WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Trump calls the U.S. military “depleted.” It urgently needs more planes, ships, troops and nuclear weapons, he says, to ensure American predominance in the world.
Hillary Clinton has a much different view of the defense and military challenges facing the next president. Her prescriptions are largely echoes of the Obama administration. She begins with the argument that the U.S. military already is head and shoulders above any competitor and does not require a major overhaul.
Here’s a summary of their proposals:
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A BIGGER MILITARY OR A BETTER MILITARY?
TRUMP: Echoing concerns of many Republicans, Trump argues that the military is too small to accomplish its assigned missions. He would increase the size of the active-duty Army to 540,000. The current total is 475,000 soldiers, which is due to shrink to 460,000 by the end of the current budget year in September 2017. He also would put the Navy on track to increasing its active-duty fleet to 350 ships, compared to the current Navy plan of growing from today’s 272 ships to 308 sometime after 2020. He has not said how he would pay for these increases, other than calling for an audit of the Pentagon’s books and economizing in broad ways like “reducing duplicative bureaucracy.”
CLINTON: The former secretary of state has offered fewer specifics in her defense plan. Her emphasis has been on military innovation rather than military growth. Her website says she would “invest in innovation and capabilities that will allow us to prepare for and fight 21st-century threats.” She has offered few details, however, while making broad promises like “modernizing” the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force and sharpening America’s ability to defend itself against cyber intrusions and attacks.
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS
TRUMP: He has asserted that the U.S. military has fallen dangerously behind Russia in nuclear capability. This does not square with the facts, and Trump has demonstrated only a limited knowledge of U.S. nuclear weapons. The implication of his remarks is that he would endorse the Obama administration’s embrace of a complete modernization of the nuclear arsenal, and perhaps even accelerate it. He has suggested that the nuclear arms treaty negotiated by the Obama administration during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, known as New START, has put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage.
CLINTON: This is one of the few areas of defense policy where the Democratic candidate has been specific about her intentions. She has defended the New START treaty as benefiting the U.S., and she has promised that early in her presidential term she would undertake a top-to-bottom review of the nation’s nuclear weapons requirements and capabilities. That could set the stage for changes more significant than any President Barack Obama has made. For example, Clinton has told her supporters that she sees little need for a new-generation nuclear-armed cruise missile, which the Obama administration has supported as part of a broader nuclear modernization program.
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DEFENSE BUDGET
TRUMP: He says he would work with Congress to repeal what Washington calls “sequestration,” or across-the-board budget cuts. Without that repeal, or other legislative action to stabilize the defense budget, Trump would have little or no room for the kinds of increased spending he has proposed. He has promised, for example, to invest unspecified amounts in a “serious” missile defense network to protect the United States from potential long-range missile strikes from North Korea and Iran.
CLINTON: She has emphasized eliminating sequestration for defense and non-defense spending. Like Obama, she has argued that American military strength requires not just a big defense budget but also a commitment to strengthening alliances like NATO and building partnerships with countries that are not treaty allies. She has promised “good stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” said she would put a high priority on “curbing runaway cost growth” in military health care and pledged “defense reform initiatives.”
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DEFEATING THE ISLAMIC STATE
TRUMP: He says his administration would “crush and destroy” the Islamic State group, arguing that his approach would be more aggressive and more effective than Obama’s. The outlines of his plan, however, are similar to what the Obama administration has been trying to do. Trump says he would pursue “international cooperation to cut off” the extremists’ funding, expand intelligence sharing with allies and partner nations, and use cyberwarfare to “disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.”
CLINTON: She has called for intensifying the air campaign in Iraq and Syria but not said how that would be done, including whether it would require deploying more U.S. troops. She also has advocated increasing the flow of arms to local Arab and Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria, and she has broken with the Obama administration by calling for the establishment of “safe zones” for civilians in Syria that would be protected by U.S. and coalition air power. Like Trump, she says more can be done to interrupt the extremists’ use of the internet to communicate and to recruit new fighters.
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WHAT ABOUT AFGHANISTAN?
Neither candidate has said much about one of the most vexing problems that will face the next president: What to do about Afghanistan, where Obama tried but failed to end U.S. military involvement and where the government, after 15 years of fighting of the Taliban, currently controls only about two-thirds of the country’s population.
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