By Charles Johnston
November 13, 2026
The current 2026 defense budget of the United States is $1,065,220,000,000. With a population of 349,000,000, this is a cost of $3,052 for each U.S. resident. This money is wasted. The U.S. is the most defensible country in the world.
In 1949, the U.S. War Department changed its name. Branches of the armed forces were then administered under the new name: Department of Defense. This newly defined mandate of defending the United States should have been a relatively easy and inexpensive task.
Geography and history render the U.S. the most defensible country in the world. Canada and Mexico, good trading partners of the U.S., have not demonstrated a threat to American territorial integrity; nor would they have the military muscle to do so.
More importantly, there are no overseas countries that pose a serious conventional warfare challenge to U.S. security. The enormous logistical operations and numbers needed to invade the United States, in the Western Hemisphere and across the world's largest oceans, would be beyond the naval and maritime capabilities of any country or military alliance of countries.
Extrapolating from combatant numbers in Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia during World War II, an undertaking of that magnitude would require possibly ten million troops, hundreds of thousands of pieces of heavy equipment, millions of tons of ammunition and fuel, field hospitals, repair facilities, and the other necessities of modern warfare. In all, a logistical impossibility. The "loss of strength gradient" is a rule in military logistics-armed forces weaken with increasing distance from their supply base.
The other difficulties in invading the United States would also be insurmountable. In World War II, the British Isles were a convenient and indispensable staging area. Millions of troops and material gathered there for three years in preparation for the D-Day invasion of nearby Normandy beaches. It was successful because it was a single, enormous assault with over 5,000 vessels crossing the narrow English Channel. Invaders of the United States would have no similar proximate location for marshaling the many more military men and material needed.
The large size, population, and internal distances of the U.S. would make it very difficult to conquer, and occupy if conquered. Furthermore, in military science, it is an accepted rule that defending forces have a three-to-one advantage over invaders. Also, the 398 million privately owned firearms in the U.S.-more guns than people-would be a strong deterrent to any would-be invader.
In the early 1900s, the German military developed contingency plans for invading the East Coast of the United States. On further analysis, they were deemed "impossible to carry out" and shelved. The last substantial invasion of the U.S. occurred in the War of 1812, more than 200 years ago.
But all this is academic. Any naval armada assembled for the purpose of invading the U.S. would be visible to American spy satellites and subject to overwhelming, and possibly nuclear, missile and submarine attacks.
Oceanic Defense: Impassable Moats
Many of the same constraints would also apply to a U.S. invasion of a peer adversary in the Eastern Hemisphere-equally difficult or impossible. Within Eurasia, Russian distances and Chinese demographics would be particularly difficult challenges to a foreign invader.
The United States is not prone to conventional armed attack and invasion by any force. A would-be attacker has only the terrifying nuclear option-for which there is no effective defense. The United States cannot be conquered, but it can be destroyed. And that was a possibility with each of the many wars waged by the U.S., which has initiated 32 wars since 1945.
The extraordinary level of current American military spending cannot be explained in terms of real defense needs. Now and in the past, other, less justifiable reasons account for the militarism, wars, lost lives, violations of international law, and the money spent-the latter at the expense of pressing domestic needs. Deficit military spending has substantially increased the national debt.
The paradox of the American military is the enormous amount of money spent in its support: a shameful waste of national wealth. The military budget of the U.S. is currently more than the Gross Domestic Product of 90 percent of all countries. There is no real threat that would justify this level of expenditure on defense.
Earlier this year, President Trump proposed increasing the military budget by 50 percent. If this happens, it is irrefutable proof of the level of corruption in Washington, where defense lobbyists line the pockets of "pay-for-play" political miscreants. Where profit and paranoia prevail, death and destruction will follow. And American media and voters share in the guilt.
Former general and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a prescient warning of an obscure but powerful alliance in American politics-the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). This real, yet almost invisible, complex has a threefold purpose: to maintain war industry profiteering and employment, crush socialist governments and movements across the world, and secure global supplies of oil, gas, and other profitable commodities. None of these goals have been publicly acknowledged, yet they are patently obvious in detailed studies of U.S. military interventions.
Most of the many U.S. wars over more than a century have occurred on the other side of the world and across vast oceans, where it also maintains 750 military bases at an enormous cost. The U.S. military's division of the world into command regions-Africa Command, European Command, Central Command (Middle East), Indo-Pacific Command, Southern Command (South and Central America), and Northern Command (U.S. and Canada)-is clear evidence that its purposes extend well beyond mere defense.
Additionally, the United States Navy has 11 carrier strike groups. Each has an aircraft carrier and several supporting vessels. They do not defensively patrol the coasts of California or the Eastern Seaboard, but rather ply the distant oceans of the world projecting American power.
Douglas MacArthur was the U.S. General of the Army in World War II. He noted the development of a war economy "in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." This use of fear continues today. Fear is the most powerful motivating force, and it is central to the far-right psychological profile.
To maintain the notion of usefulness, the MIC needs the public perception of unending enemies. Through its compliant corporate media, it has manufactured a never-ending succession of adversaries whose real purpose is fear propaganda. As a long-used example, Russia sits atop the world's largest natural resource base, has never invaded Western Europe, and would have little reason to do so-yet it is unendingly accused by some Western governments and their media of having intentions to conquer all of Europe.
Socialism has been the principal target of U.S. militarism. It is defined as the public ownership of the essential and often large-scale means of production. The family farm and corner florist shop are not targets for nationalization. Larger industries-such as oil, health care, transportation, pharmaceuticals, banking, mining, and steel-are also the preferred enterprises of the corporate community. Socialism has therefore been viewed by the U.S. government as antithetical to international corporate operations, an ideology which Washington has long fought to stop. Behaviorally, the United States government functions as a corporatocracy.
The October Revolution in 1917 produced the first socialist government in Russia. The United States soon intervened militarily but failed to halt its progress. Few Americans are aware of their military's North Russian Expedition in 1918. Washington's fear was that an anti-corporate ideology would expand within the nascent Soviet Union and elsewhere. A successful socialist economy was a threat that could provide a model for the rest of Eurasia and the world. Since its unsuccessful invasion of Russia, defeating socialism has remained an unstated but major foreign policy of the U.S.
The economic debate on capitalism versus socialism is important and will continue into the future. But the overriding question for democracy is: Do nations have the right to choose between them ? Washington does not think so.
An obvious but ignored fact of modern history is that the United States and its larger, invented leftist adversaries have peacefully coexisted for 75 years, and can continue to do so well into the future. But the "permanent war economy" is profitable for a few people in power. Profit and a cultivated paranoia prevail.
The U.S. has waged armed conflicts in 32 countries since the end of World War II in 1945. All were wars of choice. Furthermore, information from the U.S. Congressional Research Service reveals that the number of American armed actions has been substantially increasing over the last few decades. From earlier historic roots in Christian pacifism and a peaceful humanism, the U.S. has transitioned into a very warlike nation.
The long-term consequences of this militaristic behavior cannot be predicted with certainty. However, in an age of ICBMs and nuclear weaponry, a retaliatory response is very possible and would be catastrophic. It is less likely a nuclear war will occur spontaneously by one of the nine countries having nuclear weapons. More probably, it will stem from the escalation of a conventional war when one country faces imminent defeat and the dangerous emotion of fear prevails. Any of the many wars initiated by the U.S. could have accelerated into a nuclear holocaust. Ironically, in this context, the largest threat to the American public is the behavior of its own military.
Survival in a world with thousands of nuclear weapons requires a substantial level of intelligent and judicious governance. Rev. Bonhoeffer's thesis states that stupidity is more dangerous than other deficiencies because it cannot be corrected. A clinical evaluation of the leaders in Washington would probably reveal that few, if any, are actual morons, defined as those with an IQ between 51 and 70. However, their demonstrated willingness to engage in several wars in an age of nuclear weaponry is proof of their lack of sufficient intellect and good judgment. There are few serious challenges to these masters of mediocrity-certainly not from the stenographers in the mass media.
This deficit, coupled with the corrupting influence of Big Money in American politics, bodes poorly for the well-being and security of U.S. citizens and the world. Also, their fear of socialism in very faraway places suggests an ignorance-based paranoia. These cerebral deficiencies, and their potential consequences, will continue.
The cultivated threat of a leftist enemy will extend into the future in tandem with the motive of war industry profiteering, an unfounded and dangerous belief in U.S. invulnerability, and possibly boyish notions of masculinity.
Washington's sociopathic indifference to the ravages of war-death, destruction, dismembered children, and devastated families-is proof that many in its leadership do not belong in public office, but arguably in hospitals for the criminally insane. They readily direct armed conflicts in which they will never have to fight, yet under the specter of nuclear war, they act as if none of them have grandchildren. Those citizens who vote for them shoulder some of the responsibility for their misdeeds.
Repetitive actions over many years reveal real and perhaps irrepressible character. Most of Washington is locked in a war mindset from which there seems to be no escape: serial killers on the international stage. Any political opponents to this military folly-there are a few-would meet with substantial condemnation in the corporate media, and possibly assassination. In the past, the many more responsible elements in U.S. society have failed to curb militarism, and will likely fail in the future because they do not have the political organization needed to challenge the status quo. Realistically, permanent corrective change would seem very difficult, if not impossible.
The preeminent defensibility of the United States in conventional warfare may prove to be its ultimate and complete demise-the only way to militarily defeat the U.S. is through intercontinental nuclear war. U.S. militarism, if carried continuously into the years ahead, will almost certainly result in an apocalypse, with potentially global consequences.
Prudent governments elsewhere must embrace neutrality in the hope of being spared. Sometime in the future, the red button will be pushed, unleashing a co-reflexive exchange of carnage and mass destruction. The bloodied "winners" of World War III will be those nations which today lay the foundation for their survivors to rebuild from the ashes of the future. Those that manage to survive, if any, will emerge with a much-needed-but costly-pacifist enlightenment. It is incumbent on responsible global citizens and leaders to work toward peace, but prepare for disaster.
Dr. Charles Johnston is an American-Canadian geographer and naval veteran. His publications include U.S. Militarism, Corporate Interests and World War III.