WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- The United States is spending under 4 percent of its gross national product on the military, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
But in real terms, the $483 billion defense budget for 2008 -- not including money earmarked for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- exceeds the amount spent by the United States on defense during the Kennedy administration, when the country allocated 9 percent of its GDP to the military. Expressed in 2006 dollars, in 1963 the defense budget was $392 billion, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The 2008 defense budget request is also higher than at the height of spending in the Reagan administration. Expressed in 2006 dollars, in 1987 the administration of President Ronald Reagan spent $471.3 billion on defense, 6.1 percent of GDP, according to CSBA, a Washington think tank.
The difference is in the size of the economy. In 1963, U.S. GDP was about $4.1 trillion. In 1987, the United States had a $4.6 trillion economy. The GDP is now roughly $12 trillion.
If spending for the wars is totaled into the accounts, it would add $141 billion to the 2008 accounts, giving the Pentagon nearly $200 billion more in 2008 than at the height of the Reagan defense build up.
Gates said the large boosts are necessary because of the post-Cold War military draw down that left the U.S. Army short some $56 billion worth of equipment.
"Five times in the last 90 years, the United States has disarmed after a major conflict," Gates said. "And then we discovered that the world really hadn't changed -- that the nature of people hadn't changed. And so after disarming both military and intelligence capabilities, then we have to ramp-up again. And I think that one of the reasons -- is what you're seeing is really a legacy of the post-Cold War peace dividend that people talked about, and now we are in a position of trying to recover from that."
