Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, wrote a column in the New York Post on April 11, entitled “Unless we spike military spending — and FAST — the next major war could be catastrophic.” The “war” that he was referring to was a possible war between Communist China and Taiwan along with an expanded conflict in both the South China Sea and the western Pacific Ocean.
Unfortunately, Lowry fully agrees with both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to increase our defense spending to a soaring $1 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year from October 1, 2025, to September 30, 2026. However, what is more frightening is that Lowry states emphatically in his one-sentence second paragraph, “This is the right idea, and we’ll need even more [my emphasis] [money] soon enough.”
Lowry completely failed to quantify the word “more” or specify when or “soon enough.”His statement would only increase our present national debt in the next four years, which is approaching $37 trillion. And I would also bet that there is not one honest American general or admiral who would presently trade our armed forces for the so-called People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force.
Right now, the U.S. regards Taiwan as a trusted economic “partner,” especially in regard to valuable semiconductors, and is a de facto military ally, who has received tens of billions of arms sales under the Taiwan Relations Act since 1979. We still have a “security relationship” or military alliance of “strategic ambiguity” with Taipei, which greatly annoys Beijing.
What financially challenged Lowry totally fails to realize is that our national debt at our present rate of spending will be approaching an astonishing $46.4 trillion by early 2029. The U.S. currently accumulates about $1 trillion in debt from interest alone every one hundred days. In fact, the U.S. Treasury unbelievably spent more money on the national debt than on Defense or Medicare in 2024.
There is no question that Congress must drastically reduce our national debt and balance the budget in order to avoid future bankruptcy. That especially includes not increasing our defense budget to $1 trillion dollars and maintaining or decreasing the present Pentagon budget of approximately $895 billion (FY2025), which includes eliminating fraud, abuse, and waste.
What Lowry greatly fails to understand is that the U.S. incredibly spends more money ($916 billion) on defense than the combined nine countries of Communist China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, France and Japan ($883 billion). Congress and Hegseth must first reduce our bloated defense spending by allowing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, to do his job. Likewise, Trump must reduce our massive trade deficits by demanding much lower reciprocal tariffs and promoting fair trade.
Lowry claims that if the U.S. does not increase defense spending to $1 trillion, it will “result in the United States losing a major war and its great power status.” This is nonsense because the U.S. lost the Vietnam War on April 30, 1975, Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, and signed an armistice with both North Korea and China on July 27, 1953, which currently has nuclear weapons. It must be remembered that an armistice is a tie and neither a win nor a loss.
In fact, I do not think that the U.S. has won a war since 1945 except for Grenada on November 2, 1983, and Kuwait on February 28, 1991, which both resembled battles more than wars. Our invasion of Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003, remains highly inconclusive as having been won among both American civilians and veterans.
Lowry claims that “the 600,000 Russian troops on the front line are roughly double the initial invasion force” despite being unable to defeat Ukraine since 2022. In plain words, the Russian armed forces are a joke because of poor leadership and corruption, who are still struggling to defeat minuscule Ukraine after three long years.
Lowry claims to his credit that the “Pentagon deserves a good and thorough DOGEing. Its procurement process is a wasteful mess. Too much money serves sclerotic bureaucracies.” I agree 100%.
Unfortunately, Lowry’s ardent wish to increase military spending to $1 trillion ironically has the political support of both DOGE-loving President Trump and budget-reducing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than the previously mentioned nine countries combined means that we have not been spending our money wisely or efficiently. This includes printing dollars in the trillions for dubious reasons under the cognitively impaired Biden, which caused tremendous inflation.
Spending $895 billion a year on defense is enough or else the U.S. will soon be $40 trillion in debt by December 2026 along with looming national bankruptcy and the beginning of the dollar ceasing to be the world’s reserve currency resulting in a permanent lower standard of living, especially for the middle class.
If the U.S. is going to ever decline as the world’s preeminent superpower it will be because of internal reasons (á la Lowry, et al.) and not external ones similar to the collapse of the Roman empire causing the end of paxAmericana.
Robert L. Maronic