U.S. Defense Spending: Visualized

The bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy assessed in its July 2024 report that:

“The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”

Despite this fact, the United States is spending near post-World War II lows on the Department of Defense measured as a percentage of gross domestic production (GDP).

Today, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are cooperating to threaten the United States and its allies in new ways. Yet, some Americans seem to think it is time for a peace dividend. They could not be more wrong. The dangerous dissonance between the growing threats Americans confront versus the relatively few resources the United States is spending on defense invites avoidable wars of aggression and risks leaving our nation and U.S. service members unprepared to respond.

A failure to invest more resources in defense now will result in far greater costs later.

For more details, see recent analysis by Bradley Bowman and RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery in The National Review.