Democrats Must Learn To Talk About National Defense

Democrats would rather not talk about national defense.

It’s a rather remarkable place for the party and its wonks to find themselves today. Four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inaugurated the most intense period of conventional military conflict in living memory—and on the doorstep of America’s longest and, until President Trump’s return to the White House fifteen months ago, strongest alliance—Democrats and sympathetic commentators on the broad center-left in the United States still cannot bring themselves to think much about questions surrounding hard power and the use of force.

That’s not a tenable position for the party moving forward, not least in the wake of Trump’s immoral and illegal war with Iran—much less the role the United States will need to play in security around the world after Trump.

Take the analysis from the Center for American Progress—my old think tank—that expresses the $25 billion cost for the first month of Trump’s war against Iran in terms of a year’s worth of Medicaid coverage, free school lunches, and child care, among other worthy domestic policy causes. Never mind the opportunity cost this sum has for national defense itself, or the profligate use of the U.S. military’s limited stockpiles of cruise missiles and missile defense interceptors. The real problem, the CAP analysis contends, is that this money could have been better spent on these deserving domestic priorities. It’s an entirely legitimate argument, and persuasive as far as it goes—but it speaks to the allergy many on the center-left have to defense questions.

Or take a look at Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) big foreign policy debut at the Munich Security Conference last February: she took much unfair criticism from members of the Beltway political press for her admittedly maladroit but otherwise mainstream articulation of a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” a refusal to say whether or not the United States would defend Taiwan against a hypothetical Chinese invasion. But Ocasio-Cortez appeared far more at ease discussing the need for the United States to invest more in science and technology at home to compete with China or the need to counter right-wing populism—both laudable causes in their own rights—than she did discussing the possibility of military action to defend Taiwan. 

This widespread discomfort with talking and thinking about questions of national defense, military power, and the use of force—and the corresponding desire to talk about domestic issues when they arise—represents a far deeper problem for the Democratic Party and the American center-left in general.

It’s a reflex that speaks to a long-standing and deep-seated aversion to these questions among both progressives and the American center-left more generally, one founded on an understandable reluctance to avoid grappling with these morally fraught questions and the unpleasant choices they so often provoke. This instinctive aversion amounts to what the philosopher and just war theorist Michael Walzer deemed the “politics of pretending,” the tendency to imagine that the world is more hospitable to progressive thinking and policies than it actually is. The politics of pretending on the left sometimes takes grandiose and unworkable forms like disarmament proposals and schemes for world government, but more often than not it amounts to various evasions and elisions—like Ocasio-Cortez’s otherwise laudable focus on domestic science and technology investment, or the focus on spending choices and trade-offs identified by the Center for American Progress—designed more to avoid difficult and morally challenging decisions than address foreign policy problems in the real world.

We saw this sort of avoidance at play during the wars in the greater Middle East over the past quarter-century. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, for one, asserted that development assistance and schools, not military force, held the key to defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and across the region. Or take the vogue for “countering violent extremism” during the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s, a dubious fad embraced by governments and non-government organizations alike as a substitute for military force. 

It’s not so much that many on the center-left oppose the exercise of American power per se so much as they instinctively look for shortcuts to avoid thinking too hard about the subject. When confronted with hard security problems, the center-left—and progressives in particular—search for solutions congenial to their own worldview, ones that relieve them of the obligation to think about the traditional implements of hard power and how to wield them in constructive, responsible ways. 

This reflexive aversion to questions of power never made much sense substantively or politically, and it became all the more irresponsible in the wake of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and growing anxiety over a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Indeed, real war in Ukraine and the prospect of conflict over Taiwan ought to have made it impossible to pretend that military power, industrial might, and hard security don’t matter, but many on the center-left continue to do so. And American voters simply will not trust aspiring political leaders so obviously uncomfortable with military power and unable to tackle hard security questions.

At heart, the center-left must face reality and come to terms with the fact that the United States possesses immense power—and it matters considerably how it chooses to exercise that power. Since his return to the White House just over a year ago, President Trump has shown what happens when American power is used for ill: embarking on a murder spree against small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, snatching Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro from his capital, threatening to seize Greenland from America’s erstwhile Danish ally, and embarking upon a war against Iran for no apparent reason whatsoever. But Trump’s abuse of American power has also paradoxically illustrated just how vital it remains that the United States direct its considerable might toward the right ends and for the right reasons.

And American power will not fade away any time soon. Trump has done and will continue to do considerable damage to America’s economic prospects with his tariffs, corruption, and evisceration of science and technology funding, and he has already deeply alienated America’s oldest and closest allies with his predilection for international gangsterism. But the sheer size of the American economy and America’s favorable strategic geography all but ensure the United States will remain a major geopolitical player for the foreseeable future, and the interests of both the United States and its allies will compel continued ties—no matter how strained Trump may make them. The United States may find itself weaker than it might have been absent a second Trump presidency, but it will not find itself so diminished that it can safely afford to ignore questions of power politics and hard security.

As a matter of fact, such questions will only become more pressing the more Trump weakens America and its global standing. The American center-left—from Ocasio-Cortez on the left to the most centrist of elected Democrats around the nation—cannot afford to remain in denial about military power and the use of force; they must step out of their ideological comfort zones and become much more conversant with these issues. They’ve also got to be prepared to use force for the right reasons and if necessary—not for aggression, but the defense of America, its allies, and its interests.

Right now, that means rebuilding the stockpiles wasted and replacing the losses incurred by Trump’s war with Iran, most notably cruise missiles, missile defense interceptors, and airborne tankers and early warning aircraft, as well as deficiencies in artillery production revealed by the war in Ukraine. The center-left should focus its defense industrial program on these basics of modern warfare, not the whiz-bang gizmos made by venture capital-backed defense start-ups that promise far more than they can actually deliver. Nor should it hesitate to work with American allies and partners overseas, in particular those nations like Ukraine that have had to defend against suicide drones and cruise missiles for years now.

It will be an expensive proposition—a single Tomahawk cruise missile, for instance, currently costs as much as $3.6 million and takes up to two years to build—and production rates will need to rise faster than they have over the past four years, not just to restore American stocks but to meet demand from allies in Europe and the Pacific. This rearmament effort should be funded through new and higher income tax rates on billionaires, at least in part. Increased revenues from these taxes likely won’t cover the entire cost of a center-left defense program, but they can offset at least some of the expense.

Finally, it will be critical to hold both the U.S. government and defense companies accountable for increased production of arms and ammunition. Though some progress has been made over the last four years, efforts to re-energize American defense production have taken too long and not delivered enough. A Congressional committee on defense production akin to the Truman Committee of World War II should be established to oversee the proposed rearmament program and hold the feet of both government and industry to the fire—not simply to ferret out potential savings or instances of fraud, but to ensure the program actually meets its production goals and does so on schedule. 

As things stand, however, the discomfort of the center-left with questions of hard power and military force remains quite evident—as exemplified by Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks at Munich. That needs to change and change fast, not least if Democrats wish to win the trust of the American voters they hope to lead.

In the end, American power brings with it an awesome responsibility—a responsibility that the Trump administration actively shirks but one that the broad American center-left has yet to indicate it wants to bear. It’s far better to get comfortable with the exercise of that power, but if recent experience is any indication they still have a long way to go.

Featured image is "Rep. AOC Speaks at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on U.S. Foreign Policy 29:27." Public domain.