Former Secretary of Defense/General Jim Mattis wrote and released the most important National Defense Strategy we have seen this century in 2018.
BLUF (TLDR, if you don’t know what BLUF means): China and Russia are absolutely our main enemies. Even the peripheral security challenges we face in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan - are only able to confront us, because they are supported by Russia and China. In announcing the release of the NDS at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Secretary Mattis highlighted that 9 of the ten years before 2018 the Pentagon operated on a continuing resolution (CR).[1] Mattis notes it is only by the bravery and commitment of our uniformed troops, that we as a nation have managed to defend ourselves year after year, while Congress refuses to do their responsibility and pass defense budgets in regular order.
Mattis notes just a few of the consequences of continuing resolutions: “Ships will not receive required maintenance, aircraft remain on the ground, eventually ammunition, training and power will not be sufficient to deter war.”
One of the most interesting insights Mattis makes is that while China and Russia (in that order) are our primary current and future threats, we must compete globally to confront and defend against them to defend our interests. Latin America, Europe, the Indo-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa are all stages of battle between the United States, our allies and the authoritarians of our age.
Bringing the Mattis/Trump 2018 National Defense Strategy up to 2026, it ages quite well. Unfortunately, we have not resolved the underlying challenge of a lack of predictable, reliable Pentagon budgets that would enable year-over-year planning to support the most crucial long-term programs and defense contracts to modernize our capabilities.
It is tempting to assume there really is no bipartisan solution in 2026 to our nation’s security challenges. This is lazy thinking.
A striking group of bipartisan leaders in the Senate and Pentagon from both parties have proposed a simple, elegant bipartisan solution to ensure our nation’s troops have the equipment, platforms and capabilities to prevent war, and defeat our enemies if war comes to us.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who was also quite frustrated with the lack of predictability in defense budgets – recommended Congress and the White House pass a law requiring the U.S. to spend no less than five percent of our GDP on the Pentagon. If this number strikes you as large, consider for a moment the 13.6% of GDP we spent during World War I and the 35.8% we spent on the military during World War II. He was not alone, the late Senator John McCain, one of our nation’s greatest war heroes, also supported the 5% benchmark, as did SECDEF Gates.
I have heard from colleagues on both sides of this issue. Republicans highlight the anemic defense budgets beginning with the so called “peace dividend” under President Clinton and continuing up until today. Democrats are quick to note the failures of the Army’s counter-insurgency doctrine – at least with respect to its ability to generate a lasting peace in the nations we invaded following 9/11. In fact, nothing short of total war (fought against Germany and Japan) has effectively ended a war – up until the present – by the United States. That issue alone raises some truly difficult strategic questions; I will address later this week. With respect to the defense budget – it is important to note the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan was largely funded by supplementary defense budgets. As we look at what our nation needs now and will need moving forward, it’s important to evaluate our needs against Russia and China, which most likely would not be counter-insurgency fights.
I also hear from Democrats that we as a nation cannot put the military “ahead” of domestic spending. This sounds persuasive only if you do not know there are evil autocrats who would do anything to destroy the United States, our allies and all signs of liberty in a heartbeat if and when they can.
To put a sharper point on it – pause for a moment and think about that. How well would you sleep if you knew your neighbors were plotting 24/7 to burn your house down to kill you and your family. That is the reality facing our Republic and all democracies around the globe. Russia and China spend billions of dollars a year to weaken, harm and divide our nation. When I talk to Gen X and Gen Z colleagues – there is an optimism and confidence in the United States military and intelligence capabilities that is, in my assessment wildly optimistic. Nearly three decades of Hollywood movies and streaming TV series showing our country as truly invulnerable, may have been created with good intent – but we must all remember what we see on TV is not, in fact reality.
To remind the younger generation of what we are up against, I have found it useful to ask a simple question: “if you had to, how many guys do you think you could defeat in an unexpected street fight, if you were being mugged or attacked?” The truly optimistic guys (usually who are law enforcement, active duty or veteran) will say they could handle two guys – three guys on their best day, or if they had a weapon and the attacking men did not. I remind these guys that China currently has approximately 1.4 billion people. The United States currently has between 343-349 million citizens. I note that our future demographics, which have been almost consistently promising since World War II, are now in the red – meaning our population is growing smaller day after day. This is not just an issue of keeping social security funded (something we should all want), it is also an issue when it comes to manning, training and equipping an active duty and reserve military force capable of defeating China and Russia in an open war. China currently has four citizens for every one of ours. As military planners often note, “quantity has a quality all its own.”
So, returning to the issue of the defense budget. I often remind Democratic colleagues, skeptical of the military, that no one will get food stamps, healthcare, social security or student loans if China and Russia annihilate all of us first. If you think this is simply not possible, go back and listen to the public speeches of our nation’s elected Presidents from the second President Bush to the present. Unless you think you know what threatens our nation, better than our elected presidents – than I suggest we all admit, with a degree of humility – that we simply do not know all the threats seeking to destroy us every day.
There is a common suggestion by Republicans that we should spend 5% or more on defense, because NATO requires it. This also sounds persuasive but is not entirely accurate. Looking back historically, Article 3 of the original NATO charter (signed following World War II) did not require a specific percentage expenditure. It simply required member nations to maintain and develop their individual/collective capacity to resist attacks through “continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid.”[2] Up until as late as 2006, the informal requirement between NATO members was that each nation would spend no less than 2% on defense capabilities. In 2014 at the Wales Summit, the 2% GDP requirement was formalized.
In 2025, following decades of pressure from President Obama, President Trump, President Biden and now President Trump again, NATO agreed at the Hague Summit in June 2025 that each NATO nation would invest 5% of GDP by 2035. An important distinction is too often missed here. The actual requirement from the Hague Summit is only for 3.5% of GDP on “core defense activities.”[3] These capabilities include spending on uniformed troops, hardware, platforms, weapons development and readiness. Up to 1.5% of GDP can be allocated to cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, energy independence, veterans and expanding the defense industrial base.
As we look ahead, the White House has requested Congress provide an additional 500 billion dollars to the Pentagon, yet Congress has less than 30 days to approve that request, due to the congressional calendar.
Americans may hear 500 billion dollars or half a trillion, and think to themselves (as I often do), we can’t even imagine or consider having half a trillion dollars, much less evaluate whether the Pentagon needs it. In short, I don’t blame Americans who look at their monthly budget, current inflation, high food costs, and expensive health insurance and simply conclude: “I know I don’t have enough, so why should I/we give the Pentagon another half trillion dollars?”
Let’s pause and put that in perspective. Americans have been trained (and are reminded constantly) just how poor and broke we as a people are. Fox News often runs a ticker tape on their screen listing the national debt – particularly when we have Democratic Presidents. CNN and MSNBC chip into our poverty mindset by reminding Americans of corruption, greedy billionaires and trillionaires, and by highlighting graft among our political elite. But when Americans are informed that our total GDP is $31.76 trillion dollars and pull out a calculator, you will find five hundred billion dollars is 1,57% of our GDP in 2026.
I do not know as much about our nation’s debt as I would like to. Put simply, I don’t know (nor am I confident I could find out, even by spending months or years studying the problem) what we need to do to balance our books.
From a simple sense of fairness, it would seem the first place to start, to get out of debt, would be to enforce the existing tax code. Some think tanks claim that if the Fortune 500 paid the amount they owe, we would be on the right path to end our national debt.
However, there are conservatives who highlight studies showing corporations will pay up to 14.5% of their profit on federal and local taxes (combined) before they start investing millions and billions on avoiding paying taxes completely. If these studies are to be believed (I’m not an economist, though I did study corporate social responsibility with Duke Law in 2005), then there is a strong argument for Congress being pragmatic in their approach and lowering the corporate tax rate to accommodate this reality. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which is essentially the think tank for the G20, has run these studies in over a hundred countries and confirmed the 14-15% tax theory for corporations.[4]
So, whether you love or hate corporations politically (for those who hate them, I highly recommend “the wealth of nations,” by Adam Smith) I would simply like to remind them, that whatever the tax rate in the U.S., your company and shareholders stand to make more money in the next 100 years if there are still democracies to live in. I don’t think it’s an overstatement when intellectuals observe that the viability of the United States and democracy writ-large may very well depend on the decision of CEOs and corporate boards rather than our elected leaders.
Democracies, it turns out, are great for capitalism and corporations. As my friends on Wall Street frequently tell me: shareholders will never be okay with a CEO paying the IRS, when he could save even one dollar by paying an army of lawyers to avoid paying them entirely. That is simply not a problem Congress can solve. At a certain point, we will all be relying on CEOs and corporate boards’ long-term strategic sense of self-preservation, to ensure we as a nation have the funds we need to continue. I find it unlikely Putin or Xi will carve out any exceptions for capitalist companies to find refuge in their authoritarian states.
Returning to the issue of the defense budget – which I know a little more about: trusted leaders from both parties support (or have supported) Congress and the White House writing a bill that will mandate the United States spend a minimum of 5% of our GDP annually on the military. This would have multiple benefits, not just more resources, it would remove national security funding and paying the troops, as a political issue.
Both DSD Hicks and Gates say the biggest problem at the Pentagon, is simple: they can’t budget for the long term because Congress won’t give them a stable, future year budget. So, when a defense company comes to them and says we can defeat (insert whiz bang weapon from China or Russia), but it will take 3-5 years of funding up front, the Pentagon almost always has to tell OSD to say, “no, we can’t afford it.”
This has at least three terrible downstream effects. First, since we are falling behind on some future capabilities, the combatant commands are reportedly facing threats they are not certain they will be able to defeat. So, naturally they send in urgent requests for stop-gap measures and technologies to ensure they can accomplish their assigned mission-sets.
This sounds fine in a vacuum, but year over year, this drains the resources the Pentagon has available. It’s like buying a 5-billion-dollar fire suppressor instead of installing sprinklers in a building. The solution may work but it does not solve the underlying problem. And if/when the temporary or stop-gap solution is funded, there is less available to go toward long term, sustainable solutions. Second, to make matters worse, with inflation, the cost of the permanent solution goes up year after year, and the actual platform or capability system gets more expensive because our enemies capabilities keep advancing. Third, while Congress does permit defense re-appropriation for urgent needs – this is not the type of disciplined practice that lends itself to us outmatching China and Russia’s most advanced and emerging capabilities.
So, in short there is likely no easy solution to ensuring the Pentagon and our troops receive the budget they need to keep all of us safe for decades ahead. Yet, it is politically feasible and entirely rational to prioritize our collective national and economic security by passing a bipartisan bill requiring we pay no less than 5% of our GDP on national defense.
If Congress finds the courage to tackle this project, I will note one last, crucial detail. According to RAND’s extensive research – we must break the concept of the “exquisite platform” cost. Massively expensive highly sophisticated platforms like the Navy’s aircraft carriers and the Air Force’s most advanced fighters rely on a highly questionable assumption: “quality over quantity will win the day.” I encourage Congress and our nation’s defense strategists to read RAND’s reports on how investment in the gray zone (Special Operations Forces, intelligence operations and cyber operations) outperform conventional investments in threat modeling. Risking a $13 billion dollar aircraft carrier, when a cyber/SOF or intel operation could have done the job simply does not make sense.[5][6] As more than one strategic observer has noted, neither the Navy, Air Force or Army have thoughtfully addressed how they would get the needed number of troops into theater against Russia and China. Fortunately, the United States Marine Corps and Special Operations Command have.[7]
[2] See “NATO Burden Sharing and Defence Spending,” from Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security available here: https://icds.ee/en/nato-burden-sharing-and-defence-spending/
[3] See: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, article available here: https://www.sipri.org/commentary/essay/2025/natos-new-spending-target-challenges-and-risks-associated-political-signal
[5] See: “The Role of Information in U.S. concepts for strategic competition,” https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1256-1.html, and “Strategic Disruption by Special Operations Forces for Proactive Campaigning Short of Traditional War,”https://www.rand.org/topics/special-operations-forces.html, see also CSIS Findings from the Commision on Cyber Force Generation, video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZryLqvDr7iE.
[6] See: “At What Cost a Carrier?” by CAPT/Dr. Henry Hendrix/CNAS, available here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA575866.pdf, and CAPT Hendrix related report “Retreat from Range, the Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation,” available here: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/retreat-from-range-the-rise-and-fall-of-carrier-aviation#:~:text=Jerry%20Hendrix%20argues%20that%20aircraft,counterattacks%20to%20put%20into%20battle.. , and Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “Deploying Beyond their Means, America’s Navy and Marine Corps at a Tipping Point,” available here: https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CSBA6174_%28Deploying_Beyond_Their_Means%29Final2-web.pdf, and former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman’s article in the Naval War College Review, “Aircraft Carriers-Missions, Survivability, Size, Cost, Numbers,” available here: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss4/4/.
[7] See: U.S. Naval Institute, “Three MEFs Won’t be Enough,” available here: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/april/three-mefs-wont-be-enough and the 2024 Commission on the National Defense Strategy, available here: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf, and the Irregular Warfare Center’s most recent magazine, available here: https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-VOL11-NO2-PRISM.pdf and finally the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, article titled “Proficient at Irregular Warfare? Time to emphasize ‘Method of Instruction’ in the U.S. Army Special Forces Regiment,” by Dr. Daniel W. Ross, available here: https://www.swcs.mil/Special-Warfare-Journal/Article/4446415/proficient-at-irregular-warfare-time-to-emphasize-method-of-instruction-in-the/