National Defense Political Perspective

“President Obama has, conveniently, rewritten the standard of military strategy to conform to his defense-budget-cutting desires”(Bucci, 1). This quote shows how someone can manipulate the budget to make people think it is going to be for the better, but there are always two sides to a story. The defense budget cuts are causing the military a plethora of stresses because it’s taking away some training programs, benefits from soldiers, and even making America look tenuous.

The discourse surrounding an appropriate defence policy in Australia has been an intense debate, extending back to the beginning of the 20th century. Stemming from the Creswell-Foster divide has emerged two sides, the state centric, geostrategic concept of the ‘Defence of Australia’ and the alliance-centric concept of the ‘Security Based Defence’. As well as these policy approaches is the state coercive notion of ‘puritive deterrence’.

National Defense Education Act (NDEA), U.S. federal legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 2, 1958, that provided funding to improve American schools and to promote postsecondary education. The main goal of the legislation was to enable the country’s educational system to meet the demands posed by national security needs. Of particular concern was bolstering the United States’ ability to compete with the Soviet Union in the areas of science and technology.

Since the attacks a number of civil defense programs have been initiated, which leads to more departments asking for an allowance within the national budget. This ultimately is leading to a larger and larger deficit that is quickly encompassing full percentage points of our GDP. There is a debate on how much defense

Something that I vehemently disagree on with both political parties is defense spending. In their platforms, both parties seem to favor an increase in funding, even if it is a bit more discretely worded under the Democratic Party’s platform. In my view, we allocate too much of our country’s resources to the military, and neglect many of its other needs in doing so. The United States military is by far and away the most puissant armed organization in the world. Here are some figures that help illustrate just how pragmatic that last statement is. In the 2015 fiscal year we spent 598 billion dollars on the military; that’s over fifty percent of the federal government’s discretionary spending.(1) In 2016, only 19 of 194 nations had a higher GDP than America’s defense budget; that means that the U.S. spends more money per year on its military than the total value of all goods produced and services provided in a country in a year in 90 percent of the world’s nations.(2) According to 2016 statistics the U.S. spends more on its defense than the next eight countries combined.(3) That same year, China was second with a 215 billion dollar defense budget and Russia was third at approximately 69 billion.

Throughout the course of history, the United States has remained consistent with its national interest by taking many different actions in foreign policy. There have been both immediate and long term results of these actions. Foreign policy is the United States policy that defines how we deal with other countries economically and politically. It is made by congress, the president, and the people. Some of the motivations for United States foreign policy are national security, economics, and idealism. The United States entry into World War I in 1917 and the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the both had great impact on the United States.

Public opinion on the military budget has been divided for years. Surveys have previously shown a large number of Americans believing the nation spends too much on the military, others seem to be happy with the current levels of military spending and a small number saying they think the government spends too little. Now that spending has been cut, the public is more divided on the issue than it has been in decades. This makes the issue of military spending a particularly hot-button issue for the newly elected Republican

Hanson’s 2012 premise, albeit over two years old today, is immediately discernible: America faces devastating self-inflicted wounds by implementing the current Administration’s defense spending budget. The dawn of 2014 finds this debate ongoing and the implementation of this budget well in progress, with even more drastic cuts taking effect than the ones analyzed by Hanson previously. While few historians of repute would argue against the reality that the siren song of defense reductions has lured the nation onto the shoals of unpreparedness for future conflict many times in the past, two shortcomings in Hanson’s piece beckon us to pause and reexamine.

Senator Joe Donnelly, a democrat from Indiana, has been at the forefront for the fight to pass these policies: he also wrote them. He had one son commit suicide and another killed by a bomb while in Iraq. His latest crusade is a three-pronged “Service Member and Veterans Mental Health Care Package” to add to the National Defense Authorization Act. It passed right after Thanksgiving after a passionate speech from the Senator and focuses on the continuum of care for service members and veterans.

Lastly, the federal government should consider cutting budgets on the military. There are US troops in 130 countries and there are those who don’t need defending at the time. Then also there are weapons that are not being used in current missions so they are going to waste. The Pentagon should watch its overruns on how much its spending as

The National Defense Authorization Act, also known as NDAA, is a federal law established in the United States that manages and specifies the budgets and expenses of the United States Department of Defense. On December 31, 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. This bill will address the United States’ national security programs, combat terrorism, it will increase the pay and health care to our service men and women. The dark side of this bill lies in the sections 1021-1022. This section of the bill states that any individual, including American citizen that is suspected of terrorism will be incarcerated in an undisclosed location without any trial or court hearing by the U.S. military. This bill caused the Hedges v. Obama lawsuit in 2013. This lawsuit, which was filed by Christopher Hedges, a New York Times reporter, challenged

Republicans argue for increased spending while democrats vote for decreased spending. Both parties agree for a strong, however, they disagree on how money should be spent within the military. Republicans want to increase spending on technological advancement and combat readiness to be prepared for the “unrest in the Middle East and nuclear weapons in North Korea.” The democratic party supports spending in areas such as military pay, reform of the military retirement system, health care, as well as childcare rather than technology and combat readiness. Also, republicans propose to add 100,000 troops to each of the forces, but democrats oppose by wanting to cut each military force by

They believe that in the wake of war a military spending budget is the most useful tool. The Republicans also believe that cuts in the budget causes the personnel to have low morale, and lowers the ability of the military to prepare for problems. Public opinion on the military spending is very divided. Thirty seven percent of the nation believes that military spending should be decreased, while twenty percent say it should be increased. Trent Franks once said, “Of all government expenditures, defense spending is the... most stimulative to the

It can be argued that the arms build was done intentionally to further weaken the USSR’s economy. Reagan also firmly believed in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), ground based and space based weapons system implemented to protect the United States and other nations from a strategic attack from ballistic missiles. Reagan pushed that SDI was to be used as a defensive system only and hoped that its implementation would help to stop MAD. The Soviets saw the SDI as a blatant aggression on the part of the United States and feared that it would be used in a preemptive strike.

By breaking down the two key words, security and defense, you find how each of these items are married together. Security and defense are to very similar words, one you are securing a given item and the other you are defending. So, wouldn’t you think that homeland defense and homeland security would be the same? You would, but they are not. Homeland defense is the of its self is the infrastructure used to defend us against any sort of external threat. Whereas Homeland Security is the strategy that is used with to combat these sort of things. It goes without saying that the primary mission of homeland security and defense, is to protect the citizens of the United States of America. Within the mission is the tasks, and each individual department has its own specific task. Now, with the specific task comes specific duties, responsibilities, and operations. From personal experience, most operations of within the homeland security/defense real are in some way, shape, or form joint operations. Now each individual knows their specific tasks, duty, and responsibility. Take for example the current situation in New York City and Elizabeth, New Jersey, you have on the ground investigating, the local law enforcement agencies, the ATF, the FBI, and Homeland Security agents. Each agency has their own job and their own input on what needs to be done while on scene. Here is simple breakdown of those task, the local law enforcement agents are first own the scene. They are going to