Defense Spending: Almost 5 Percent of GDP

OK, one more Pentagon budget chart. This should give a sense of the Pentagon budget in a broader context. Even through the Bush years, there ran a critique that the U.S. was “only” spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defense. One Rumsfeld enthusiast called that paltry sum dominance “without even breathing hard.” Well, now it’s 4.7 percent of GDP. Feel safer?

Now, it isn’t just increases to the base budget that account for that growth alone. It’s the ongoing expenses of Iraq and Afghanistan — which will end at some point; the Iraq deployment will end next year — and the miserable state of the economy. So we’ll have to see what this looks like going forward. But still — nearly five percent of GDP…