President Trump is advancing a long-overdue defense buildup, with his promise to boost defense spending to $1 trillion this coming year.
As he put it this week: “We have to be strong, because you got a lot of bad forces out there now.”
Exactly right. Malign actors from all corners of the world are banding together in a Chinese Communist Party–led alignment that poses a serious threat to America’s security.
The trend line worsened under President Biden, who often warned of the techno-authoritarian vision pushed by Beijing yet sent Congress multiple budget requests that cut spending on the military in real terms. Thankfully, Congress instead passed appropriations bills with a higher top-line budget each time.
During that time, China’s defense budget grew significantly, with some estimates putting the regime’s actual spending (as opposed to the smaller official figure) at close to $800 billion. It also acquired a world-class nuclear arsenal and new bases overseas. Russia, meanwhile, is poised to reconstitute its military in the coming years, toward the goal of reconstituting its strength prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
The $1 trillion touted by Trump is a necessary corrective to America’s dwindling military advantage and a welcome development, even if the nice, round number isn’t necessarily a radical advance. (The expected budget request for this coming year was already approximately $950 billion.) Trump’s statement provides a clear sense of direction, when there are forces within his administration and in the party who are skeptical of a buildup of this scale for fiscal reasons.
Obviously, the state of the federal budget is dire, but deterring a war with China will prove much cheaper than potentially fighting one.
That doesn’t mean that the Pentagon shouldn’t find savings and reform antiquated practices. As the indispensable Roger Wicker, the Mississippi senator, has put it, the goal should be a buildup bigger than Ronald Reagan’s and a reform of the Pentagon as significant as that under Dwight Eisenhower.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said of the $1 trillion plan, “We intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely — on lethality and readiness.” DOGE is showing up at the Pentagon, and an ungodly procurement process that is so self-sabotaging that you might think it’s a product of Chinese plants should be top of the agenda.
Meanwhile, Trump has already zeroed in on U.S. shipbuilding as one of his early national defense priorities, as the People’s Liberation Army Navy builds an ambitious new fleet that has already surpassed America’s in number (though not in tonnage or in quality). The new White House National Security Council office on shipbuilding is already hard at work, and the administration facilitated a new agreement between shipbuilders from the U.S. and South Korea earlier this week.
We’ll also need more munitions, hypersonic missiles, autonomous systems, and pre-positioned weapon stocks. We should avoid proposed cuts to the Army’s end strength and make it a priority to try to bring Trump’s visions of a “golden dome” missile-defense system to fruition. We’ve been living off weapons developed in the Reagan buildup for 30 years now, and we desperately need the next generation. We should be doing everything possible to leverage the innovative firms, funded by private equity, that have sprung up in recent years rather than simply relying on the legacy defense contractors.
Trump has been urging NATO members to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense. That, as Wicker has advocated, is a good goal for us, too (it would mean a budget of approximately $1.4 trillion). Peace through strength actually requires strength.