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US looks at 8% defense budget cut in each of next 5 years, Washington Post reports
(www.reuters.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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I can totally see Trump privatizing US military.
They pretty much already are. That's why the defense budget is so high already. It's a money funnel to defense contractors. Almost every aspect of it is just paying contractors. The military doesn't do a lot outside of just supplying the cannon fodder. The only thing left to do is privatize actual soldiers. But still, there's be a capitalist needing to make money off them and soldiers are already paid next to nothing as it is.
So realistically, this move has me stumped.
I think theyre gonna pivot to PMC model to allow the military of the US to operate in areas as mercenaries without it being a "war".
US companies could hire PMCs to go secure regions for them and the US govt can be like "Those are private entities that has nothing to do with us"
Think about it this way, instead of funding stuff like F35s, they'll spend that money on getting Blackwater to hire more goons who can be used to put down food riots.
I don't think there's any talk of replacing the entire US military though. They just want to reduce Pentagon budget over the coming years, and funnelling that money into stuff like PMCs seems to be an obvious next step. Also, if they're now realizing that they can't take on Russia and China then the policy would be to retrench which means they have less global commitments. Europe being dumped is one example of this. I very much agree with the assessment here https://archive.ph/00s4y
I think they're probably cutting pet projects of the industrialists and reallocating to cyber