Andrew Sullivan makes a point that both he and I have made before, but bears repeating:

You will never hear a neocon talk about the expense of empire or the burden of imperial debt. The neoconservative outlook focuses on the internal nature of foreign regimes, but it refuses to look at the internal financial collapse of contemporary America.

Neocons favor more defense spending, period. I do not recall a single recent instance in which they did not want to project military power, regardless of its expense. There have been no conservative worries about the cost of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, even as they fulminate against big government spending. To ask the question of why American tax-payers are still financing the defense of Germany, for example, is to commit heresy (I exclude Ron Paul from all this, of course). And yet if we know one thing from history it is that empires crumble from a function of mounting debt, often caused by unnecessary or hubristic wars. If today’s astounding debt - created in large part by Republican tax cuts, war, failure to rein in entitlements or regulate the financial industry sufficiently - does not wake them up, what will?

By a mile and a half, “defense” spending is the largest portion of America’s discretionary budget. (In second place? Interest on the debt.) We cannot realistically cut deficits and pay down debt unless we face the beast that is “defense” spending and start being rational about the military role that America should take.

I put “defense” in quotes, of course, because a substantial portion of dollars spent has nothing to do with the primary purpose of the military, which is to repel foreign invasion. The United States spends more money on its military than every other country in the world. Combined. We could cut defense spending in half and we’d still be spending more than all of the European Union countries. Combined.

Now look at it this way. The United States’ military budget is $636,292,979,000. Now, think about the “grave threats to our security” that neoconservatives are always rambling about–and realize that they spend a tiny percentage of this amount on their militaries:

Russia - $39,600,000,000
China - $70,308,600,000
North Korea - $5,500,000,000
Iran - $2,500,000,000
Venezuela - $4,000,000,000

In other words, we could cut military spending in half and we’d still be spending about three times as much as our “major threats” combined.

If we’re able to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan successfully, there’s no reason why we can’t start a program to start winding down our defense spending to a more manageable level without sacrificing the security of the United States. I think that a 50% cut over, oh, say, 10-15 years is a reasonable goal. We really can’t afford to keep spending so much on the military.