poster) is even more of a peril.

I don’t want a leaner, more efficient, imperial military. I want a smaller, much less ambitious, military suitable to a republic that’s dedicated to the defense of our constitutional ideals.

I don’t want cheaper, more nimble, nuclear weapons. I want major reductions in nuclear arms. Any sane person should want this.

Yet what we get is fear-mongering, threat inflation, and boasts about U.S. military lethality even by the Democrats. (Recall Kamala Harris and her praise of lethality.)

America has a bellicose, bullying, immature leadership that thinks military might is the answer to everything, as reflected by U.S. Special Forces in 80+ countries and roughly 800 bases globally. That global presence is unsustainable. It is also folly.

Of course, this massive global presence grew during World War II and the Cold War. After 1991, instead of downsizing, the U.S. military decided it could dominate everywhere, then defined the GWOT (global war on terror) and a new cold war to justify the trillion dollar budgets we’re now seeing – and which can’t be audited, according to the Pentagon.

Here’s the rub: America must end the idea of full-spectrum dominance, end the GWOT, and dismiss notions of a new cold war. Forget about efficiency: make big cuts to the Pentagon budget and create a new vision of a military suited to keeping the peace rather than waging perpetual war.

Making the Pentagon pass an audit (still very unlikely) may keep accountants happy, but a more efficient military may be even more dangerous if the policies of dominance everywhere and weapons sales irrespective of human rights, even genocide (!), continue unabated.

As George McGovern said in 1972, “Come home, America.” Leave the rest of the world to settle its own affairs.

Answer the call of duty: defeat the blob!

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views. His video testimony for the Merchants of Death Tribunal is available at this link.