Trump's approach to defense is different from that of past presidents, witness his 2019 meeting with ... [+]
Polls indicate that Donald Trump is favored by most Republican voters as their party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election. Likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden has depicted the prospect of a second Trump term in apocalyptic terms, but his concern apparently does not extend to standing aside so that the party can offer a more popular candidate.
The possibility of a Trump win thus cannot be dismissed. Trump is competitive in all of the battleground states that will decide the outcome of the election. Despite his legal problems, the former president may again be headed for the White House.
If that happens, what would it mean for the one federal function that partisans of every stripe agree is essential—national defense?
Trump is often described as unpredictable, but on defense matters he has exhibited strong convictions on a number of fronts, some of them stretching back decades. Here are eight core principles that are certain to shape the U.S. defense posture in a second Trump presidency.
Peace requires strength. Like many of the Founding Fathers, Trump believes that human beings are by their nature grasping and selfish. You would too if you’d spent your career in New York real estate. In Trump’s view, the only reliable way to prevent aggression is by threatening enemies with unacceptable consequences.
That requires a defense posture second to none, which helps explain why during Trump’s first term Pentagon spending rose from $606 billion to $723 billion—a substantial after-inflation increase that kept America by far the biggest military spender in the world. In a second Trump term, defense spending would likely increase again at above the rate of inflation, notwithstanding a burgeoning national debt.
Nuclear firepower trumps arms control. Given his view of human nature, Trump distrusts treaties and prefers acquiring concrete military capabilities. That applies in particular to nuclear weapons. His first public statement on military matters after declaring he would be a candidate in 2016 was to call for an increase in the size of the U.S. nuclear force.
During his presidency, Trump exhibited little enthusiasm for arms control, withdrawing from the intermediate nuclear forces agreement and setting challenging goals for continuation of strategic arms limitations. This wasn’t just based on ideology: Trump’s advisors believed the Russians were cheating on the arms control agreements they had signed.
China is the rival that matters. In 2018, the Trump administration released a drastically revised national defense strategy that shifted the focus of U.S. military planning from the global war on terror to great-power competition. The new strategy was largely classified, but defense secretary Pat Shanahan described its essence as “China, China, China.”
Trump views China as the only credible aspirant to superpower status other than America, in part because of its rapid economic growth after joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. With that economic power now translating into a steady buildup of military capabilities, in a second term Trump would continue to make China the driving threat in defense plans.
Alliances are unreliable. The Biden administration has sought to deal with the Chinese military buildup by enlisting regional allies in a multilateral coalition. However, Trump has little faith in alliances and has complained that countries like Japan and South Korea don’t spend enough on their own defense. He has argued both countries will need to acquire nuclear forces to deter attack if they don’t pay America more for defending them.
Trump’s view of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is even more dismissive, and apparently stretches back to long before he entered politics. He views most of America’s traditional European allies as freeloaders, relying on the U.S. defense umbrella rather than adequately funding indigenous military forces. He is more favorably disposed to a few newer NATO members such as Poland, but prefers bilateral ties over multilateral coalitions.
Regional conflicts are quagmires. The main lesson Trump has learned from recent wars is that Washington should avoid getting involved in local conflicts. As his 2017 national security strategy stated, “We are not going to impose our values on others.” Thus, the idea of deploying U.S. forces to defend embattled democracies elsewhere in the world does not resonate with Trump.
Accordingly, he would scale back military aid to Ukraine and resist sending troops anywhere. Trump despises the theocratic leaders of Iran, but he is unlikely to go to war in the Persian Gulf. The only place where he departs from his non-interventionist convictions is Israel, because of America’s close cultural ties to the Jewish state.
Tech is better than boots on the ground. In those rare circumstances where foreign provocations demand a military response, Trump will always favor the use of remote weapons over the deployment of U.S. personnel on the ground. He recognizes that the death or capture of U.S. military personnel by hostile forces is always a divisive development in domestic politics, and thus he is determined to avoid such episodes.
During his presidency, Trump greatly increased the use of drones in Southwest Asia and Africa. He repeatedly used unmanned aircraft to attack terrorist leaders, with significant success. The last thing he wants to see on his watch is U.S. soldiers in firefights with local forces.
Military judgment can’t be trusted. Trump entered the White House with a high regard for military professionals, bending the rules to make one of them his first defense secretary. Over time, though, he gradually soured on the military as a source of insight and came to view some military leaders as disloyal. He even disparaged military opponents of his pardons for war criminals as members of “the deep state.”
In a second term, Trump would likely value his own intuition over the judgment of professionals in the military and the intelligence community. This is not surprising, given his confidence in his own opinions, and the priority he assigns to gauging the domestic political fallout from military actions.
Military power is inseparable from industrial power. A second Trump presidency would have no difficulty continuing the industrial-policy initiatives of the Biden administration. Biden’s exertions are largely a continuation of efforts begun during the Trump years, and many of them are grounded in authorities such as the Defense Production Act.
Trump sees an intimate connection between remaining a world-class economy and fielding a world-class military. However, his notion of a strong economy focuses mainly on industrial sectors rather than the digital innovations of Silicon Valley. In a second term, Trump would be a strong supporter of the traditional defense industry.
