A National Security Strategy for a Strong America

 

A National Security Strategy for a Strong America

 

 

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace." --Thomas Jefferson

Foreign policy is by no means the number-one issue for voters in this election, but national defense is, as John Adams put it, "one of the cardinal duties of a statesman." Taking a look around the world, particularly at continually emerging details about the embassy attack in Benghazi and the way Iran is applying Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward," to its nuclear program, it was a bad time for the president to have a debate on foreign policy.
Before we even get into the details, we'll just let former CIA chief and retired Air Force four-star Michael Hayden sum it up: "You had two men on stage. One was president. The other was presidential."
Indeed, Mitt Romney's goal Monday night was simply to be presidential. Unfortunately, that led to a few too many agreements with and pats on the back for Barack Obama, whether it was agreeing with the ready-or-not 2014 withdrawal deadline for Afghanistan or praising Obama that "it's wonderful that Libya seems to be making some progress." It was good that Romney followed our advice on Libya and didn't get bogged down debating the minutia -- that's for surrogates and others to handle -- but he should have made the larger point that the deception on Benghazi surely means Obama can't be trusted.
From a strategic perspective, Obama couldn't be more misguided, wrong and, in many ways, dangerous. For example, the president would like Americans to believe that al-Qa'ida died when he (actually the Navy SEALs) killed Osama bin Laden, though the murderous 9/11 terrorist attack in Libya proved this a farce. And he continues to conflate quitting the war in Afghanistan with winning it.
When it came to the military budget -- one of the precious few federal expenditures actually authorized by the Constitution -- Obama employed his usual strategy of deflecting blame. Massive automatic cuts are scheduled to hit the military budget come January through sequestration, but he said, "First of all, the sequester is not something that I proposed. It's something that Congress has proposed." And, he promised, "It will not happen." Well, the president does know a thing or two about skirting Congress to "get things done." Let the record show, however, that sequestration originated in the White House, and Obama signed the cuts into law.
He continued to distort the record, saying, "The budget that we're talking about is not reducing our military spending, it's maintaining it." In normal budget parlance, he might be correct. Politicians frequently speak of "cuts" that are in reality only reductions in the growth rate. However, his assertion in this case simply isn't true. As the Heritage Foundation notes, "Here are the numbers from his Office of Management and Budget from this year's budget request. In fiscal year 2010, defense spending was $721.3 billion in budget authority. Under the President's proposal, defense spending will fall to $566.3 billion in fiscal year 2014. This is a 21 percent reduction in just four years."
The president repeatedly accuses his challenger of wanting "to spend another $2 trillion on military spending that our military's not asking for," but Romney merely wants to stop Obama's cuts. Obama likes to claim that we'll save $800 billion by winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but rather than "investing" that money in bankrupt solar panel companies, perhaps we should upgrade our military capability. We're not of the opinion that every dollar spent on the military is sacred, but after two wars, our military's equipment could use some repair and replacement.
A prime example of needed spending is the Navy, which Romney pointed out "is smaller now than any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now down to 285." And if sequestration goes through, that number will shrink further. It was here that Obama struck back with his most childish, petulant response of the evening: "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities."
While technology has changed quite a bit since Ronald Reagan's tenure, the fundamentals are the same. Reagan left us with a 600-ship Navy, because he understood that no matter the capabilities, a ship can be in only one location at a time, and peace in the world depends on the U.S. Navy being in many locations. Nimitz-class aircraft carriers remain the workhorses of the Navy, and Ohio-class submarines still serve as a nuclear deterrent, but we have fewer of both since Reagan left office. And the carrier Enterprise is being decommissioned in a month, and the Gerald R. Ford won't enter service until at least 2015 -- pending budget figures, of course. If the president wishes us to "pivot to Asia," we will need ships to patrol the Pacific.
Bottom line: To maintain our status as the world's lone superpower, we must have ships, and we shouldn't settle for parity with potential enemies.
Oh, and by the way, the military actually has more bayonets now than in 1917, but who's counting? They're quite useful, too. Just ask our Marines.
Foreign policy is certainly about more than ships and bayonets -- and as much as we hate to break it to the president, it's about more than putting more teachers in the classroom, too -- but President Reagan achieved "peace through strength." If there are indeed enough adults in the country to defeat Barack Obama on Nov. 6, Mitt Romney must restore fiscal sanity at home, in part so that we can cultivate relations with our allies and deter our adversaries with the sure military might of the United States. We've had enough of blaming the military for America's debt woes, and blaming America for the world's dysfunction.      Cont. Reading