OP-ED: The U.S. Needs to Rebuild Its Military Might
Trump and the Republican Party promise to do just that.
Nearly every leader I spoke with during this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit agrees: The world has become consumed by chaos. Dictators in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are working together to undermine the free world. There’s little doubt why they feel emboldened: Under the Biden administration, U.S. military readiness has significantly diminished and authoritarians sense weakness. They’re perceptive.
America urgently needs to embrace the philosophy of peace through strength that has guided Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump and kept our nation safe. Thankfully at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next week, Mr. Trump will present the Republican Party’s plan to do exactly that should he be re-elected in November.
The party’s recently released platform calls for making America’s military the “most modern, lethal and powerful” force in the world. That isn’t a new playbook. The GOP has a long tradition of championing robust investments in America’s vital defense needs. The Democrats, meantime, have targeted the nation’s defense budget since at least Jimmy Carter’s presidency at the expense of our military readiness and national security.
Joe Biden’s defenders may take issue with this contrast, pointing to his speech at this week’s summit where he declared “history calls for our collective strength.” The president even took credit for the increase in the number of NATO members meeting their commitment to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense—doubtless a result that is owing more to Mr. Trump’s blunt, bare-knuckle warnings to our allies.
Does Mr. Biden’s rhetoric match his record? In each year of his presidency, Mr. Biden has proposed budgets with inflation-adjusted cuts to the Defense Department, while posting double-digit increases for such agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Education Department. The president has America’s defense spending on track to drop below 3% of GDP within the next two years for only the fourth year since the end of World War II. This is the wrong signal to send to dictators like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are building up their military forces.
Such weakness fails to inspire our own citizens. Our military is facing its worst recruiting crisis in more than 50 years. America’s Navy has been left “in its worst state for designing, building, maintaining, and crewing ships in over 40 years,” experts from the Congressional Research Service told me. Meanwhile Mr. Biden’s Navy secretary is obsessively focused on climate change.
In addition to the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which took the lives of 13 American service members—the Biden administration has enriched Iran by refusing to enforce sanctions. The White House also lifted oil sanctions on Venezuela while aggressively seeking to shut down energy production in the U.S., including in my home state of Alaska. Don’t forget that Mr. Biden rewarded Mr. Putin by banning new U.S. liquefied natural gas projects and delaying every major weapons system Ukraine’s leadership has asked for.
None of this is surprising. Mr. Biden’s record on defense and foreign policy is a continuation of a Democratic tradition. Mr. Carter cut defense spending in his first three years of office. The Russians and Iranians took advantage of America’s weakened posture, which forced him to increase spending at the end of his term. Bill Clinton cut the size of our military by a third, upending a decade of progress under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Barack Obama slashed the Pentagon’s budget by 25% during his second term. Our military readiness plummeted, leaving only three out of 58 Army brigade combat teams at the highest level of readiness in 2015.
In the Middle East, Mr. Obama’s passivity and infamous “red line” in Syria led to the flourishing of Islamic State and an emboldened Iranian terrorist regime. In the runup to Mr. Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, Mr. Obama opted to send the Ukrainians ready-to-eat meals and blankets when they needed weapons and ammunition. He was also reluctant to build up American forces in the Baltics and Poland.
Mr. Trump cleaned up these messes. He worked to rebuild America’s military might and readiness, destroyed ISIS and delivered lethal weapons to Ukraine. Mr. Trump also deployed thousands of troops to Eastern Europe, crippled Iran’s economy and unleashed American energy dominance. This suite of policies kept Moscow, Tehran and Beijing in check.
The Republican Party’s platform promises to return to these policies. The Democratic National Committee hasn’t yet unveiled its 2024 platform, but if past is prologue, it won’t be promising. The party’s 2020 platform aspired to cut America’s defense budget, chastised America for spending “more on the military than . . . on diplomacy,” and naively pledged to “maintain a strong defense” for less money. Such policies will lead only to further global chaos.
Mr. Biden can protest all he wants. But for the vast majority of Americans who want to see America’s strength restored and the world’s dictators checked, the choice in November couldn’t be clearer.
Mr. Sullivan, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Alaska.
By: Sen. Dan Sullivan
Source: Wall Street Journal
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