WASHINGTON: Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. It’s a standard military prescription for dealing with a sometimes hostile and usually unpredictable world. It’s also what an African-American chum told me this morning was his plan for life under President Trump. This guy is a fellow Chicagoan and Cubs fan, so he knows how to […]
No one has done a better job of predicting the final outcomes of deals on the defense budget since sequestration was made law than Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute. So we asked her to predict what this election will mean to the 2018 defense budget. With the election tomorrow, we couldn’t think of a […]
Throughout this presidential campaign, the candidates have barely discussed the most important elements of national security, the United States’ armed forces. We’ve tried to flesh things out, with the excellent force structure and budget analyses done by Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Analyses. But Mark had to work with very few […]
WASHINGTON: Whoever is elected the next president of the United States must stand ready for crisis to strike “at 12:01 on January 20th,” the Secretary of the Navy warned today, lest America’s adversaries see a window of opportunity. What Ray Mabus and his fellow service secretaries didn’t say, at least out loud, speaks volumes. With Russia meddling in […]
When Donald Trump discussed his defense program in Philadelphia on Wednesday, the bluster and lunacy of the primary season were gone and he offered a scripted position paper that reflected (mostly) mainstream Republican ideas. There is still lots one might disagree with, but the discipline of the teleprompter meant that he read a staff-prepared paper that put […]
WASHINGTON: In the face of a lot of what he called “catastrophizing” about the “very volatile time for the country” known as the presidential transition, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper offers a simple message: “It’ll be OK.” Of course, that reassurance came after Clapper outlined the dark precautions that are taken on Inauguration Day, including the designation of […]
NAVAL STATION GREAT LAKES, ILL: As Russian cyber espionage heats up the presidential campaign, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said his Pentagon reforms will endure under the next president, whoever he or she may be. “These things that we’re doing, we the leadership collectively discuss them, invent them, so everybody understands why we’re doing these things,” […]
This presidential primary process has been a huge (or, yuge) disappointment. The most disappointing aspect, perhaps, is the failure of the candidates to address the details of their budgetary and defense strategies, and in particular, the cyber security policies they will pursue as Commander-in-Chief. The party platforms may offer more information about Donald Trump’s and Hillary […]
This completes our series on the initial defense plans of the major presidential contenders for the 2016 election. Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies will keep his eye on Clinton and Trump’s campaign as we get more details (presuming we do) and analyze them. Read on. The Editor Hillary Clinton really, […]