I enlisted in the Global War on Terror believing we would do things differently than we had in Vietnam – make the world safer, defeat Islamic terrorism and avoid another quagmire.
Instead, I watched Iraq turn into a disaster and Afghanistan become the longest war in U.S. history, costing trillions of dollars with no clear path to victory. We measured progress in kill counts and destroyed assets, but lost sight of the mission. Or maybe the mission changed. Maybe the goal wasn’t to win, but to sustain the fight.
Either way, the question is unavoidable: Are we safer now?
The US is sliding back into open-ended conflict
“War is a racket.”
Today, that line sounds like something from a progressive activist or a cynical fiscal hawk. It wasn’t. It came from a two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler warned nearly a century ago about how war had become a business – how military power and private profit had fused at the country’s expense.
His point was simple: When war becomes good business, defense stops being the point.
A century later, the racket endures. After years of promises of “no new wars,” the United States is once again sliding into an open-ended conflict in Iran.
Which raises the question: Is this level of military spending actually making us safer? Or is it merely sustaining a system that depends on constant expansion?
Israeli soldiers use an artillery unit, amid escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, and amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, March 15, 2026. REUTERS/Shir Torem
Defense contractors take in billions, budgets keep climbing and Washington shows no appetite for restraint. Butler would recognize it.
As a Marine, I lived in dilapidated barracks with undrinkable water while billions flowed to defense contractors for weapons and gear. Armored vehicles, tactical equipment, new rifles – purchased in bulk for wars that felt less about winning than sustaining themselves.
After Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, we had a clear off-ramp in Afghanistan. We didn’t take it. Instead, we stayed.
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The Pentagon keeps failing its audit. Where’s the oversight?
The United States still maintains troops in countries across the globe. Some of that is legitimate: deterring China and Russia, containing rogue states like North Korea, maintaining stability.
But all of it costs money. And once those commitments are in place, they only grow.
Grief and destruction in the Middle East amid Iran War ceasefire
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See the trail of devastation and grief left by the Iran War that began on Feb. 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched joint airstrikes, known as Operation Epic Fury, targeting Iranian military and government sites.
A U.S.-Iran ceasefire, which also included Israel, began on April 7-8, 2026.
Pictured here, mourners attend the funeral of people, including Hezbollah members, who were killed during the conflict with Israel before a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel went into effect, in Kfar Sir, Lebanon, April 21, 2026.
The deeper problem is oversight, or the lack of it. The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years in a row. Eight. If the Department of Government Efficiency were serious about rooting out waste, this is where the chainsaw should have landed.
Instead, civilian agencies got gutted while the Pentagon will get a proposed massive spending boost courtesy of the Trump administration.
Now, President Donald Trump wants to push the defense budget to $1.5 trillion. We’ve already spent billions on missile interceptors only to be told we’ll need billions more because the current systems may not hold up against Iranian drones and missiles.
Who profits? Defense contractors – and, in some cases, people close to the administration itself.
The Navy is hunting for a new fleet of ships to replace its current new fleet of ships even as we retire older vessels that could still serve in places like the Strait of Hormuz. Trump also wants to spend billions on another fighter jet, despite the fortune already sunk into the F-35. And these are just some of the systems on the wish list.
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We’ll see what we saw in Gaza and Iran again
Rapidly expanding an already massive military pushes us into dangerous territory, a space where defense contractors look for new ways to use weapons systems, if only to generate real-world data. We saw it in Gaza. We’re seeing it in Iran. We’ll see it again.
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The world is dangerous. There are real adversaries, and some want to harm the United States. The question isn’t whether we need a strong military. It’s whether the current level of spending, with no accountability attached, is actually making us safer.
History offers a warning. The arms races before World War I were driven by the same logic – more weapons, more preparedness, more deterrence. Instead, they built the tinderbox. Today, in an age of artificial intelligence, Palantir and drones, the stakes are higher still. The next conflict won’t just be costly. It could be catastrophic.
Smedley Butler saw the danger nearly a century ago. When war becomes good business, defense stops being the point. We don’t need to weaken our military. We need to demand something simple: that it be built to protect the country, not sustain the system.
Joslin Joseph is a recipient of the Military Reporters and Editors’ award for Best Commentary/Opinion. A graduate of Harvard and Ohio State University, he is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. He lives in Anaheim, California.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Trump’s defense budget increase is really about | Opinion