Why Trump’s Proposed Economic Development Plan with Zelenskyy Takes a Chainsaw to a Broken System
There is an old saying in war that the first casualty is the truth. When countries choose to take up arms, governments usually try to control information to make sure that the public will support an effort most are inclined to oppose. One of the most famous speeches in American history was made by Dwight Eisenhower as he left office. The former President and decorated military leader warned about what he referred to as the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned that a new system was being set up that needed constant wars to be sustained.
There are many military contractors, such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and others, that perform very good work. A number of these companies also do a significant amount of civilian work as well. The critique of the military-industrial complex and the way this part of our economy has shaped Washington for nearly 70 years is about the broken system in Washington D.C., the criticism is not about these individual companies.
While obviously as Trump himself has stated many times, the US needs a very strong military to protect both our country and America’s interests around the world. Still, the United States spends more on defense than the next 9 largest countries spend on their militaries combined. Even China, the US’s biggest geopolitical threat, spends 40 percent less on the country’s armed forces than America does. China’s military budget numbers are also misleading, since the country spends nearly a third of the country’s budget for the armed forces on personnel, which is nearly three times what the United States spends on manpower. Defense spending also accounts for nearly half of all discretionary spending in the US budget. The US spent $841.4 billion on the military in 2024.
The system in Washington is built around the need for constant wars to maintain a bloated budget for the Pentagon. There is massive waste, fraud, and abuse at the Pentagon. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield warned in 2001 that the Pentagon could not account for nearly 2.3 trillion in transactions. The Pentagon has also never been fully audited or passed an independent and comprehensive financial review. The corrupt Biden Administration continued to push funding for the avoidable war between Ukraine and Russia in part to feed a broken system that needs perpetual wars and constant conflict to maintain money flow. The broken system needed another war when the War in Afghanistan ended to justify spending nearly $850 billion on defense in 2024 alone.
This is why Trump’s proposal to form an economic partnership with Ukraine, as well as his idea to develop war-savaged Gaza, are potential game changers. The President is a billionaire, he cannot be controlled by money or special interests, he is focused on doing what is right for the country. Trump sees that the primary people benefitting from the constant wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, are a select group of companies, not the American people. These corporations aren’t evil, but the system is clearly broken. The United States could cut the Pentagon’s budget by over $100 billion and we would still be spending far more than any other country in the world on defense. The US could easily cut another $50 billion in military spending on waste and still have the strongest and best-prepared armed forces in the world by far. Indeed, while Democrats complain about Trump’s efforts to reform Medicaid, the President’s efforts to end the constant wars that failed groups such as the neoconservatives have pushed has the potential to enable Trump to be able to shift hundreds of billions from the Pentagon into policies focused on rebuilding the country.
