With Israel carrying out a U.S.-armed and funded genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, tensions in the South China Sea, and the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, abandoning militarism has perhaps never been more urgent.
In this thoughtful roundtable, Institute for Policy Studies fellow Phyllis Bennis, Rutgers University professor Jackson Lears, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey D. Sachs reflect on the state of U.S. foreign policy and how to shift its priorities for a better world.
Question: How would you assess the most important aspects of current U.S. foreign policy?
Phyllis Bennis: I think the most important aspects are the most problematic ones. The focus on militarism that leads to a military budget this year of $921 billion, almost a trillion dollars, an unfathomable number translates to $0.53 out of every discretionary federal dollar going directly to the military. And if you add in the militarism side of things, the federal prison system, the militarization of the borders, ICE, deportations, all those things, you come up with $0.62 out of every discretionary federal dollar.
So the militarism is, I think, the single most important problem. The issue of unilateralism remains a huge problem when the rise of the so-called “global war …read more
Source:: Institute for Policy Studies
