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quincy institute for responsible statecraft
Hegseth Drops New Ad for Proposed $1.5 Trillion Pentagon Budget as Poll Shows 60% Opposed
"What we're seeing is the public experience how more spending does not actually keep them safe," said a researcher at Brown University's Costs of War Project.
May 14, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday released yet another ad pitching President Donald Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, as new polling showed major skepticism over the idea.
In his latest pitch for the record-breaking defense budget, the former Fox News host insists that "America is not in decline," even though the US has been unable to compel Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz despite having spent nearly $1 trillion on defense in 2025.
"We remain the strongest military power on Earth," Hegseth continued. "But that power requires renewal. And with global threats that are constantly evolving, it's time to make a $1.5 trillion investment."
The $1.5 trillion investment is a GENERATIONAL DOWN PAYMENT on America’s national defense.
This investment guarantees the United States maintains overwhelming strength and unmatched deterrence against any adversary for generations to come. pic.twitter.com/2zOSlZkzNr
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) May 14, 2026
A $1.5 trillion military budget would be over 50% more than the 2025 US defense budget and more than four times the money spent on defense by China, the world’s second-biggest defense spender.
Among other things, Hegseth said that the budget would invest $18 billion into Trump's proposed "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, which the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday estimated would cost $1.2 trillion to create, deploy, and operate over the first 20 years of its existence.
Hegseth also said that the Pentagon would be increasing its investment in artificial intelligence by "800%," although it's not at the moment clear how well AI helps militaries effectively fight wars.
The defense secretary concluded his video by insisting that "we are expanding our strength, we are restoring our deterrence, and we are putting America first."
USA Today reported on Thursday that a new poll conducted by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project at Brown University finds that nearly 60% of Americans think the proposed Trump Pentagon budget is too large, including 40% who say $1.5 trillion is "much too high" to spend on defense.
Breaking the figures down by party, 87% of Democrats said the defense budget was too high, along with 54% of independents, and even 30% of Republicans.
Jennifer Greenburg, a researcher with Brown's Costs of War Project, told USA Today that Americans were broadly skeptical that plunging more taxpayer money into the Pentagon is really necessary given that the US already doles out more for defense than the next four biggest spenders—China, Russia, Germany, and India—combined.
"In real time, I think what we're seeing," said Greenberg, "is the public experience how more spending does not actually keep them safe."
In a column published by The New York Times on Wednesday, longtime national security reporter Noah Shachtman argued that Hegseth's $1.5 trillion proposal was "less like a budget and more like a trip to an endless casino buffet" in which the Pentagon spends money in "gut-busting proportions."
Shachtman also noted that the proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget comes at a time when the Trump administration has wrecked traditional oversight mechanisms, thus making waste and fraud far more likely at a Pentagon that's never passed an audit.
"One of their early actions was to fire and replace the Pentagon’s inspector general, whose office looks into claims of fraud and abuse in military contracting," Shachtman explained. "The independent office that tests whether our weapons actually work has been gutted."
Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued in an analysis published on Tuesday that Hegseth's budget pitch at congressional hearings this week was particularly baffling because there is really no imperative behind it on par with the Cold War or the post-9/11 defense buildup.
"Despite presenting no strategic necessity for the largest year-over-year Pentagon spending increase since World War II," Freeman wrote, "Hegseth repeatedly claimed the $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget was a sound financial decision, arguing in the Senate hearing that 'at every level we have made it a fiscally responsible budget.' Yet, the fact is that the entirety of this proposed increase in Pentagon spending would be deficit financed, effectively going on Uncle Sam’s credit card."
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Escalating Attacks in Strait of Hormuz Risk Return to 'Full-Blown War'
"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a problem CAUSED by US military power, not one US military power can fix," said one critic.
May 04, 2026
Iran on Monday launched missiles and drones at US military forces and merchant ships after President Donald Trump announced plans to help vessels navigate the Strait of Hormuz.
According to The Washington Post, the Iranian strikes "were carried out just after Central Command announced that two U.S.-flagged commercial vessels passed through the strait, the first known to have done so since the ceasefire, closely following the passage of two US destroyers."
Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, a senior Iranian commander, warned in a statement given to the Iranian Mehr News Agency that his country's military "will attack any foreign force, particularly the US military, if it attempts to approach or enter the Strait of Hormuz."
Trump responded to the Iranian attacks by once again threatening to carry out war crimes, telling Fox News' Trey Yingst that Iran will "be blown off the face of the Earth" if it attacks US military ships.
Trump's latest threat comes just over a month after the president delivered an openly genocidal threat against Iran, warning that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," if Iran's leaders didn't give into his demands.
Amid the resumption of hostilities, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) warned that the US and Iran could be stumbling into a dangerous new phase of the war, which Trump launched in late February without any authorization from the US Congress.
"In seemingly daring Iran to fire on US vessels by testing their restriction of naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz," NIAC wrote in a social media post, "the US risks instigating a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident that would serve as a spark for deeper military hostilities. The consistent rejection of diplomatic off-ramps and use of brinksmanship to seek to enhance leverage at the negotiating table is a losing game that risks tilting the US and Iran back into full-blown war."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, relayed comments from an unidentified Iranian analyst who said Iran's decision to fire "warning shots" at US military vessels represented a move to a more aggressive strategic posture.
"If Trump plans to restart the war, Iran will not wait for Trump to do so before it retaliates," Parsi wrote. "It will strike preemptively in a measured way to deter Trump."
Sina Toossi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, called attention to Trump's claims that his escort mission to get two commercial vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz was a "success," even as it led to reported Iranian strikes on ports in the allied United Arab Emirates.
"Reads like another desperate attempt to steady markets as events suggest otherwise," Toossi remarked.
Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, said the latest round of hostilities showed the Trump administration was still in denial about what needs to happen to reopen the strait.
"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a problem CAUSED by US military power, not one US military power can fix," Kavanagh explained. "The sooner Washington accepts this, the sooner we can start working toward a diplomatic resolution."
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With Everyone Looking for Iran War Off-Ramp, Experts Offer 'Exit Plan'
"The United States and Iran are trapped in a conflict in which each new escalation only deepens a shared, losing predicament... Sooner rather than later, both will confront the urgency of finding an off-ramp."
Mar 27, 2026
Multiple reports published in the last two days have indicated that President Donald Trump is seeking to wrap up his illegal war in Iran, which has significantly hurt his domestic political standing—partially by raising gas prices at a time when polls show US voters are primarily concerned about the cost of living.
While ending the Iran war will not be simple, some foreign policy experts believe that it can be done if both the US and Iran truly understand that deescalation is in both nations' best interests.
George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and former director of the CIA’s Russia analysis, and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, have written an essay published on Thursday by Foreign Policy outlining what an achievable Iran "exit plan" would look like.
The authors acknowledged the immense challenges in getting both sides to meet one another halfway, but said this option is preferable to a drawn-out war that will leave both nations poorer and bloodied.
On Iran's side, argued Beebe and Parsi, a deal would involve renewing "its stated commitment to never pursue nuclear weapons," re-opening the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping vessels, and making a commitment "to denominating at least half of its oil sales in US dollars rather than the Chinese yuan."
The US, meanwhile, would "grant sanctions exemptions to countries prepared to finance Iran’s reconstruction" and "would also permit a specified group of states—such as China, India, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Iraq, and others in the Gulf—to resume trade with Tehran and the purchase of Iranian oil, thereby easing global energy prices."
Beebe and Parsi emphasized that this deal would only be a first step, and they said the next step would be restarting negotiations to establish a nuclear weapons agreement similar to the one previously negotiated by the Obama administration that Trump tore up during his first term.
"The United States and Iran are trapped in a conflict in which each new escalation only deepens a shared, losing predicament," they wrote. "Neither can compel the other’s surrender. Sooner rather than later, both will confront the urgency of finding an off-ramp—one that does not hinge on the other’s humiliation."
Even if Trump takes this course of action, however, there is no guarantee it will succeed, in part because of how much he has already damaged US alliances across the world.
In an analysis published Thursday, Sarah Yerkes, senior fellow at the Carnegie International Endowment for Peace's Middle East Program, argued that even nations in the Middle East that stand to benefit from a weakened Iran are now thinking twice about their dependence on the US for their security needs, given that Trump's war has resulted in Iran launching retaliatory strikes throughout the region.
Yerkes also highlighted how Trump's handling of European allies is making it less likely that they will play a significant part in helping him end the conflict.
"Europe, which is not eager to enter what it sees as a war of choice, has refrained from proactively joining US and Israeli strikes," Yerkes explained. "One of the clearest examples of the transatlantic rift was over the initial reaction to closures in the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping channel for approximately 20% of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG traffic. Multiple European countries refused to cow to Trump’s demand that they send warships to help keep the strait open, inviting public ire from Trump."
The bottom line, warned Yerkes, is that "each day the war continues, without explicit goals or a clear exit strategy, opposition to the United States—from friends and foes, inside and outside—is also likely to grow, making America less safe and less secure."
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