Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth returned to Capitol Hill this week to promote the Trump administration’s proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget. The request is colossal, in both relative and absolute terms. It is 44% larger than the 2026 fiscal year budget, which was already a 17% increase over 2025.

President Donald Trump’s team claims this is a necessary defensive measure against threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. But this budget is offensive in both senses of the word: aggressive toward the world and insulting here at home.

For decades, our adversaries have watched America’s growing military size and reach with alarm at what they see as signs of aggression. The U.S. government has dismissed these concerns, suggesting that our military might and forward deployment across the globe are merely deterrents to the aggression of others.

That may have been persuasive to some partners before, but this administration’s penchant for both threats and use of force has fatally undermined the credibility of that rationalization. Consider U.S. military action in Venezuela, the Caribbean and Iran, and the threats to Cuba, Mexico and Greenland, to name a few.

America today is not shy about delivering on its threats, either. America’s existing military presence and infrastructure around the world make Trump’s appetite for military action even more dangerous because they lower the cost and threshold for it. If we had no bases across the Middle East, for example, would he have launched this war with Iran?

No one else comes close to America’s global military footprint. The United States has at least 750 overseas military bases across 80 countries. Russia is believed to have about 50 across a dozen countries, mostly concentrated in former Soviet states with some presence in Africa and the Middle East. China only has two currently, though it is considering opening bases in several other locations.

And who could blame them? Look at a map of known U.S. bases ringing the globe, and it’s no wonder so many other countries see the U.S. posture as a threat. Giving this administration a massive increase in funding for its so-called “War Department” only dials up the risk of further aggression and provocative posturing.

Defense spending was already a runaway train. A generation ago, the defense budget was a fraction of what it is today, at less than $400 billion. From 2000 to 2014, the budget increased by 31% (in inflation-adjusted dollars), and it has doubled since then. Today, the United States spends vastly more on defense than any of its adversaries and more than the next six countries combined. The American public has consistently opposed defense spending increases, but politicians often champion them anyway to avoid looking weak on security.

Increasing it now by some 44% is not only entirely uncalled for; it’s also offensive to the American people, who are being told the federal government can’t afford to pay for anything they actually need. Social services and healthcare have been slashed, gas prices are skyrocketing, and Americans are facing a deepening affordability crisis. Trump has said in no uncertain terms that the economic pain his citizens are facing is not a factor in how he deals with his war of choice. It hasn’t dampened his interest in pricey vanity projects, either, as he directs hundreds of millions of dollars to his ballroom, his triumphal arch and painting of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The Trump administration cries about the costs of important government services while it spends on pet projects like it’s Monopoly money.

These massive budget increases are being spent on things that don’t help Americans and that they don’t want, at a time when the U.S. debt is out of control. At $31.27 trillion, it now outpaces the country’s gross domestic product.

Beyond the numbers, though, an unconstrained military budget brings other real risks. It means our government faces no pressure to seek peace or avoid escalation. It has no need to make hard choices about what hardware and capabilities we really need in today’s modern security environment. The Pentagon has no urgency to economize or to rid ourselves of the legacy systems and big-ticket items that U.S. defense contractors love to sell but that our military has no need for anymore.

We have had the most expensive military on earth for decades, but the war in Iran has revealed that it is not as domineering as it should be at that price tag. Three months into a war with a middle power that has far less military capability, our weapons stockpiles are severely depleted. The Defense Department itself admits that it will take years to restock. This war has been costly, at up to $1 billion a day, but what do you expect when our military is using $4 million Patriot missile interceptors to down$20,000 drones? How prepared is the U.S. government for the other threats we face, like a far better-equipped China?

All this means that we get inadequate national security at premium costs and still can’t afford healthcare, and this government wants us to simply throw even more money at it. If you find this offensive, too, you should let your elected representatives know.

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Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior adviser with the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She is also a distinguished lecturer with the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”

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