NY Times Letter to the Editor

Sept. 21, 2019

To the Editor:

The Democratic debates have virtually ignored numerous national security issues, particularly the bloated defense budget; the overzealous tempo of military deployments; the overabundant overseas bases; the unnecessary modernization of our nuclear weapons; and the troublesome decline of arms control and disarmament. The United States has become the dominant arms merchant in the international arena and has downplayed the important instrument of diplomacy.

A manifesto signed by Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and others warned years ago: “We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest that will be disastrous to all parties?”

The Democratic debates would be a good place to start this conversation.

Melvin A. Goodman
Bethesda, Md.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former C.I.A. intelligence analyst.

Recent News and Latest Book

The USS Liberty: a Well-Planned Accident

Today marks the 56th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, which has been described by too many U.S. and Israeli accounts as an accident.  In fact, the attack took place after eight hours of aerial surveillance by Israel, and it involved a two-hour air and naval attack that killed 34 sailors and wounded an…

The Mainstream Media’s Unwillingness to Challenge U.S. Militarization

The Post regularly states that the United States spends as much on defense as the next 10 or 11 nations combined, but the cruel fact is that we spend as much as all other nations combined.  The global total for defense spending is around $2.5 trillion, and U.S. defense spending exceeds $1.2 trillion. The Pentagon’s budget for next year is $886 billion, but that is not the full extent of defense spending.  The budget for the Veteran’s Administration is over $120 billion, which takes total defense spending to more than $1 trillion.  There is significant defense spending in the budgets of the intelligence community, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security, bringing total defense spending to at least $1.2 trillion.