Issue Position: National Defense

Issue Position

Our modern military should have the latest technology and best equipment our nation can produce. It should have the trained manpower necessary to repel an attack from wherever it may come, launch retaliatory strikes and make hot pursuit in response to provocations. Most of all, it must maintain the structure necessary to expand rapidly in time of actual, congressionally declared war. No less, but also no more.

Reagan rightly said that defense is not a budget issue -- we spend what we must to defend our nation. But we should not spend in excess of what is required either, for it is equally true that we cannot provide for the common defense if we cannot pay for it. Nations that fail to maintain an adequate defense do not survive very long, but neither to those that maintain excessive forces, overextend their military and bankrupt themselves.

Traditionally, America has not attacked another country unless it has attacked us first. When we have faced hostile powers in the past, we instead have surrounded them with superior force and waited them out. Usually, this has proven sufficient, and when it hasn't we have been prepared. When we have had war forced upon us and have placed our military in harm's way, Congress has declared war, as the Constitution requires, and we have backed our troops with the full might and fury of the nation and gotten it over with as quickly as possible.

Since the Korean War, we have largely abandoned these principles, and the result has been 70 years of stalemate and the gradual diminishment of our nation's resources, international respect, and public will. We need to get back to the ancient principles that worked: a small, agile, professional and well equipped military that can fulfill core peace-keeping functions with the ability and structure to expand rapidly and decisively in time of war.

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