The Defense Budget We Need

For 30 years the United States has been fundamentally unserious about its national-security strategy, which was predicated on the assumptions that it had entered Immanuel Kant’s era of “perpetual peace,” that the nation was the lone superpower, and that it would remain so for decades to come. As a result, four successive presidential administrations of both parties consistently underfunded the Department of Defense. The Clinton administration took “peace dividends” in the 1990s, the Bush II administration fought its Global War on Terror while neglecting force structure, and the Obama administration imposed the disastrous defense sequester in 2013, which over the next several years reduced planned defense budgets by over $495 billion.