WASHINGTON – Potential 2016 presidential candidates are using hawkish terms when it comes to Russia and the Islamic State. But while some are banging the drums of war, few are calling for larger annual U.S. defense budgets.
Vice President Joe Biden, a potential White House aspirant, last week vowed to fight the violent Sunni group “to the gates of Hell.” The man Biden and others might seek to replace, President Obama, told the Islamic State “we will not be intimidated.”
Possible presidential candidates of all stripes are using hawkish rhetoric against the Islamic State after it captured territory in Iraq and began beheading American journalists. From the interventionists to the isolationists, the candidates agree Washington must take the fight to the Sunni group before it strikes the homeland.
Many also are talking tougher than the sitting commander in chief on countering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.
Inside the U.S. defense sector, there is a sense that combating the Islamic State and standing up to Moscow could not be accomplished with nearly $650 billion in unclassified annual baseline and war funds.
“How big should the budget be because of these new threats?” one defense lobbyist with ties to Republican lawmakers said, repeating a question posed by Defense News. “They can’t get big enough at this point. The operations the administration is talking about could take years to accomplish. The military can’t take that out of hide.”
Yet there also seems to be agreement on another matter: For now, these new threats don’t warrant voiding sequestration nor turning back on the post-9/11 defense-spending spigot.
“The only people calling for increased defense are the people who have always called for increases to defense spending. There’s nothing new here yet,” said Gordon Adams, who ran national defense budgeting for the Clinton administration.
“I don’t see a lot of people who surprise me saying, ‘It’s time to break the [2011] fiscal deal’,” said Adams, now at American University. “And I certainly don’t see anyone calling for increases to defense who is even remotely considered a candidate for president of the United States.”
But longtime Washington defense and political observers say that soon will change. That’s because analysts, consultants, pundits and academics now calling for a return to big defense budget hikes will begin linking up with presidential campaigns over the next 12 months.
“That’s as predictable as the night and the day,” Adams said. “Clearly sometime next year, and it might even start a bit early, late this year.”
When candidates do begin officially jumping in the race and laying out in-depth policy and budget plans, all eyes will be on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She not only is the early frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, but also to become the next commander in chief.
Ask any national security expert to describe Clinton’s likely campaign-trail rhetoric on foreign policy and — no matter their political affiliation or philosophy — they use one term: “Hawk.”
Clinton recently let everyone know that she already is thinking about how she, as commander in chief, would combat the violent Sunni group.
“One of the reasons why I worry about what’s happening in the Middle East right now is because of the breakout capacity of jihadist groups that can affect Europe, can affect the United States,” Clinton told The Atlantic last month.
“Jihadist groups are governing territory. They will never stay there, though. They are driven to expand. Their raison d’etre is to be against the West, against the crusaders, against the fill-in-the-blank — and we all fit into one of these categories. How do we try to contain that? I’m thinking a lot about containment, deterrence and defeat.”
The former secretary of state has laid out that broad strategy. But Defense News could find no record of Clinton saying new threats like the Islamic State, nor old ones like Russia, demand a new era of massive increases in annual Pentagon budgets.
And the same is true of both her potential Democratic primary challengers Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is expected to — should she get into the race — run as the dovish and liberal alternative to Clinton.
Adams expects Clinton will be a “hawkish Democratic candidate,” but not a “big-spending one on defense.” He predicts she will talk about getting rid of the defense part of sequestration — but also about voiding the domestic part to “keep her party together.”
On the Republican side, experts except so-called establishment Republicans such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — should they enter the race — to call for an end to the automatic cuts and a return to military spending increases.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, experts said, likely would strike a broader theme of federal fiscal responsibility as he emphasizes his past stewardship of the Office of Management and Budget.
Clinton vs. Paul
Then there is the early Republican frontrunner, the tea party’s Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“I think Paul sees that he is having success running as a libertarian candidate,” Adams said. “So I think he will try and waltz in a general way to still attract Republican primary voters while still not calling for more [defense spending].”
Inside establishment, pro-defense GOP circles in Washington, however, there is growing angst about Paul as the party’s 2016 nominee.
“Paul is going to be our nominee. And it’s going to be a disaster,” said one Republican defense source and a former Senate aide. “He’s going to gut defense spending worse than Obama has, and he’s going to be less involved around the world — and nothing good will come of any of that. I’m telling you now: A disaster.”
That has some GOP defense insiders shaking their heads and declaring Clinton their preferred candidate — at least on national security and foreign policy.
“She gets it,” the Republican source said. “Hillary gets what’s happening to the military because of sequestration. And she gets that the United States can’t sit back and hope for the best.”
The defense sector wants the sequester cuts to be a 2016 campaign issue. But experts said it could be tough to make the defense cuts a front-burner, national issue that voters care about.
“Sequestration is a tough political issue because few voters understand what the word means or the details of how it has been implemented,” said Loren Thompson, Lexington Institute COO and a defense-sector consultant. “So to the extent it is discussed on the campaign trail, the process will be simplified using code words like ‘reining in government waste.’
“The paradox is that the electorate seems to support President Obama’s positions on both sequestration and overseas conflicts,” Thompson said, “but it doesn’t seem to like the results.”
For candidates, that creates few incentives to talk in more than generalities about national security and foreign policy issues. Why? Because, as Thompson notes, “Obama’s popularity is suffering for giving voters what they wanted.”
Email: jbennett@defensenews.com.
