Eurasia Press & News
There is a dichotomy, almost a contradiction, in comparing Donald Trump to Kamala Harris on matters of defense and the military. At one level, national security policy appears to be an area where there is more accord, and less debate, between the candidates than is the case in many other policy realms. However, national security policy may also be the place where there is the greatest potential for divergence based on the characters, personalities, and decision-making styles of the two candidates, should the nation face a crisis and have to consider the use of military force.
First, here are some of the areas where they (mostly) agree: Both the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the Trump-Pence administration under Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and the 2022 National Defense Strategy of the Biden-Harris administration under Secretary Lloyd Austin prioritize roughly the same things. Both promote a focus on great-power rivalry and deterrence over the emphasis on “rogue states” and terrorist organizations of the previous three decades. Trump focused in equal measure on Russia and China; Biden emphasized China more, calling it the “pacing challenge” rather than an adversary but clearly underscoring that given its resources and size, it was the potential challenger to watch most closely. Few that I know in Trump world would disagree with the Biden/Austin tweak to Mattis’ strategy; few in the Biden-Harris administration have anything critical to say about Jim Mattis and his earlier 2018 document as well as the budgetary priorities that went along with it. Neither Trump nor Biden sought to enlarge the military; both sought to modernize it more quickly than had been the case in recent decades to make it more lethal, survivable, and resilient.
The 2024 party platforms provide few differences of opinion as well. Both prioritize troop pay, the strengthening of the defense industrial base, and the modernization of the American nuclear deterrent. Trump’s platform places more emphasis on an expanded national missile defense “dome” and on expunging “woke” Democrats from the ranks of the national security community. The Democratic document inherited by Harris makes a (slight) nod to arms control and also criticizes Trump’s earlier occasional disparaging remarks about American servicemen and servicewomen. Trump promises to demand more equitable military burden sharing from allies; the Democrats celebrate the strengthening of alliances on their watch. These are all important points, but I find the areas of accord more striking than those of disagreement (unless and until Trump actually takes seriously the idea of breaking off U.S. security commitments to allies that fail to do enough burden sharing, as he has sometimes hinted he might).
Neither platform nor candidate is specific about what, if any, defense budget increases they might advocate. The track record is that Trump increased defense budgets notably on his watch, above and beyond the rate of inflation, whereas Biden and Harris, inheriting those increases, kept the real-dollar or inflation-adjusted defense budget steady. So, Trump’s legacy is slightly more “pro-defense” than that of Biden and Harris, but the differences are slight, and the pledges about where either candidate would take the defense budget going forward are imprecise and thus, indistinguishable.
So, as best I can tell, the real differences boil down to civil-military relations and also to possible decisions on the use of force.
First, to be fair to Trump, his tendency towards bellicosity in his rhetoric and his political style was not matched by his actual decisions on the use of force as president. He threatened to go to war with North Korea but later tried summitry with Kim Jong Un. He inherited a strategy to defeat ISIS that was showing promise, doubled down on it, and succeeded. He authorized the killing of Iranian terrorism mastermind Qasem Soleimani but otherwise avoided new uses of force for the most part.
To be fair to Biden, although the Afghanistan withdrawal went badly, it was a decision on a given timeline that Trump had initiated, so if you don’t like the results of that withdrawal (and I don’t) you should probably blame both recent presidents (and I do). Also, Biden and Harris and team have done a generally good job in building and sustaining a coalition to help Ukraine fend off Russian attacks without risking direct American intervention in that war. They have also managed their way through several crises with China, over Taiwan and the South China Sea, that a less careful team might have misplayed. In his first term, to give Trump credit, he also managed to keep problems with China from blowing up into dangerous crises. But he had hired professionals in his first term—Mattis, Mark Esper, H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo—that should get lots of the credit. However, eventually, he fired most of the people on that list, and it is not clear that he would hire equally competent national security officials in a second term. So, on crisis management, I give the nod to Harris not because she is a Democrat but because she fits in the modern bipartisan American tradition of studious consideration of options with a team of top-notch professionals before making momentous decisions on the possible use of American military force. Trump does not; he wings it based on personal instinct and intuition. My worries here are somewhat mitigated by my sense that Trump does not relish violence the way that some belligerent leaders in world history (or Vladimir Putin today) seem to. But they’re only somewhat mitigated.
Finally, there is the matter of civil-military relations. Trump had very tense relations with his second chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, largely over the events of January 6, 2021, but also in regard to the Lafayette Square incident after the killing of George Floyd and on other occasions. Trump has also been disparaging towards members of the military, as the Biden-Harris platform document reminds us. Trump did not fire lots of generals and admirals in his first term, to be fair, and also his disparaging commentary about the troops did not seriously damage military recruiting or retention on his watch (COVID-19 proved the bigger challenge on the recruiting front for both Trump and Biden). Yet Americans benefit enormously from a professional and de-politicized military today; it would be a shame if that were jeopardized by a future president.
Bottom line: On policy and spending, there is probably only modest difference of opinion between Trump and Harris. But on decision-making style on matters of war, peace, and civil-military relations, there is an enormous gulf between them that could have important consequences for how the United States handles any national security crises that might arise on the next president’s watch.
