On this edition of Your Call’s Authoritarian Playbook Series, we're discussing Trump’s foreign interventions and request for a $1.5 trillion military budget, which is a $500 billion increase.
Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion), according to policy analysts William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute, and Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute. By comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion.
Since returning to office, Trump has joined Israel in launching a deadly assault on Iran, which killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and over 1,000 people so far, abducted Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro during a surprise air raid, said the US will "own" Gaza, is threatening a "friendly takeover" of Cuba, has threatened to take over Greenland, carried out airstrikes in Somalia, launched naval and airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and carried out boat strikes in Latin American waters.
What does the future hold under Trump’s deadly foreign interventions?
Guests:
William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, expert on the arms trade, Pentagon spending and strategy, and nuclear weapons policy, co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home, and author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex
Josh Paul, co-founder of A New Policy, a nonprofit dedicated to forging a new US policy toward Israel and Palestine, and former State Department official who resigned in October, 2023, due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel for its assault on Gaza
Resources:
Time: From Iran to Venezuela, Here Are the Countries Trump Has Ordered Strikes On in His Second Term
Forbes: War is Not The Way to Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
The Guardian: Trump vies for Bush’s crown for worst foreign policy decision in history
Middle East Monitor: US offensive on Iran burned through an estimated $779M on first day
The New York Times: Trump’s Foreign Policy – Resurrecting Empire
The New York Times: Opinion – No Empire. No Kings.
