by Peter Reagan, Birch Gold Group:
We’ve published more than a few articles about how the national debt makes our lives more difficult and diminishes the dollar’s purchasing power.
But as we’ll cover in this article, the insane level of debt that the United States is carrying right now ($34.8 trillion) also poses a dangerous national security risk.
In fact, Congress approved a resolution back in March declaring exactly that, according to a report by Reason Magazine:
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The Senate unanimously approved a resolution on Wednesday calling the debt “a threat to the national security of the United States” and calling expected future budget deficits “unsustainable, irresponsible, and dangerous.”
And the approval of that resolution was timely. Later on Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published its latest long-term budget projections. The report shows that annual budget deficits are on pace to grow from an expected $1.6 trillion this year to $2.6 trillion in 2034, $4.4 trillion in 2044, and $7.3 trillion in 2054.
Then the same piece also gave a 30,000-foot overview of the danger that carrying such extreme amounts of national debt could pose:
The CBO does not account for the possibility of recessions, natural disasters, wars, or other unpredictable events that could cause the federal government to borrow more heavily than current law expects. The past 30 years have included 9/11, the war on terror, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic, so it seems pretty likely that the next three decades will include at least a few emergencies that drive deficits higher.
Namely, that any emergency would necessitate even more spending, which according to the CBO, would pose an even higher national security risk now.
But it gets worse…
It appears like the United States has also been in a “net borrowing” situation for most of the last 22 years. This accounts for all government receipts, and subtracts all expenditures (including interest payments).
A picture is better than a thousand words in this case:
So in addition to piling up debt, the United States economy has been operating “in the red.” There is no economy in which this debt would reduce the national security risk.
It’s also quite odd that the corporate media and Chairman Jerome Powell haven’t addressed this net shortfall more often, especially in light of the CBO’s findings.
(Our 2021 piece actually covers the economic theory that underlies most of this inflationary debt spending spree, called Modern Monetary Theory.)
With all of the above in mind, let’s dive into the debt’s potential impact on national security in this country.
“Peace through strength” only works if you can afford it
Former Trump advisor Robert C. O’Brien recently took to Foreign Affairs to make the case for a global guiding philosophy called “peace through strength”:
U.S. President George Washington understood this well. “If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war,” he told Congress in 1793. The idea was echoed in President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous dictum: “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
In the same piece, O’Brien also briefly summarized a few of Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments during his first term:
In the Trump years, Russia did not press further forward after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine, Iran did not dare to directly attack Israel, and North Korea stopped testing nuclear weapons after a combination of diplomatic outreach and a U.S. military show of force.
But unfortunately for O’Brien, it’s not 2017 anymore.
Thanks to the trillions of dollars in national debt that have piled over the last few years, can we even afford Roosevelt’s “big stick”?
Regardless of who becomes the next president of the U.S. they’ll have a much more challenging struggle with foreign policy, thanks to those piles of debt.
