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Apparently Trump is seeking a 10% cut in non-defense spending and a $500 billion increase in defense spending.
These numbers are so high that I feel like this is probably some kind of bluster or a gambit to get a smaller increase by asking for a larger one.
This would raise US defense spending as a fraction of GDP to the same level as the height of the War on Terror, except with no 9/11 to motivate political will to support the increase.
A 10% cut in non-defense spending would hurt many people, including many Trump supporters, especially given that the DOGE experiment was cancelled and so one cannot expect much efficiency increase to offset the cuts.
A $500 billion defense increase makes no sense except if the US is increasing preparations to engage in a war with China. No other potential adversary even comes close to justifying such an increase. But China is not currently threatening any vital US interests other than Taiwan, and defense of Taiwan could be increased to effective levels without $500 extra billion. It is, after all, an island with rugged terrain, 24 million people, and its own military.
If a war does happen, it carries enormous risks one way or another, even with the extra budget. If a war does not happen, it is money largely wasted in that it could be spent better instead.
It would also be a huge experiment to add on top of the already ongoing tariff project, with difficult-to-predict consequences to the economy. The consequences might be hard to predict, but I feel like it's safe to say that the money could be spent in more productive ways.
The political fallout of actually getting these changes implemented, which seems like an extreme long shot, would drive everyone other than hardcore MAGA "I love the troops" types away and people who directly benefit from defense spending away from the Republican coalition and would give non-Republicans a huge amount of fodder for campaign material.
Even the fallout of just trying to get the changes implemented is bad. It is coming not long before the midterms and it is also a ready-made gift to Newsom or whoever else runs in 2028.
What is Trump doing with this?
One of the big reasons I joined recently was to try and recalibrate my understanding of Trump, and really US foreign policy in general. I really did not predict Iran, I used to be a proponent of "Donald the semi-dove", so I clearly needed to update my models.
One political change that I think is overlooked is that the Blob of 2010s and 2020s is a lot different than the blob of the early 2000s. The blob learned from the Iraq war, and pivoted towards either minor interventions, such as Syria and Libya, or just a supporting role, such as Ukraine. Afghanistan certainly was a black mark, but they didn't start anything major after Iraq. They even resisted going into Iran during the later part of Bush II and backed the JCPOA. Once you take into account the Blob's moderation on this issue, they go from "out of touch warmonger" to "interventionist, but within the public Overton Window".
It does reality is the inverse of how many people thought of it from 2015-now: Trump is more aggressive, for better or for worse, than the Blob.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that it is entirely possible that behind the scenes information alters the calculus such that most, if not all presidents would have jumped in on this one.
It's not popular to consider, but if Iran actually went ahead with nuclearization or was reaching a break point with missile/drone production...both of those essentially "require" intervention if we are to keep with our foreign policy goals.
These things are part of the "official" stated reason for the war and are quite possibly actually accurate, even if many Americans aren't happy for them. The underlying motivation might be something like "we have to go now or Iran will be able to destroy Israel and we can't do anything about it. You might be okay with destroying Israel but the U.S. government isn't (at least for now).
Additionally Trump and likely any replacement Republican president would be tempted to pull the trigger if it was a near thing and not yet profoundly dire due to a fear of ending up like Biden (in the sense of permitting Russia to attack Ukraine).
Biden begged Zelensky to take the threat of invasion seriously and Zelensky refused. It was almost pure luck that Ukraine happened to have troops in the right area to blunt the initial thrust.
Biden was a Russia hawk in rhetoric only. It was like Reverse-Teddy-Roosevelt stuff. Its pretty obvious in hindsight why Putin waited for him to be President to invade.
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Biden was a weak president and was likely perceived that way by foreign adversaries, especially with what we know now.
I strongly belief if Trump, Obama, Bush, or Clinton was the president then Putin would not have invaded.
Putin also invaded his neighbors under the Obama regime (which Biden is best seen as the 3rd term of). The defining thing about the Obama people long term is their consistent lack of seriousness in foreign policy. Grandiose speeches paired with feckless actual policy. JCPOA is the crowning achievement of this "strategy" if you can call it one.
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