Chapter 4, Part 1: Department of Defense
Day 11 of reading and sharing my notes on Project 2025 (the long title is Mandate for Leadership 2024: The Conservative Promise, in case you're searching for it).
Here's my approach and why I’m doing this.
SUMMARY
We're in Section 2: The Common Defense, Chapter 4: Department of Defense by Christopher Miller.
According to his bio earlier in the document, Miller "served in several positions during the Trump Administration, including as Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of National Counterterrorism Center, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Transnational Threats at the National Security Council." He was an Army Green Beret and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He went to George Washington University, the Naval War College, where he got an MA, and the College of Naval Command and Staff and the Army War College.
He explains that the DOD is the largest part of the federal government and uses more than half of the government's discretionary spending.
He says the military has spent "years of sustained misuse ..." that make junior officers and soldiers take the blame for what senior officers and officials do, as well as "wasteful spending, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution and ... the Biden Administration's profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll."
MY OPINION
Pretty sure the military has always had vaccine mandates. Soldiers go to all kinds of places where they need to have vaccines. I've heard older men talk about how they were lined up and given all kinds of vaccines all at once. This is politicizing COVID vaccines, but soldiers have, to my knowledge, never had choices about vaccines. And why does Miller think equity in the military is "profoundly unserious"? This is another area where I have heard many people talk about how the military was a place where people of all races could move up the ranks based on their merit. It gave many opportunities to young minorities. This isn't new. I heard Jimmy Carter and Colin Powell talk about it.
SUMMARY
Miller criticizes U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan and China, and he says "the growing involvement of senior military officers in the political area ... are clear signals of a disturbing decay and markers of a dangerous decline in our nation's capabilities and will. He mentions the deaths to narcotics.
He warns of leaning on technology, praising American "ingenuity, common sense, and thoughtfulness grounded in a free society."
He lays out four priorities:
"Reestablish a culture of command accountability, nonpoliticization, and warfighting focus."
"Transform our armed forces for maximum effectiveness in an era of great-power competition."
"Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland Security border protection operations. Border protection is a national security issue that requires sustained attention and effort by all elements of the executive branch."
"Demand financial transparency and accountability."
MY OPINION
Obviously, accountability is good. I'm curious about "nonpoliticization." I suspect he doesn't want military leaders criticizing the Commander in Chief. I understand prudence, but I don't want leaders silenced. "Warfighting focus" scares me.
Priority 2 is vague enough that I'm not sure what he means. It sounds good, but it's hard to say.
If border security is such a priority, I'm confused about why the Republican candidate killed a bipartisan bill. The need for all of the executive branch to give its attention to border security seems extreme to me.
I agree that the military should be much more transparent and accountable.
SUMMARY
Miller lays out his argument that China is "by far the most significant danger to Americans' security, freedoms, and prosperity." He says China wants to dominate Asia undermine the U.S., "Including by restricting U.S. access to the world's most important market. Preventing this from happening must be the top priority for American foreign and defense policy."
He says China is building up its military and nuclear arsenal. But its "most severe immediate threat" is to Taiwan and other U.S. allies in Asia.
"Accordingly, the United States must ensure that China does not succeed. This requires a denial defense: the ability to make the subordination of Taiwan or other U.S. allies in Asia prohibitively difficult. Critically, the United States must be able to do this at a level of cost and risk that Americans are willing to bear given the relative importance of Taiwan to China and to the U.S."
MY OPINION
This sounds like an argument for going to war with China to me. I hope I'm wrong. It looks like he'll lay out more specific policy later in this section.
SUMMARY
Miller gives a paragraph to Russia, Iran, North Korean, and transnational terrorism "at a time when decades of ill-advised military operations in the Greater Middle East, the atrophy of our defense industrial base, the impact of sequestration, and effective disarmament by many U.S. allies have exacted a high toll on America's military.
**-He advocates "modernizing and expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal ..."
He says U.S. allies must join taking on China, Russia, Iran, the Middle East, and North Korea. "The reality is that achieving these goals will require more spending on defense, both by the United States and by its allies, as well as active support for reindustrialization and more support for allies' productive capacity so that we can scale our free-world efforts together."
MY OPINION
Earlier he said the military needed more financial accountability, and that we're spending more than half of our money on the military. Now he's saying we need to spend more. I don't have current stats, but the U.S. has always outspent every other country on earth by an astronomical amount on defense. "... our free-world efforts ..." sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel.
I'll stop there for now. The next section is on "Needed Reforms" and outlines specific policy proposals.