By Daniel DePetris
It’s May 28, and the Biden administration is scheduled to release more details about its spending requests to Congress. Foremost among the list of items is the defense budget, which is set to compose roughly 50 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending in fiscal 2022. President Joe Biden’s $753 billion defense spending request, including $715 billion for the Pentagon, represents a nearly 1.7 percent increase from the previous year. Senior Defense Department officials have made it clear that a large portion of the defense budget will be devoted to great power competition, principally on countering China’s growing military capabilities.
Like most defense budgets at the time of release, the White House is sure to receive a significant amount of pushback from lawmakers who believe a 1.7 percent hike is too small. Others, including dozens of progressives in the House, oppose the budget request due to its overzealous size and are advocating for a $50 billion decrease. But as important as these concerns are, the debate over the U.S. defense budget is not simply a battle over dollars and cents. Focusing exclusively on the numbers to the exclusion of strategy is akin to missing the forest for the trees.
Budget season is the perfect opportunity for the stakeholders in Washington to review U.S. grand strategy as a whole — what the United States seeks to achieve, which missions it should eliminate or pass onto allies and partners, and whether the U.S. force posture as it now exists is actually serving core U.S. security interests.
This piece was originally published in Defense News on May 28, 2021. Read more HERE.