Portside

Lawmakers this week will rubber stamp a bill authorizing tens of billions more to the Defense Department that it didn’t even ask for.

New report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. The options in the budget watchdog’s new report are anything but radical.

The war in Afghanistan wasn’t a failure. It was a massive success — for those who made a fortune off it. Instead of a nation, what we really built were more than 500 military bases — and the personal fortunes of the people who supplied them.

Money drives the US military machine.

In just 20 years, the total cost of the US increasing homeland security and waging wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere since Sept. 11, 2001, have exceeded $8 trillion, according to new estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University.

How the National Security State Has Come to Dominate a "Civilian" Government

Instead of wasting scarce funds on the Space Force, the Biden administration should deploy its diplomats to demilitarize space.

Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?

The military says that the “health” of the defense industry is crucial to national security. But the CARES Act money was specifically allocated to protect the health of the people of this country — not the companies that build weapons.

A Post-Coronavirus economy can no longer afford to put the Pentagon first. As it turns out, creating jobs through Pentagon spending is among the least effective ways to rebuild the economy.