Are We 4 Times as Safe as in 1948?

At a recent meeting of a small group of dedicated activists who are still trying to keep the military budget under control, a chart was passed around listing the "Budget Authority for National Defense, FY 1948-2009," in billions of constant FY09 dollars. The amounts included both war and nuclear funding for each year, and showed some interesting facts. (Unfortunately, I missed the part that explained who had actually done the chart, so I can't give proper credit, but I'll summarize some of the key points here.)

In 1948, just after World War II, at the onset of the Cold War, our military budget authority was $171B. It went up significantly during the Korean War, then settled at about twice the 1948 figure during the latter years of the Eisenhower Administration and the early JFK years ($366B in 1961, for instance). The mid-to-late-1960s escalation of the Vietnam War took it up over $500B in 1967 & 1968, 3 times the 1948 amount.

Believe it or not, progressives were actually strong enough politically that the military budget was cut each year that Richard Nixon was in office, dropping from $513B in 1968 down to $352B in 1975. Ronald Reagan increased the military budget each of his first 5 years in office, up to $557B in 1985, but the election of a Democratic Senate in 1986 calmed that down some.

Once the Cold War ended, the military budget dropped steadily during both the first Bush Presidency and during Clinton's two terms, at least in constant dollars, from $502B in 1989 down to $416B in 1993, and then on down to $387 in 2000. (Funny that this decline in military spending is never associated with the strong economy of the 1990s, isn't it?)

At that point, George W. took over, and the military budget almost doubled over the next 8 years, while the economy stagnated. U.S. military budget authority rose up to $426B in 2001, $448B in 2002, $547B in 2003, $570B in 2004, $565B in 2005, $605B in 2006, $660B in 2007, and $709B in 2008.

In other words, our military budget has escalated by 4 times in 60 years--from $171B in 1948 to $709B in 2008. Do you feel 4 times safer? Are we 4x safer now than we were 60 years ago?