Militarism 

As people of faith, we believe that budgets are moral documents. A society’s true priorities are reflected less in what they say is important, and more in what they pay for. In the United States, the single greatest portion of the discretionary spending – the part of federal spending approved by House and Senate appropriations committees – is dedicated to warfare. According to the Congressional Budget Office, half of 2019’s $1.3 trillion in discretionary spending went to the military.  

That $676 billion does not include related expenses such as veterans’ benefits or the militarized activities of civilian agencies such as the CIA. The second half of the appropriated funds was split among vital public services such as education and job training, international affairs, the legal system, and transportation. With such a high priority placed on funding militarism, it comes as no surprise that the U.S. has been in a constant state of armed conflict for all but 17 years of its existence. In the modern era, hot wars are not the only way we export violence, which disproportionately harms the poor.  

Sanctions, which at first seem like a nonviolent alternative to war, are in fact coextensive with war. The historical analogue for the contemporary practice of economic sanctions is siege warfare, wherein an opposing military would surround enemy territory to cut off life-sustaining supplies. Catholic moral theology condemns siege warfare for the indiscriminate nature in which it distributes harm. It is a form of collective punishment that, by design, does not distinguish between civilian and enemy combatant. It chokes off life within the borders of the affected territory. In this sense modern economic sanctions are no different from the sieges of past eras. 

In the case of Iran under President Trump’s unprecedented “maximum pressure campaign,” Iranian imports of medical supplies were down 60% from 2018 to 2019. Even so-called “targeted sanctions” – sanctions on individuals rather than whole economies – harm the entire populations because investors know that they usually precede widescale economic sanctions. The lack of investment hamstrings vital industry, thereby constituting collective punishment. In Venezuela, recent U.S. economic sanctions have reduced overall calorie intake among the general population, increased mortality, and produced an economic depression.  

The poor suffer disproportionately in these manufactured crises. As such, in practice, sanctions do not pass Catholic standards for the international use of force not just because they are levied against whole populations, but also because they levy the greatest harm to the margins of society. Illegal markets often arise where legal ones are closed. Those with the resources in a sanctioned economy can make it; the poor face a more perilous situation. The wealthy have a decent chance to flee warzones; the poor are left to face to try and survive wars that have only gotten deadlier for civilians despite the advent of so-called “smart” and “precision” weaponry. 

Policy Solutions 

• We must make substantial cuts to defense spending in order to properly invest in human needs at home and abroad. Even if we cut the military’s budget in half, we would still spend at least $77 billion more than China, the country with the second highest defense budget in the world.
  
• Ban low-yield nuclear weapons, so-called “mini-nukes” or “tactical nuclear weapons,” of which the US and others have increased testing and production. Nuclear weapons with smaller blast radii only serve to normalize the possibility of their usage. In recent years, there have been a number of proposed bills to ban their usage. This should be a part of a broader denuclearization effort between the United States and Russia, who own a combined 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.
  
• Extend the New START Treaty between the United States and Russia beyond its 2021 initial expiration date to reduce the threat of nuclear war.  
• Immediate sanctions relief for the duration of the COVID-19 health crisis. This should be a prelude to elevating the standard of levying sanctions to the same heights as the use of military force.  
• An immediate repeal of both the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, which provided legal authorization for President Bush to combat Al Queda and its allies and the invasion of Iraq, respectively. Both bills expanded the executive branch’s powers to engage in warfare without congressional authorization under the ever-expanding terms of the war on terror.
• The Pentagon must submit to, and pass, an annual, comprehensive audit. In 1990, federal mandated that every federal agency be audited by independent accountants. The Department of Defense resisted a department-wide audit until 2018 when it failed its first ever. It failed again in 2019.  

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