More than one-third of the U.S. population was born after 1970, and thus has no personal memories of the Cold War, particularly the Berlin crises or the Cuban missile crisis. Since we are in the early stages of a new Cold War, it’s a good time to review the tensions that we will confront. Spoiler alert: Cold War 2.0 will be more costly and risky than its predecessor. The soaring defense budget, which is woefully understated in the mainstream media, is the Congress’ pet rock and its only genuine bipartisan undertaking. The media consistently refers to the record defense budget ($858 billion), but ignore an additional $300 billion that is devoted to the military. The latter figure would include important elements of spending by the intelligence community, which primarily serves the military; the Department of Energy, which stores our nuclear inventory; the Veterans’ Administration; and important agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, which include the Coast Guard, the world’s seventh largest navy. The roughly $1.2 trillion devoted to defense equals the sum that the rest of the global community allocates to the military!
Click for Full Text!
