“We have a defense budget that is disconnected from a coherent grand strategy,” says Dan Caldwell, a public policy adviser at Defense Priorities, a nonprofit that advocates a more restrained military policy. “A lot of policymakers and a lot of individuals in the national security think tank community think that a topline spending number—whether it’s a total spending number or a percentage of GDP—they think that in and of itself is a strategy.”
“Every problem with our defense budget ultimately flows from the fact that we are trying to pursue an American grand strategy of primacy in a world where we are facing increasing constraints,” says Caldwell. “That ultimately leads us to try and build weapon systems like the [littoral combat ship] that try to either do too much or too little and are not suited to the real threats that we face.”
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