Sustainable Defense: - More Security, Less Spending Final Report

This report’s recommendations are a sharp contrast to the National Defense Strategy announced by the Pentagon in January 2018 and the companion evaluation of that strat- egy provided by the National Defense Strategy Commission (NDSC), which has declared that “[t]he security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades.” The commission’s report and the Nationa. [...] National strategy as- sesses the vital interests of the United States, the country’s role in the world, and the major challenges to national well-being and safety facing the United States, providing the resources needed to address them, and setting priorities among competing demands. [...] The Chinese economy is expected to be larger than that of the United States within the next decade, a position that will allow it to project greater military, economic, and diplo- matic power should it choose to do so.23 The country’s rapid growth rate and its assertive international investment strategy, embodied in the Belt and Road economic initiative and the formation of the Chinese-led Asian I. [...] The Brown Costs of War Project puts the full price tag of America’s post-9/11 wars and anti-terror efforts at $5.9 trillion and counting, including the direct costs of the wars, related increases in the Pentagon’s base budget, homeland security, defense-related interest on the national debt, and the responsibility of providing care for the veterans of these conflicts.37 The budgetary costs are jus. [...] As the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum, and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, the Pentagon is a significant part of the problem.68 The U.