National defense experts watching Donald Trump’s military readiness speech Wednesday surely recognized much of his plan. He pledged to increase Marine Corps battalions to 36, boost the number of Navy ships to 350, and add Army combat brigades.
These are the same numbers proposed by Carly Fiorina during the Republican primary campaign, and similar to those of Mitt Romney when he was running for the presidency in 2012. In other words, they fit traditional and mainstream Republican defense policy. That is welcome. They also echo proposals made by the conservative Heritage Foundation in several reports, including its most recent Index of United States Military Strength.
Such a proposed military build-up makes it plain that Trump is running to restore the long-accepted position that America should be able to fight two ground wars simultaneously. The Pentagon has acknowledged that, under President Obama, it can no longer do so, partly because of budget cuts.
Trump proposes an active Army of 540,000 troops, up from 490,000 today. That would make it capable of fighting two major regional conflicts at the same time with room left over for reserves. Trump’s proposed 36 Marine battalions would be a major increase from the 23 the corps has now and it would, likewise, allow the Marines to engage in two major regional conflicts while maintaining a 20 percent reserve.
The Navy has 276 ships and says it needs 306. Trump is going considerably farther, calling for an increase to 350, and also wants America to equip itself with at least 1,200 war planes, the number the Air Force says it needs. This huge military build-up is, in principle, welcome, given the perilous and unstable times in which we live; there are pressing military needs in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Western Pacific. In each, the reassertion of American power and leadership is greatly to be desired. But, such a build-up is also extremely costly, and Trump needs now to explain how it will be paid for. While he proposed some offsets, Trump’s plan would still cost about $150 billion according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
One of Trump’s major foreign policy talking points is that he would not have invaded Iraq after 9/11. He has also criticized the idea that America should intervene in other countries to change the regimes that govern them. “The current strategy of toppling regimes, with no plan for what to do the day after, only produces power vacuums that are filled by terrorists,” Trump said Wednesday. He added, “Sometimes it has seemed like there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to invade, intervene or topple. She is trigger-happy and unstable when it comes to war.”
That doesn’t mean Trump is calling for an isolationist foreign policy. His first point is that he would ask America’s top military brass “to present a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS.” This is an idea that polls well with the public, but it’s important that Trump now does what he says is necessary, and shows he has an idea about what he’d do in Iraq and Syria after he has eliminated the Islamic State. One cannot expect every detail all at once but, as with much that Trump proposes on the campaign trail, it would be good if he’d follow up quickly and add flesh to the bones of his policies.
Since President Reagan helped topple the Soviet Union with “peace through strength,” the two-war strategy has served as the guiding principle of conservative national secuirty policy. Trump restated that policy cogently and forcefully on Wednesday. Now let’s have specifics so voters can see that the policy represents real, rather than merely rhetorical, change from the status quo.
Trump has made it plain that he wants voters to see him as committed to upholding a blueprint that can make the Republican Party once again more trusted on matters of national security — strong but not overhasty to enter military conflict. This is a good step.
