In 2024, for the first time in almost a century, the United States spent more financing its national debt than it did, as a percentage of GDP, on national defense. In 2024, interest on our national debt expenditures came in at 3.1 percent of GDP and defense spending at 2.9 percent.

This has been the case through this year, although it's too soon to say what the picture will finally be for 2026. But it's very close.

Hoover Institution scholar Niall Ferguson notes that this is an ominous sign. He quotes what he calls Ferguson's Law, after 18th century Scottish political theorist Adam Ferguson.

Ferguson concluded, after doing an extensive study of history that, per Niall Ferguson, "any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power."

We're in this situation because of the massive increase in federal spending, and the massive increase in federal borrowing to finance the spending. At the same time, defense spending as a percentage of GDP hovers at a historically low point.

President Donald Trump wants to change this situation........

© Townhall