U.S. Defense Spending, and the "5% of GDP" Fallacy

The idea that defense spending should somehow be a consistent percentage of GDP is as fallacious as it is wasteful.

Consider a recent Washington Post editorial. It oddly asserted that “Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. consistently spent more than 5 percent of GDP on its military.” The editorial’s point, and also lament, was that defense spending “hasn’t reached that level in decades, hovering around 3 percent in recent years.”