If you are looking for a sense of the future of the Pentagon after the November election, don’t watch the horse-race polls between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. You can ignore the pundits and even much of the news. Just read the last National Defense Strategy, which has served as the Pentagon’s bible for investment, research, and training since former Defense Secretary James Mattis unveiled it in 2018. The strategy describes a future environment of great power competition with the U.S. pitted against China and Russia in a long-term race for innovation, influence, and advantage. No matter who is elected president, that is unlikely to change. Where Biden may part from Trump, is how the United States goes about it.
The defense strategy is an extension of the White House’s wider 2017 National Security Strategy. Both are products of the Trump administration, but they are also a continuation of policy and budget moves that began under the Obama administration, especially the “pivot to Asia.” Mike Carpenter, managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, says that Biden would create his own strategy, but that great power competition still would be the primary focus. More importantly, he argues, a Biden administration would actually get to work executing it much more robustly.
“I think the gap between the rhetoric of the Trump National Security Strategy and the practice of his administration is enormous,” said Carpenter, who was a White House advisor to Biden, Russia policy director at the National Security Council, and served in the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, the Balkans, and conventional arms control. “The Obama administration recognized the need to compete against great powers by working together with allies and partners. The Trump administration has taken a go-it-alone approach and neglected our alliances, which has greatly weakened our position vis-a-vis Russia and China. Look for example at Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Germany and his questioning of the U.S. commitment to defend our allies. My sense is that a Biden administration would put our democratic allies and partners at the forefront of its foreign policy.”Read more…
