June 26, 2019
Democrats Face a Defense Spending Conundrum
On Wednesday and Thursday, 20 of the two dozen contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination will converge on stage in Miami to make their case to the American people. As candidates navigate the political reality show, they will face two major pressures: to differentiate themselves from the crowd of fellow travelers and to align on virtuous moral stands that set them apart from the sitting president.
Foreign-policy and defense wonks tend to bemoan the lack of emphasis on their specialties during election season while panicking about the results these two priorities incentivize. Standing out in foreign policy and defense typically demands a bold step away from the safe, technocratic “Blob,” as Obama administration advisor Ben Rhodes called the Washington foreign-policy establishment. And aligning against Trump means pressing to reverse his policies cold turkey. Foreign-policy experts tend to get spooked by these approaches because they seem to ignore complicated nuances.
Black-and-white calls to end wars, blow up budgets, close detention centers, or sign idealistic agreements have routinely run into the brick walls of entrenched realities that stand in the way of election promises. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all campaigned on some variation of rolling back the tides of war, nation building, and intervention. Each entered into, stayed in, or expanded conflicts, and none achieved the defense budget savings or Defense Department reforms they’d sought and promised.
Read the full article in Foreign Policy.
More from CNAS
-
Next Generation Defense Strategy: Space
Commentary
Without significant changes in defense policy, programs, and staffing, U.S. strategic competitors will transform the nation’s asymmetric advantage into an asymmetric vulnerabi...
By Sarah Mineiro
-
Institutional Roadblocks to the Defense Department’s Adoption of AI
Commentary
Bureaucratic inertia, stemming in part from deep-rooted institutional and cultural resistance, has hampered DoD’s ability to rapidly develop, acquire, and deploy AI capabiliti...
By Megan Lamberth & Martijn Rasser
-
Can China’s Military Win the Tech War?
Commentary
The United States and its allies should take seriously Beijing’s efforts to militarize China’s technological base....
By Anja Manuel & Kathleen Hicks
-
Make China the Explicit Priority in the Next NDS
Commentary
The Bottom Line The new NDS is an opportunity for the next Secretary of Defense in January 2021 to do three things: Further deepen and explicitly state the current NDS’s sound...
By Mark Montgomery & Eric Sayers
