Obama Defense Secretary Issues ‘Urgent’ Nuclear Warning to Trump And Harris

Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary, has warned that America’s armed forces are ill-equipped for the “very real prospect of war between nuclear-armed great powers.”
Gates, who served under both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, has called on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to face up to the “unprecedented peril” posed by China and Russia, aided by North Korea and Iran.
“The current approach to ensuring such superiority in Congress, the White House and the Defense Department cannot meet the international challenges — and peril — facing America and our allies,” Gates wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
Gates argued that current levels of funding for the U.S. military are insufficient.
“Our Army is shrinking, our Navy is decommissioning warships faster than new ones can be built, our Air Force has stagnated in size, and only a fraction of the force is available for combat on any given day,” he wrote.
He cited a February report by the Department of Defense, which said that, in the 14 fiscal years since 2011, the branch “has had only one, on-time, full appropriation.” Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder said that this underfunding, alongside the delayed signing of full-year budgets “undermines our military readiness and jeopardizes critical modernization efforts.”
Despite their otherwise extensive policy differences, both candidates have assured voters that the military will remain well-financed during their administrations.
Though neither have provided specific budgetary proposals, Harris has vowed to ensure that the military “remains the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” while Trump has made “rebuilding America’s depleted military” a key slogan in his campaign.
However, Gates said that these “boasts,” do little beyond demonstrating the “yawning gap between the political rhetoric in Washington about sustaining American military strength and the stark realities on the ground.”
Whoever is elected president in November must be ready to inaugurate the “dramatic change” needed to ensure America’s “long-term military superiority,” Gates continued, and be prepared to put forward budgets that correspond to the level of threat facing the U.S.
“As secretary of defense for both Republican and Democratic presidents, I strongly supported allocating more resources for nonmilitary instruments of power — diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, geoeconomic tools and more,” Gates said. “But it is a fact of life that these instruments are effective only against the backdrop of American military power so compelling that adversaries are deterred from taking up arms against us or our allies.”
In March, the Biden-Harris administration submitted a $849.8 billion defense budget for fiscal year 2025, representing a 4.1 percent increase form 2023’s enacted budget, though this faces threats from the six-month spending bill recently unveiled by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
However, even were this budget enacted, Gates believes this would still be insufficient for the embattled U.S. military.
“Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate,” he wrote. “Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent. The new president must propose and fight for those resources.”
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