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The Biden-Harris Administration proposed military budgets have consistently fallen short of our defense needs, even as external security threats mount. Accounting for inflation, Biden and Harris have now asked Congress to cut military spending four years in a row even as they demand massive budget increases for domestic progressive priorities.

The Biden-Harris Administration talks tough about stopping autocracies and partnering with liberal democracies. But what message is the United States sending when our President won’t even fund our defense properly? America’s international reputation hinges on our ability to maintain a forward military presence and lethal forces that can win wars.

Funding Our Nation’s Military

The Facts About U.S. Defense Spending

  • National defense has been declining as a share of federal spending for the last 35 years, falling from 28.1 percent in 1987 to 13 percent in FY2024.
  • Our federal government currently spends 2.9 percent of total GDP on our military. This means that only 2.9 percent of all U.S. economic output goes to our defense community to protect our families and ensure our world is stable for American business.

President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Budget

  • President’s Biden FY2025 defense budget proposes over a real 10% cut from the level authorized by Congress in FY2024 once inflation is taken into account.
  • President Biden’s proposed defense budget is built on wishful thinking that the United States can keep pace with growing and evolving threats without giving our defense apparatus the funding to do so.
  • Despite claims that the White House’s FY2025 budget request would represent the “largest Pentagon budget in U.S. history,” it is actually cutting the Pentagon’s buying power. That’s not record defense spending.
  • The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understands the reality of our rivalry, which is why it has increased their military’s defense budget to over 7.2 percent. They are building ships faster than us and expanding their nuclear capabilities at a rapid pace.
  • For their part, neither Russia, Iran, nor North Korea are showing any signs of restraint, and this proposed budget would give our military less to counter their threats.

This budget reflects the worst tendencies of bureaucratic inertia: refusing to evolve and adapt to meet our global threats.

The Military’s Recruiting Crisis
  • The U.S. military is facing a major recruitment crisis, with most branches of the armed forces unable to meet their enlistment goals. The Army missed its FY2023 goal by 10 percent after falling short of its FY2022 goal by a whopping 15,000 soldiers (25 percent)— its toughest recruiting year since the all-volunteer force began. The Navy also fell short of its sailor and officer objectives by 7,450 recruits, and the Air Force missed its Reserve and Guard numbers by over 30 percent and experienced its worst recruiting outcome since 1999. In total, the military missed its FY2023 recruitment goals by about 41,000 recruits.
  • In 2023, only 9 percent of Americans ages 16-21 said they would consider military service. That is down from 13 percent prior to the pandemic.
  • Health constraints and a deficiency of basic qualifications are major causes. Only 23 percent of American youth have the physical, mental, and moral competencies to join the U.S. military without receiving a waiver of some kind. Obesity, educational deficiencies, mental health issues, and criminal records disqualify 77 percent of American youth, constricting our recruitment pool.
  • Declining patriotism— which is strongly correlated with disinterest in military service—is also to blame. Over the past 25 years, the percentage of Americans who say that patriotism is a “very important” value in their life has declined by 32 percent. The statistics are particularly acute among young white Democrats.
  • The percentage of military and veteran families who would recommend military life has dropped from three quarters to less than two thirds in three years. With nearly 80 percent of recruits having relatives who served, this should alarm military recruiters.
  • There are no easy fixes here, but we certainly know what doesn’t work: woke policies that make a bad problem worse by alienating potential recruits who don’t want to put up with progressive politics.
NATO: The Free World’s Collective Security Architecture

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a political and military alliance between 30 nations in North America and Europe. It is regarded by many as the most successful military pact in all of human history. The Alliance’s mission is to safeguard allied nations’ security and freedom and provide collective defense of member nations. Collective defense means that an attack on one NATO country is treated as an attack on all countries. This protects members, including America, from threats by other nations and terror groups.

NATO was formed in 1949 in response to the Soviet Union’s expansion in Europe. While the Soviet Union could overpower singular nations, it could never successfully wage a full-scale war against all European nations and the United States when united together. Thus, NATO has served as an effective and longstanding deterrent against nations seeking to invade NATO members. To this day, NATO members have never been invaded by outside enemy forces—a testament to its enduring strategic value.

Russia has never attacked a NATO country. NATO deters Western enemies, namely Russia, and greatly improves the prospect for regional peace. The United States lost over 500,000 men in Europe during WWI and WWII, but since 1945 there has not been a major conflict involving a European NATO state, which has prevented our direct involvement in a war on the continent.

Nuclear Fundamentals: A Primer
  • While the size of Russian and U.S. nuclear stockpiles historically has been somewhat constrained by arms control treaties, Russia has violated or reneged on these agreements while China refuses to negotiate any limitations to its nuclear stockpile size. After successfully testing a hypersonic missile in 2021, the Chinese military can send conventional or nuclear warheads almost anywhere in the world in minutes with greater maneuverability than air defense systems can counter.
  • Outside of testing, nuclear weapons have only been used in war during the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to conclude World War II in 1945, when America was the only nation possessing nuclear technology.
  • North Korea and Iran have pursued nuclear weapons to increase their power and threaten their perceived enemies. Leaders of these terror states should never be trusted with nuclear capabilities that could be used to target America and our allies.

The Way Forward

  • Conservatives know arms control is not an end in itself; it is only as effective as the degree to which treaties are honored. Moscow has no intention of adhering to rules, so why should we self-impose nuclear constraints while rivals build capabilities?
  • A weak nuclear deterrent invites aggression from rivals, which is why Biden’s arms control agenda is such a national security peril. With vast superiority in non-strategic and theater nuclear weapons, Russia holds a significant strategic advantage over U.S. forces while China pursues its own strategic breakout. We should not engage in arms control negotiations without Beijing and fail to address all classes of nuclear weaponry.
  • Our national security apparatus must do two things: advance our nuclear deterrent and prepare to compete in an arms control-free environment. The Biden Administration should address deficiencies in our nuclear triad and accelerate modernization timelines with funding for programs such as the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

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