[Politico] The Pentagon, famed as the world’s largest office building, sits on 24 acres of land across the Potomac River from Washington. Home to 3.7 million square feet of offices, it was constructed during the Second World War. In anticipation of the military shrinking once peace returned, the building was designed to be easily converted into a records storage center. Instead, if the Trump administration’s budget is approved, in 2021 it will oversee the largest defense expenditure since 1945.This history makes the Pentagon a potent symbol of America’s foreign-policy infrastructure in general, which is dominated by a massive, increasingly inefficient military machine better suited to the challenges of the mid-20th century than the early 21st. It is a machine that carries considerable direct economic costs but, more important, overshadows other foreign-policy tools more effective in confronting the global problems that the United States faces today. And just as the Pentagon is no longer fit for its backup purpose of records storage center in an age of cloud computing, nor is the Department of Defense well-placed to readjust to new roles, such as anti-terror or cybersecurity, let alone responding to climate change, pandemic threats or global financial crises.
So, as the 2020 race heats up, presidential contenders should talk big and be specific. While some candidates, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have said they’d cut defense and shift U.S. foreign policy away from military engagement, they have been light on specifics. But the United States needs a dramatic overhaul to adapt to the global threats of the 21st century, which should include moving away from military engagement and toward international cooperation on issues from peacekeeping to greenhouse gas reduction to global health to banking reform. Such an overhaul should also include cutting the defense budget in half by 2035, and perhaps even getting rid of the Pentagon itself. (Maybe Amazon could move in.)
The Department of Defense was created to win wars against nations that threatened the United States. That is still its major role: Of the Pentagon budget, 71 percent goes to research, development, testing, procurement, operation and maintenance, mostly of large weapons systems designed to defeat other countries’ military forces.