A couple of things to note about the new defense budget, which comes in at $500 billion and change. The New York Times says:
If it is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II.
This is misleading--annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, has hovered around $400 billion for most of the Cold War, and the current budget does not appear larger than what was spent during the Korean War unless one includes the supplemental funding for the wars. Here's a chart:
From MIT Center for International Studies.
A more useful metric is the percentage of GDP allotted to defense spending, and at roughly 4 percent, the military budget is well below the average during the Cold War. Even in the 1980s, when the country was nominally at peace, spending hovered around 6 percent of GDP. We are fighting the war on terrorism on the cheap, and compared to earlier wars, we spend next to nothing on the war in Iraq. If anything, people should be outraged that this country devotes so little money to the war effort...which may be why not a single candidate for president, even among the Dems, is calling for a reduction in defense spending. We're fighting on a shoe-string budget.
From NRO.