THE budget plan Donald Trump will send to Congress, proposing to boost defence spending by $54bn next year, is less transformative than the president appears to believe. As John McCain, the chairman of the Senate armed services committee, swiftly pointed out, the 10% increase is about $19bn more than forecast by the outgoing Obama administration (out of a total annual spend of close to $600bn). It would not provide anything like enough money for the 350-ship navy, additional fighter planes and extra troops for both the army and the marines that Mr Trump has called for. And it would certainly not pay for the new nuclear arms race that the president has also suggested he favours.
Mr Trump wants to slash spending on soft power. Cuts to the State Department’s budget and foreign-aid programmes would reduce America’s influence in the world and undermine the civil side of stabilisation missions—for example, the rebuilding of Mosul after Islamic State has been kicked out—against the advice of some of his own cabinet. The defence secretary, James Mattis, while giving testimony to Congress in 2013 when he was running Central Command, warned: “If you...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2lZaiCL
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