Protecting citizens should be the top priority for any government, so we’re lucky that the United States has one of the best militaries on the planet. We can go about our days without much worry of threats from abroad.
However, as much as I appreciate America’s unparalleled brute force, the U.S. defense budget is far too bloated. In fact, we spend so much that we’re hurting ourselves.
And at home we face a nonstop battle — a political conflict over the role of the military.
Every candidate seems to have a rock-solid opinion on this subject. Businessman Donald Trump said our military is “going to be so strong, nobody’s going to mess with us. But you know what? We can do it for a lot less.”
Trump explained that he intends to scale back expenses by eradicating fraud. Although an audit could bolster the Pentagon’s accountability, Trump’s lack of specifics are concerning.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a fierce Trump critic, actually favors higher defense spending. In a debate, he justified this position by saying, “The world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world.”
Rubio is correct to argue that the U.S. must remain strong, but endlessly throwing money at the Pentagon isn’t what makes us stronger.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. spends roughly as much on defense as the next seven top-spending countries combined. That amount of overkill is self-destructive.
In his 1957 State of the Union address, Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “We must not delude ourselves that safety necessarily increases as expenditures for military research or forces in being go up. Indeed, beyond a wise and reasonable level, which is always changing and is under constant study, money spent on arms may be money wasted on sterile metal or inflated costs, thereby weakening the very security and strength we seek.”
In other words, Eisenhower restrained the military in order to defend the nation’s overall strength. He didn’t want to rob Americans of wealth by needlessly increasing the national debt or abusing money that could be better allocated to domestic programs.
Eisenhower’s vision of strength balanced military readiness with Americans’ quality of life. I think his vision was right then and is right for us now.
From what I’ve seen, none of the remaining candidates on the Republican or Democratic sides fully embody Eisenhower’s balanced foreign policy.
But one other thing Eisenhower emphasized was that defense shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Neither side holds a monopoly on safety or well-being, so, as we’ve seen in the past, Americans of opposing viewpoints have to unite in times of need.
And as we know, America is at its very strongest when we stand together.
