The United States spent an estimated $3.4 trillion to compete militarily with China between 2012 and 2024, according to a Costs of War report by Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank. The paper comes as part of the Costs of War project at the Watson School for International and Public Affairs, which aims to research the social, economic and political impacts of U.S. military activities and spending.
Kavanagh’s paper provides the first account to date of the financial costs spent by the United States to compete militarily with China.
Using published Department of Defense budget plans and annual expenditures, Kavanagh estimated how much of the spendings were allocated to the militarized rivalry with China, she explained in an interview with The Herald. From there, she looked at the different services and adjusted their expenditure.
For example, Kavanagh said she made a “higher-end estimate” for the Navy “because the Navy’s focus has been so squarely on operating in Asia.” On the other hand, expenditures for the Air Force and the Army, which mostly focuses on “procurement and operations costs,” were estimated more conservatively.
According to Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, Kavanagh’s paper “helps us understand what our policies actually cost, and therefore, what we’re sacrificing for them, and hopefully we can make better decisions as a result.”
“It’s very convenient to have an enemy,” said Lyle Golstein, director of the China Initiative at the Watson School and director of the Asia program at Defense Priorities. “Deep in our human psychology, we’re taught to sort of compete in this way—it helps us to unify as a country if we have something to compete against.”
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