Can The Next President Afford To Follow Obama's Defense Spending Footsteps?

Get ready for resurgence in planning the future of the American military. It’s long overdue. In fact, serious thinking about the “future force”—what America will need to assure national security in the face of foreseeable, emerging threats—has been largely lacking in the post-Reagan era. Thankfully, that seems to be changing.

The Pentagon recently announced the winning bid to build its new bomber. It’s the military’s first new big-ticket acquisition in quite a while. The Clinton administration largely lived-off the benefits of the Reagan defense buildup. Bush sent big bucks to the Pentagon, but largely to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama administration has been consciously deemphasizing reliance on military power since it came into office. As a result, there is an enormous pent-up demand to refurbish and reinvest in the armed forces.

Recently, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Foreign Policy Initiative released The State of the US Military: A Defense Primer. The report concluded, “Even though the number and severity of threats to the United States continues [sic] to expand, the US military is only getting smaller.”

Read the full article at Forbes.