March 1, 2025
Trump has proposed that the United States, China, and Russia cut their defense budgets by half. If the administration pulls the trigger - death cleaning the Pentagon - most Americans won't notice and all will benefit.
Swedish death cleaning - döstädning - is about getting one's house in order, in preparation for handing over what has been accumulated to the next generation. The Pentagon was finished in 1943, apparently as a big place to run the war. Less than two years later it became a big place to "put things" as the US transitioned to full-blown global empire. Forty years ago, the five rings were still grand hallways, the corridor spokes wide and spacious. By the time I left the Pentagon in 2003, most hallways and corridors had been filled with a thousand new warrens and ratholes of offices and cubicles.
Massive savings may be found overnight, and 80% - not just 50% - of the DoD could be eliminated with zero impact on "defensive capability" or "national security." This is true because of the abysmal level of defensive capability it provides, something we found out real quick on September 11, 2001. The DoD wasn't defending us then, nor is it providing measurable national security today.
Future generations of Americans deserve a new triad: national security, peace and prosperity. Towards that end, a Pentagon death cleaning is in order. If done correctly, useless things will be eliminated, haphazard collections thrown out, accumulated supplies for forgotten projects donated, and clothes worn in a career that ended thirty years ago discarded. We will identify what we want to preserve, as we discover many hidden things we never wanted in the first place.
DOGE and Secretary of Defense Hegseth are targeting the waste, duplication, and sheer criminality that coats the DoD circulatory system like arterial plaque. Past efforts to root out waste and duplication, like Reagan's 1984 Grace Commission Report, or even Al Gore's Reinventing Government study never caught fire in the Congress, and we are left with an annual rage-celebration, courtesy Rand Paul's increasingly popular Festivus Report. We do have many organizations, like Citizens Against Government Waste, that continue in the spirit of J. Peter Grace. We have a myriad of canaries in the mine who aim to make the Pentagon more efficient, more effective, and more honest.
DOGE, unlike previous efforts, is spearheaded by youthful outsiders who recognize they and their generation are inheriting a precarious mountain of garbage government. Unlike Grace and Gore who believed there was still time to save the republic, the DOGE-minded among us know when this man-made mountain collapses, it means the sudden death of the Republic, overnight wealth consolidation by the global elites, a national poverty emergency, radically reduced lifespans, and a dead dollar.
No one wants Grandma's collections of china, figurines, and quilt-making materials. No one wants Grandpa's workshop of unfinished projects. No one wants the paperback libraries, the VHS tapes, old computers, TVs and the box of remote controls, or the heavy furniture.
The DoD has accumulated a massive intelligence bureaucracy of nine different agencies. Despite its best efforts to model and match modern technology, DoD intelligence is geared to the serial killer decade of the 1980s. The enemy is everywhere, and he or she could be anyone. What a frightening time it was, and to the Pentagon, a frightening time it remains. Recent trans-talk in classified Intelink chatrooms revealed that many working inside the intelligence community are bored, self-absorbed and lack a sense of urgency and import. They are correct to feel this way - intelligence products and recommendations that actually get to the President are based on political, rather than objective, facts. Emotionally- and ideologically-driven lies and fabrications have led to all US wars, and many national security mistakes, like failing to prevent 9/11. Trump's policy reversal on Ukraine wasn't the result of US intelligence advice or reports; he learned the truth about that war from the non-government people he met during his latest campaign, who served him far better and more honestly than a trillion dollar intelligence community, choked and subverted by DC agenda-setters, grifters and war beneficiaries.
The DoD has accumulated a massive inventory of old and no longer useful weapons systems, along with overpriced and sloppy contracts for their manufacture, maintenance and secure storage. Apparently, when they try to end a program and liquidate its logistic tail, Congress squeals like a stuck pig. The Pentagon has numerous modern systems that don't work well, like the ultra-embarrassing littoral ships and the uber-expensive F-35 stealth fighter that can't fly in the rain, and has a huge heat signature, among other flaws. Most in Congress are intellectually unqualified to be competent Facebook users, much less to determine which weapons systems to fund for the next decade or two, and which to cancel immediately. The current system enriches the Military Industrial Complex and impoverishes the rest of us - while providing no measurable national security. Only a diligent and conscientious death cleaning of the entire defense acquisition establishment will fix it.
A vast array of US nuclear weapons exists throughout the US and in other allied countries. By ourselves, we have enough to end the world ten times over. A 90% reduction of this inventory - and its logistical and maintenance cost - wouldn't sacrifice the government's apparent goal of ending the planet in minutes, and it would save a lot of money. Much of the "50% reduction" that Trump proposed will come from this deadly collection.
Like any respectable hoarder, the Defense Department has lots of ugly junk, in pile after pile. Hundreds of commands, agencies and organizations, each with numerous flag officers and their staffs and hangers-on exist - the book definition of self-licking ice cream cones. The Pentagon oversees a global archipelago of joint and combatant commands, as if we owned the world - a world filled with serial killers because our generals don't get promoted until they buy into the same 1980's Cold War thinking that guides our intelligence and acquisition programs. To modernize in 2025 means we close overseas bases, installations, training areas, secret prisons, torture centers, and biological warfare sites - and bring our troops home.
The Pentagon's entire existence has been an obsessive Cold War imperial project, and nothing else. In those 80 years, the US Congress never declared a single war, and the Pentagon never won a single conflict. While Congress cheered and Presidents preened, the taxpayers paid and paid, and American sons and daughters were murdered and maimed. This cycle continues unabated, and we continue to be unaccountable for the damage it does to us, and to the rest of the world. We are today in the midst of not resolving the Obama-Biden wastage of Ukraine to "weaken Russia." We are today in the midst of not resolving the undeniable and devastating fact that the US military is Tel Aviv's bitch.
New generations, new technologies, and new visions of national defense are possible now. Americans, and by extension, Mr. Trump, have a narrow window in which to act. After over 80 years of bad decision-making, unhealthy appetites, and a pervasive lack of self-discipline, it's long past time for the Pentagon's death cleaning.