Trump Can — and Should — Fully Fund Our Military

By Bradley Bowman & Mark Montgomery

Friday, November 29, 2024

 

‘For almost twenty years we had all of the time and almost none of the money; today we have all of the money and no time.” That was then–Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall’s warning on July 22, 1940, a little more than a year before the Pearl Harbor attack and America’s entry into World War II.

 

Today, Americans find themselves in a similarly precarious geostrategic position and at risk of making the same mistake again — waiting until the last moments before a war to invest the necessary resources in defense. That undermines deterrence, invites aggression, and increases the chances that American war-fighters will not have what they need in the early months of a preventable war.

 

Each year, the Obama and Biden administrations failed to request from Congress sufficient resources for defense. Trump should not make the same mistake.

 

The bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy assessed in its July 2024 report that the “threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”

 

Consider the actions of America’s adversaries.

 

In preparation for potential aggression against Taiwan and a war with the United States, China is undertaking a breathtaking military modernization and expansion campaign. In March, the former top U.S. commander in the Pacific called Beijing’s military buildup “the most extensive and rapid” seen anywhere since World War II.

 

Russia, for its part, is waging a war of conquest against Ukraine that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. If Putin’s might-makes-right aggression succeeds, the consequences will reverberate far beyond Europe for years to come.

 

Iran, meanwhile, is progressing toward a nuclear weapon even as its terror proxies wage a multifront war against Israel, conduct the most significant assault on maritime shipping in decades in the Red Sea, and have launched more than 180 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since October 17, 2023.

 

And nuclear-armed North Korea is expanding its missile arsenal, honing the ability to strike the U.S. homeland with intercontinental ballistic missiles, sending combat forces to fight Ukraine, and behaving even more aggressively on and near the Korean Peninsula.

 

To make matters worse, these four adversaries, which are part of a new axis of aggressors, are cooperating in unprecedented ways — making each of them more capable, resilient, and effective in their respective areas of ongoing or potential aggression. The results of their diplomatic, intelligence, military, cyber, and economic cooperation are greater than the sum of its parts, presenting genuine challenges and dilemmas for the United States and its allies.

 

Indeed, there is a significant risk that the United States could confront simultaneous great-power wars in Europe and Asia in the coming years, and the National Defense Strategy Commission concluded that the United States is “not prepared.”

 

Changing that reality will require many actions by the new administration, but the first and fundamental step is addressing America’s insufficient defense budget.

 

Many Americans who have spent too much time listening to Senator Bernie Sanders might be surprised by such an assertion and believe that the United States is on the verge of going bankrupt due to excessive defense spending.

 

The truth is quite different.

 

The United States is projected to spend 3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on the Department of Defense for 2024. Other than the years just before the 9/11 terror attacks on our country, that approximate level of spending in recent years is the lowest percentage any time since 1940 — the year before the U.S. entry into World War II.

 

For comparison, measured as a percent of GDP, the United States spent about 11.4 percent on the Department of Defense in 1953 (Korean War), 8.6 percent in 1968 (Vietnam War), 5.9 percent in 1986 (Reagan buildup), and 4.5 percent in 2010 (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

 

If the threats the United States is confronting are the “most serious” seen since 1945, why is Washington spending so little on defense?

 

This is just the kind of Beltway nonsense that the next administration and its allies in Congress should correct — and fast. That’s because it can take a long time for increased defense spending to yield fielded combat capabilities, and war could come sooner than many expect.

 

After all, it is fielded combat capabilities — not defense spending — that deters and wins wars.

 

At a minimum, President Trump should seek to increase defense spending by 3 to 5 percent above inflation each year and ensure that any such increase amounts to at least a 0.1 percent GDP increase each year, including the FY 2025 budget still under review in Congress. That would boost defense spending back to 3.5 percent of GDP by the end of Trump’s term. That may be the maximum rate of increase that the services and the U.S. defense industry could effectively absorb under current conditions.

 

Regardless, any such increase should be decoupled from any increases in non-defense spending, especially given the Biden administration’s inflationary domestic-spending binge in recent years.

 

Some might point to Pentagon waste as an excuse not to increase defense spending. To be sure, the Department of Defense should serve as a responsible steward of tax dollars, and every dollar wasted is a dollar not available to help secure our country.

 

But the National Defense Strategy Commission was correct when it assessed that “no feasible combination of institutional adaptation, process improvement, or waste reduction will generate defense savings of sufficient size, and with sufficient speed, to finance” all the necessary steps.

 

“Bigger budgets are therefore essential,” the commission concluded.

 

Suggesting we must either cut waste or increase the defense budget is a false choice. We must do both simultaneously given the urgency of the threats we confront.

 

Indeed, in this geostrategic moment, prioritizing efficiency over speed would be a costly and short-sighted mistake. History reminds us that the worst waste of resources — both financial and human — are wars that could have been prevented with earlier and more concerted action to bolster deterrence.

 

If deterrence fails in the Taiwan Strait as it did in Ukraine, the costs for Americans will be even higher. The Trump administration plans to pursue a “peace through strength” foreign policy. If that laudable approach is to succeed, it must be based on unmatched U.S. military power. Such power is possible only if Washington invests sufficient resources in defense as Ronald Reagan did. Otherwise, such phrases will elicit little more than a shrug in adversary capitals, and Americans will confront wars of aggression sooner or later that could have been prevented.