US spends half of its budget on military: American analyst

The United States spends about half of its federal budget on military production--six times the military spending of China, an American political analyst says.

“The fact that the United States has this massive military-industrial complex certainly shapes up American foreign policy to a large degree,” Keith Preston, director of AttacktheSystem.com, told Press TV on Saturday.

“There’s an American journalist by the name of Robert Scheer who once said that ‘the United States doesn’t just have a military-industrial complex, it is a military-industrial complex.’ And there’s a great deal of truth to that,” he stated.

Preston made the remarks when asked to comment on a report that the US military has fired off more than 20,000 missiles and bombs since it launched a bombing campaign against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group more than a year ago.

The US Air Force said in a statement on Friday that it is fast running out of munitions stockpiles and called for an increase in funding and production of weapons, CNN reported.

“The United States spends more money on military production and military activities than certainly any other nation in the world. Its closest competitor would be China. The United States has six times the military budget of China in spite the fact that the Chinese actually have five times the population of the United States,” Preston said.

“So it’s clear that in terms of proportion to the world’s military spending and the world’s population, the military spending of the United States is way off the chart,” he added.

“Officially, the United States spends about 25 percent of its annual budget on military production, [but] in reality it is probably closer to 45 percent when you figure in aspects of the American national debt that have been generated by past wars as well as spending that is still owed on past wars,”  the analyst pointed out.

“So, about half of the US federal budget goes to military related activities,” Preston reiterated.

The US spends hundreds of billions of dollars on its armed forces per year, even with the recent budget cutbacks.

The $614 billion spent by the US in 2014 was more than the next 7 countries combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Total military spending by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, India and Germany was $601 billion last year, SIPRI figures show.

Despite this, US officials often warn of strides by China and Russia in developing defenses against American weapons and closing the gaps in capabilities.

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