Despite the fact that military spending is at its highest level since World War II, the arms industry and its allies in the think tank world and the punditocracy are seeking to cash in on the push for a substantial economic stimulus. The Washington Post has hosted two pieces making variations on this argument, one by its monthly contributor Robert Kagan, and one by Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute. We're going to be hearing the "defense as stimulus" argument long after the current stimulus package has been enacted, as part of the debate over the size and shape of the FY2010 Pentagon budget. So, it's worth debunking some of the myths inherent in this argument.

First and foremost, as my colleague Christopher Preble and I argued in a recent piece in the Washington Times, military spending should not be a jobs program. We should figure out what is needed to defend the country and address the key security challenges in the world, and craft the budget accordingly. Many of the favorite weapons programs of the "defense as stimulus" crowd -- from the massively overpriced F-22 combat aircraft to the Virginia class attack submarine -- were originally designed to combat Soviet weapons systems that were never built.

Second, in a world where the greatest threats to human life -- such as climate change, epidemics of disease, and entrenched poverty -- are not amenable to military solutions, it would make more sense to "re-balance" our security spending to move funding from the Pentagon towards programs aimed at dealing with these broader challenges. A report from a task force coordinated by Foreign Policy in Focus and the Center for Defense Information has suggested a detailed program along these lines that would shift over $60 billion in unneeded spending from the Pentagon budget to fund diplomacy, foreign assistance, alternative energy, public health, and programs to secure and eliminate loose nuclear weapons and bomb-making materials. Spending along these lines would do far more to protect us than spending on missile defense, nuclear weapons, or redundant combat aircraft.

Finally, it should be noted that military spending creates fewer jobs than virtually any other form of public investment, from weatherization of buildings, to building mass transit lines, to expanding education and health services.

So, to sum up, Pentagon spending should be limited to items that will actually defend us; and, if we are looking to create jobs, there are plenty of needed public projects that can do far more in that respect than throwing money at the military budget. Some of this may seem obvious to TPM Cafe readers, but we will need to disseminate these arguments early and often to deal with the conservative "echo chamber" on this issue.