With the extension of the Bush tax cuts effectively preventing any meaningful reduction of the federal deficit in the near term (at least until their 2012 expiration), new House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) stated that “everything is on the table” when it comes to congressional proposals to cut spending.

While all programs are likely to come under budgetary scrutiny as Congress considers where and how deep to make these cuts, some Republicans balk at proposals to reduce the defense budget, which is slated to exceed a trillion dollars this fiscal year.

Most politicians are loath to even suggest a reduction in the defense budget, since such a stance suggests weakness on national security matters. But with the military accounting for almost a quarter of federal spending—more than any other discretionary funding, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—we hope that Rep. Cantor’s declaration is given serious consideration when it comes to defense.

In 2009, the United States led all nations in defense spending, with $663 billion in expenditures—six times more than China, the second highest spender, and almost double as much as the next five countries (China, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia) combined annually. The total expenditures allotted to “overseas contingency operations” (read: Iraq and Afghanistan) accounts for $130 billion of that amount, and still exceeds any of the next highest spenders’ annual budgets.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. spends far more than its potential rivals and allies combined due to its commitment of the last 65 years as the world’s police force, a role it assumed after the Second World War. Indeed, it can be argued that America’s interventionism has its origins in the Spanish-American War, which introduced the U.S. as an imperial power to rival that of its European contemporaries.

Since 1898, when American troops fought in Cuba and the Phillipines, the U.S. has undertaken overseas military intervention 30 times, depending on how one chooses to count, including both World Wars. The nation has found itself engaged in combat or intervening in 52 of the last 112 years, or roughly half the time—since the end of the Cold War, American troops have gotten involved with overseas operations 16 out of 22 years, about 70 percent of the time.

These figures demonstrate that intervention is, and has been, the norm for U.S. foreign policy, and a simplified reason for the runaway defense budget. Since 9/11, the emphasis on national security and the desire to not appear soft on the nation’s defense, solidified the Department of Defense’s status as a budgetary sacred cow.

And since 9/11, the defense budget has doubled, without counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—a new post-World War II high. A congressional deficit commission found that the United States spends nearly as much on defense as the rest of the world.

“Until recently, defense was sacrosanct,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), a long time proponent of restraining defense spending. Lee has found an unlikely ally in small government Tea Party conservatives, who have displayed their dissatisfaction with their own party over traditional Republican opposition to any perceived cuts against the military.

For all the grumbling and finger pointing directed towards the inefficiency of domestic programs, military and other defense-related spending has been largely free of scrutiny or serious assessment. However, military spending has had more than its share of notable failures and fraudulent wastes and abuses.

The F-22 fighter jet, hailed as the supreme fighter plane of its time, serves as a qualified example of budgetary mismanagement. The plane, whose parts are manufactured in 44 states, received annual funds towards its $65 billion program price tag, at the price of $150 million per jet.

However, not a single F-22 has seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, not in small part due to the fact that neither of those countries possesses any air capability that the F-22 could combat. The result?

All 187 F-22s have been grounded, due to rust.

The Obama administration, to its credit, recognized this in 2009, refusing to sign a defense budget that included the plane. Still, the Department of Defense saw a 12 percent increase in its budget that year.

Misappropriation of funds has also proven a waste of tax dollars, due to endemic corruption in the Iraqi and Afghan governments, and a lack of oversight by U.S. and allied administrators in both countries.

A 2008 BBC investigation discovered that $28 billion allocated during the Iraqi war simply disappeared. Defense contractors, from firms like Halliburton and Blackwater, account for greater numbers of personnel in Iraq than US troops, and are paid big salaries for services like food preparation and laundry. Allegations against the Karzai government include the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars.

House Armed Service Committee Chair Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) has agreed with Defense Secretary Gates, who proposed cutting $78 billion in wasteful defense spending over five years in order to assume the department’s share of belt-tightening. McKeon has made it clear, however, that “any measures that stress our force and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform” will be unacceptable.

We no doubt share Rep. McKeon’s concern for the safety of our troops, and we agree that the security of American citizens is paramount.

What is unclear, however, is how the presence of 70,000 troops in Germany, Italy and the UK, or 65,000 in Japan or Korea promotes American safety at home. Furthermore, the sustainability of maintaining our overseas military missions must be considered strongly as America eases into the new century.

America’s role as the world’s foremost “peacekeeper” (in the UN sense of the word) has without a doubt benefitted the United States and its allies over the latter half of the 20th century, but not without great cost in both blood and treasure. As the American sun descends from its zenith, the traditional assumptions of America’s “preponderance of power” and its reach must be rethought and realized.

By undertaking cuts in areas such as clean energy technology, education, housing, and research, we risk serious detriment to our near- and long-term future.

Fiscal realities mandate austerity in 2011, and such temporary measures must, and will, be accepted. But the future of America’s interventionist role and our ability to perpetuate it must be on the table for serious consideration.

Americans must decide whether the need for devastating cluster bombs, a navy larger than the next 13 combined, a nuclear arsenal with capacity to annihilate the world several times over—as if the apocalypse needed a replay or two.

In President Eisenhower’s famously misinterpreted 1961 speech warning Americans against the dangers of the “military-industrial complex,” the former five-star general illustrated perhaps a greater point, denouncing the wasteful costs of Cold War with the Soviets.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Whatever Ike’s actions as commander-in-chief or his motives in decrying the military-industrial complex, his words recognize not only the material, but human costs of an American militarized culture.