Looking to sell Americans on $106 billion in new spending on foreign wars, President Biden and senior Republicans have adopted a political approach: America’s defense industry needs the customers.

Warning that the arsenal of democracy is rusting, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told colleagues last week that shipping weaponry to Ukraine is a good way to get the defense plants humming again as the U.S. eyes its own adversaries in China and Iran.

“These investments are not just replacing what’s being used to destroy Russia’s military strength. They’re expanding production capacity to meet soaring demand from allies,” Mr. McConnell said. “And they’re helping equip U.S. forces for our own long-term competition with China.”

The White House sides with Mr. McConnell.

In his prime-time speech last month announcing his $106 billion war-spending bill, the president said the money isn’t really going to Ukraine. The ally is getting America’s hand-me-downs. The money is actually going to fill the now-empty closet space with new stuff.

And it means jobs, he suggested.

“Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more,” Mr. Biden said. “You know, just as in World War II, today, patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.”

Call it the revenge of the military-industrial complex.

Thirty years after the post-Cold War peace dividend and 10 years after the post-Iraq war dividend, Democrats and Republicans are now competing to funnel more cash to the Pentagon as the U.S. suddenly finds itself bankrolling two wars on the other side of the globe.

And that means coming up with answers for a public still scorched by the global war on terror and increasingly fed up with the U.S. effort in Ukraine.

Gallup’s polling shows 41% of Americans now believe the U.S. is doing “too much” for Ukraine, the highest rate dating back to when the pollsters started asking the question in August 2022, when just 24% said the U.S. was too involved.

Among Republicans, 62% say the U.S. is doing too much, up 12 percentage points in just four months.

“The jobs thing is clearly a political ploy to keep people on board and also for public consumption,” said William D. Hartung, an expert on the Pentagon and the arms industry for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “Especially now, where there’s more skepticism, especially on the Republicans’ side, I think that’s why they’re shifting to the jibs argument. I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

It also doesn’t help that the jobs argument is probably wrong.

“I think there’s a national security argument for modernizing our weaponry and making sure we have sufficient updated resources. I just don’t think that’s an economic argument,” said Brien Riedl, an economist at the Manhattan Institute who supports Ukraine funding.

He said there’s no reason why defense spending is more beneficial than another type of government investment.

“In a full-employment economy, the effect on GDP is roughly zero because every dollar that government is spending on these munitions, for instance, is one less dollar the private sector is spending. And this is because every dollar the government injects into the economy must be taxed or borrowed out of the economy,” he said.

He also said it’s a particularly tough sell for those who say they want to see a smaller government.

“If government investment in defense weaponry is pro-growth then so would government investment in all kinds of industries liberals support,” Mr. Riedl.

Mr. McConnell, though, ticked off specific weapons systems and where they are built. America has spent “billions” on new artillery shells, putting workers in plants from Arkansas and Ohio to Texas and Virginia. The Patriot interceptor, deployed from Europe through the Middle East and into the Pacific region, is produced in Tucson, Arizona, from components sourced throughout the U.S., Mr. McConnell said.

“The truth is the investments we’ve made in expanding production capacity to respond to Putin’s escalation are helping American manufacturers produce more of the weapons Israel and Taiwan need,” the Kentucky Republican said.

It’s not as if the defense industry has been lagging. The U.S. sold some $200 billion in weaponry to the world last year. Much of it went to democracies, but not all.

Patriot missiles went to Saudi Arabia, even as Abrams tanks went to Poland.

And being the world’s arsenal hasn’t always worked out.

The Islamic State used American equipment intended for Iraq’s security forces to build its vicious caliphate in the middle of the last decade. And the U.S. government is still trying to figure out exactly what U.S. equipment the Taliban has managed to salvage from America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan.

The eagerness to pump money into the defense industry has ignited a new round of questions about the military-industrial complex, a phrase coined by President Eisenhower, who in his 1961 farewell address warned of the dangers of yielding to the lure of the “military machine,”

Mr. Hartung said the comparison strains over some key factors. For one thing, defense spending at the time of Eisenhower’s warning was 9% of GDP. Now it’s about 3.5%.

But he said in other ways the defense industry has more political clout today, with massive companies that sit at the center of many key areas of the economy, that employ armies of lobbyists and hire ex-generals to build relationships.

“Now, because of Ukraine, they really want to embrace this arsenal of democracy concept,” he said.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.