By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com

President Trump made a very strong statement on Feb. 13 which will be revolutionary in nature if he can carry it out.
He said there is no reason that we should be spending a trillion dollars a year on the military and that we should cut defense spending in half.
He also said we should not be building any more nuclear weapons when we already have enough to destroy the world 50 or 100 times over.
Trump added that he hoped to get commitments from Russia and China to do the same.
He said: “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
Barron’s, the leading business publication, reported the statement under this headline: “Trump Sends Shockwave Through Defense Stocks, Says Military Spending Could Be Halved.”
The next day defense stocks had their biggest one-day drop ever. Four days later, on Feb. 17, Newsweek reported that Washington, D.C., housing prices “are being slashed as the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk to shrink the size of the U.S. federal workforce have employees uncertain about their future.”
Trump’s statement was made when discussing upcoming talks with Russia and China. He said: “One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China and President Putin of Russia. I want to say let’s cut our military budgets in half and spend the money on other things.”
This was music to my ears. I had written in my column on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, that “because of Trump’s statements through the years about having an American-First foreign policy, I am very hopeful that he will be a very anti-war, peace President like Eisenhower was.”
I know that many millions hate Trump with great passion, but I hope they can get past this hatred to at least support him in this area. All peace-loving Americans should get behind this effort.
It will be very difficult, because both U.S. political parties have tried to prove their patriotism by supporting increases in defense spending every year.
U.S. defense spending is now more than double what Russia and China spend combined. In fact, we spend more on the military than the next nine countries combined. Much of it is simply foreign aid.
And the big defense contractors have worked, possibly in collusion, to put their spending into almost every state and most congressional districts.
The Defense Department, too, has spread its spending into every district.
President Eisenhower, in one of the earliest drafts of his famous farewell address, planned to criticize what he called the “military-industrial-congressional” complex. However, he and/or his advisors decided to remove the “congressional” part from the final speech.
In that speech, Eisenhower spoke of the “grave implications” of our “immense military establishment and a large arms industry.”
In this speech, he was echoing one of our other greatest military leaders, George Washington, who in his farewell address warned that large military establishments are “inauspicious to liberty” and are “particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
James Madison, writing in the Federalist Papers, said liberty would be “crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes,” and that “the best possible precaution against danger from standing armies is a limitation of the term for which revenue may be appropriated to their support.”
The problem with having an immense military is not only the cost but also the eagerness to go to war. As President Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, once said: “What’s the point of having this superb military….if we can’t use it.” She was greatly criticized for this remark.
I wish someone close to President Trump would show him this story from the book “Ike’s Bluff” by Evan Thomas: “When Defense Secretary Neil McElroy warned him [Eisenhower] that further cuts would harm national security, Eisenhower acerbically replied, ‘If you go to any military installation in the world where the American flag is flying and tell the commander that Ike says he will give him an extra star for his shoulder if he cuts his budget, there’ll be such a rush to cut costs that you’ll have to get out of the way.’”
If we have any realistic hope of avoiding the inflation that has destroyed the economies of most countries, every federal department and agency must be cut. If we don’t, our Social Security and other pensions and savings will be worth very little.