President Donald Trump’s national defense team believes the United States is in a cold war with the Chinese Communist Party. Despite the political division in Washington, this is one point upon which the two parties seem to agree — in theory, at least. Last September, former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell made headlines with the following statement: “Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents.”
In 2023, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) made similar remarks at a Heritage Foundation event titled, “Winning the New Cold War with China.” Despite a growing consensus toward the idea of a Cold War redux, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing failed to include discussion about the type of budget needed to fight one.
America’s five-decade competition with the Soviet Union triggered profound adjustments in defense spending, government organization, and acquisitions. The present competition with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, however, has elicited a more subdued response.
Over the last 10 years, the Defense Department budget has fluctuated by less than 1% in relation to gross domestic product, hovering between a low of 2.7% last year and a high of 3.7% in 2020. Trump returns to the White House at an exceptionally dangerous moment for the nation and the world with the smallest defense budget in nearly 100 years. If the U.S. is in a cold war, it seems to be cheaper and less urgent than the last.
In the early 1950s, President Harry Truman nearly tripled the defense budget before Dwight Eisenhower succeeded him in 1953. Over the next eight years, the administration built a vast nuclear arsenal, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, ballistic missiles, space programs, and an Air Force with global reach. These investments deterred war with the Soviet Union and defined power projection throughout the century and into the next.
To do this, Eisenhower dedicated 68 cents of every federal dollar to defense in 1955. In contrast, last year, the U.S. gave 12 cents of every federal dollar to defense, or $824 billion out of $6.75 trillion. That amounts to 2.7% of GDP, a number projected to decrease in real terms by $15 billion in 2025 according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Modernization was a cornerstone of Eisenhower’s strategy. His administration gave roughly three cents of every federal dollar to nuclear research and stockpiling. To support Eisenhower’s strategies, the Air Force acquired more aircraft between 1952 and 1956 than it did between 1957 and 1990.
Two interactions during Hegseth’s confirmation hearing stand out as relevant to cold war spending practices. In the first, Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT), a former Navy SEAL, characterized the process of building a modern navy as a “decadeslong pursuit.” A single Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, for instance, costs $13 billion. The Navy’s new Vanguard unmanned surface vessel has a price tag of $56 million, and the Manta Ray uncrewed underwater vessel could be much more expensive. Navies are not cheap, and the Chinese military now has the largest one in the world.
Another exchange at the hearing involved Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD). He expressed concern with the U.S. military sharing portions of its wireless communications band with foreign nations, a vulnerability he believes could be exploited by adversaries on a war footing. Relocating the Navy’s destroyers and coastal radars to another part of the band would cost an estimated $250 billion, more than a quarter of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
None of this begins to explore the price of updating America’s nuclear triad, taking better care of military families, hardening critical infrastructure against cyber and drone attacks, or acquiring more sixth-generation fighters and bombers, such as Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider.
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It is true cold wars are fought with economic and diplomatic weapons as well, and how the U.S. spends its money is as important as how much it spends. Still, budgets speak volumes about priorities. While announcing the budget for fiscal 2023, then-President Joe Biden attributed a quote to his father: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” This is sound advice, but it is also ironic.
Cold wars are expensive when waged effectively but less costly than trying to fight them on a budget. The first step in addressing these challenges is to acknowledge that the U.S. is in a cold war that might be as precarious as the last. The second step is to start acting like it.
Army Maj. Michael P. Ferguson is a doctorate student in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a co-author of The Military Legacy of Alexander the Great: Lessons for the Information Age. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. government.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
