Changing Dynamics of U.S. Defense Spending

A behind-the-scenes look at the environment for defense policy and budgeting—in Congress, the news media, and the defense industry—reveals that the appearance of stability is deceiving. Pressures are building for change. Defense spending has leveled off at about $265 billion a year in outlays. Current commitments to preserve the existing force while purchasing new weaponry are creating significant budget issues which must be addressed.

This book probes beneath the surface to show how the political base for defense spending is eroding. The economic benefits of defense spending and of foreign military sales are increasingly concentrated. A few well-placed members are now the main beneficiaries of add-ons to the budget. At the same time, mergers and acquisitions have left the defense industrial base largely intact, with new weapons filling every production line. Yet it will take sharp increases in the defense budget to fund these new weapons, increases that may not be politically viable. A provocative analysis by some of the leading scholars and researchers involved with defense and foreign policy issues, this will be of great interest to experts as well as general readers.

LEON V. SIGAL is a consultant at the Social Science Research Council and adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. A former member of the editorial board of the New York Times, he is the author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, including Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945, and Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First-Use Question (with John Steinbruner).