The U.S. Could Spend $92 Million on a Parade - Or Put it Back into U.N. Peacekeeping by Rick Noack – Washington Post
After President Trump announced his intention to host a military parade in Washington this year, critics compared the plans to the dreams of a despot, complained that the extravaganza was too focused on Trump himself and questioned the costs of any such endeavor.
On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he has canceled the parade for this year amid spiraling costs but indicated that it was potentially still on for 2019, if costs go down. “Now we can buy some more jet fighters,” he wrote.
The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
....attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
The Associated Press previously reported that a parade in Washington would have cost $92 million, or three times as much as initially predicted by the Trump administration. If such a parade — or a somewhat smaller version of it — were to be held next year, what sort of message would it send?
One year ago, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced cuts of roughly $570 million to the U.N. peacekeeping budget — of which the United States would have shouldered 28 percent, or $160 million. This year, the budget decreased further as some missions were shuttered, with the United States again saving about the same amount as last year.
This is part of a general reduction in U.S. expenditures abroad, including a call to slash the foreign aid budget by a third, which was later thwarted by Congress. Now my colleagues report that the Trump administration is using other means to take back more than $3 billion in already approved foreign aid in an effort to curb such spending.
The problem is, experts, including many former military officers, are pretty sure that money spent on diplomacy and international institutions saves U.S. lives in the long run.
So rather than hold that parade, would the money be better spent if it were used to restore some of that slashed funding for U.N. peacekeeping missions that almost invariably use non-American troops? …