TRUMPENTAGONOLOGY
A trifecta on what lies ahead
First, President-elect Trump is going to be a lame duck from the moment he is sworn in January 20. Whatever may have restrained him during his first term — in his effort to win a second — will be gone this time around. That actually could be a good thing: there are plenty of national-security shibboleths that need to be rewritten (fight and win two wars at once?) and rice bowls that need smashing (nuclear triad, anyone?). A commander-in-chief not fretting over winning a second term will have the freedom — if he opts to seize it — to make, or propose making, major changes in the way the U.S. defends itself.
Second, Trump isn’t looking to hire skeptics. He wants combat boot-licking sycophants, unwilling to challenge him. Trump has said he may need to deploy U.S. troops against U.S. citizens, fire “woke” generals and those who fumbled the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and threaten U.S. withdrawal from NATO unless European allies spend more on their own defense. A redder House and Senate will be more pliable.
The day after the election, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a terse memo (PDF) telling the troops “to obey all lawful orders” from their incoming commander-in-chief (a Pentagon spokesperson declined to be drawn into his use of “lawful”). Putting aside Trump’s fitness for office, or the wisdom of the electorate in voting him back in, here’s a peek into the three Ps of President-elect Trump’s Pentagon plans:
1. POLICY
While Trump has dismissed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, its chapter on the military (PDF) was written by his final defense secretary. It calls for more money (although not guaranteed, given GOP divisions) and more nuclear weapons. He has consistently pressured Ukraine to negotiate an end to its war with Russia that would allow Moscow to keep some of the land it occupies following its 2022 invasion. Trump expects Israel to wind down its war in Gaza, now that Israel has decimated both Hamas and Hezbollah. He’s leery of offending China, and hasn’t committed to coming to Taiwan’s defense if China invades as Biden did (Biden was the outlier here; since 1979 the U.S. position has formally been “strategic ambiguity” to leave both Beijing and Taipei guessing what Washington would do). Other allies are concerned over how Trump will handle the growing ties among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
Yet Trump seems more interested in engaging in culture wars than real ones. That’s why he has vowed to eliminate pro-diversity efforts — and trans troops — from the U.S. military. He’s likely to reverse its policy allowing pregnant troops to travel out of state at government cost for abortions if they are banned where those troops are based. And he has pledged to re-honor the Confederacy by returning the original names to nine Army posts initially named for rebel military officers that were changed during the Biden administration.
2. PERSONNEL
Personnel is policy, especially when it comes to national security. During Trump’s first term, traditionalists relaxed when he tapped retired Marine generals like Jim Mattis (his first defense secretary) and John Kelly (his second White House chief of staff) to top posts. But after they turned on him, citing his authoritarian tendencies, Trump turned on them. He’s not going to enlist such doubters the second time around. We got early clues when he publicly ruled out two seasoned moderates — Mike Pompeo, who served as his secretary of state, and Nikki Haley, who served as his UN ambassador — from any such posts in Trump 2.0.
He’s named loyalists Fox TV host and Army vet Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, and former Republican lawmaker John Ratcliffe to run the CIA. He’s picked Representative Michael Waltz (R-FL), a former Army Green Beret, as national security adviser, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his UN ambassador, and deportation-backer Tom Homan as his border czar. Trump is eyeing Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to serve as secretary of state, and South Dakota GOP Governor Kristi Noem as his homeland security chief. The choices augur Big Changes Ahead.
On the uniformed side, Trump himself tapped General Charles Brown to serve as the Air Force’s top officer in 2020. But Biden promoted him to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. Brown’s push to diversify the nation’s military could place him in Trump’s crosshairs. Both Rubio and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance voted against confirming Brown for the nation’s top military post.
3. PROCUREMENT
Trump has been a cipher when it comes to military procurement. It’s likely to be a crazy ride, as Trump made clear at Madison Square Garden nine days before the election: “We will strengthen and rebuild our military. I rebuilt our military in total.” If those two sentences seem in conflict to you, you aren’t alone. As president, he decried the cost of the Pentagon’s “uncontrollable” arms race with China and Russia. But Trump, following his pledge to cut defense spending, reversed course.
While he created the hardware-heavy U.S. Space Force during his first term — the first new service since the establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947 — he’s a bit of a Joe Sixpack when it comes to buying weapons. He drove the Navy batty when he urged it to stick with steam-powered catapults to launch aircraft from its new carriers instead of shifting to electromagnetic power (the Navy has steamed ahead with the new launchers). He dubiously claimed to drive down the cost of the F-35 fighter, the Pentagon’s most costly program.
If Trump becomes more isolationist, it “could end up bringing major changes in the defense budget and a drastic reduction in force structure,” American Enterprise Institute defense budget pro Todd Harrison said. But the defense industry is betting on business as usual. “The defense budget more reflects the threat environment than any particular administration change, and so we fully expect that again, this time,” Northrop CEO Kathy Warden said October 24. “The national defense strategy has remained consistent over the past several years, in the last couple of administrations, and we believe that’s because it is responsive to the emerging threats around the globe and focused on both deterring and defending.”
Turns out that Trump’s next war might be with the U.S. national-security state itself.