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  See Also

  United States, Defense/Homeland Security, Defense Policy & Budget

  Latest from CFR.org

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  Homeland Security is Like a Poorly Equipped Junior Varsity Squad

  Author:	Scott G. Borgerson, International Affairs Fellow

  March 10, 2008
  Providence Journal

  Over the coming months, Congress will continue to debate President Bush’s record $3.1 trillion budget request. Although the Democrats and Republicans do not see eye to eye on many issues, they are in total agreement that national security should receive the highest budgetary priority.

  Regardless of the rhetoric that this spending makes America safer, the proposed budget continues the trend of placing inordinate emphasis on offensive military strength at the expense of homeland security. It is as if the United States plays the A-team for preemptive wars abroad, and then fields a poorly-equipped junior varsity squad to defend the homeland. What might be worse, Congress is now adding billions more in earmarks that further distort the nation’s spending.

  The $515 billion the president proposes for traditional defense spending is the largest it has been since World War II in inflation-adjusted terms, an increase of over 74 percent since Bush’s first year in the White House. And that’s without emergency supplemental funding requests that will total at least $160 billion to cover the tabs for the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan, and the budget of the second largest cabinet agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, where war costs are also directly felt. In total, the United States will spend three-quarters of a trillion dollars next year to support what is essentially offensive firepower.

  View full text of article

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  

  In Regional Monetary Integration, Peter B. Kenen poses an important question: Should various country groups follow the lead of the European Monetary Union and form similar full-fledged monetary unions?

  

  Walter Russell Mead recounts the story of the centuries-long rivalry between the English- speaking peoples and their enemies in God and Gold.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New from the Council: Policy Options Papers

  Kenya

  In this POP, Adjunct Fellow Michelle D. Gavin suggests steps the Bush administration could take to promote political and ethnic reconciliation and to restore the viability of Kenya’s governing institutions.

  Pakistan

  In this paper, Senior Fellow Daniel Markey poses a set of recommendations for the United States to consider in response to Pakistan’s ongoing political crisis.

  

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