Future Watch, September 28, 2005: The Changing Economics of Defense Spending

September 28, 2005

The United States presently faces a global war on terrorism likely to continue for years. Major troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have uncertain end dates. The national debt is fast increasing. Can we afford this defense posture? Yes, we can. That is, according to Murray Weidenbaum, eminent economist and CSIS trustee.  But he made this claim with an important caveat: the fact that we can sustain this level of spending doesn’t imply that we should.