Section 2: The Common Defense Rebuttal

Rebuttal to Section 2 of Project 2025: The Common Defense

In Section 2 of Project 2025, titled The Common Defense, the authors advocate for a reshaping of U.S. military and defense policies, emphasizing the need to rebuild military strength and ensure national security. While the section claims to promote a robust defense strategy, it actually lays out a framework for increasing militarization, reducing oversight, and prioritizing defense spending at the expense of diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. The vision it presents risks undermining global stability, straining resources that could be better used for domestic priorities, and fueling a dangerous cycle of perpetual military intervention.

A Militarized Vision of National Security

Project 2025 calls for a significant buildup of military forces, with an emphasis on increasing defense spending and modernizing the armed forces. While maintaining a strong national defense is essential, the project’s approach places excessive emphasis on military solutions to global problems, rather than a balanced strategy that includes diplomacy, international cooperation, and conflict prevention.

This aggressive posture ignores the fact that many of the security challenges facing the United States today—such as cyberattacks, climate change, and global pandemics—cannot be addressed solely through military might. The world’s most pressing threats are often complex and require multifaceted approaches that include diplomacy, international collaboration, and soft power. By focusing disproportionately on military strength, Project 2025 risks neglecting these critical aspects of national security, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to non-traditional threats that cannot be solved with force alone.

Furthermore, this militarized vision promotes an arms race mentality that could escalate tensions with other global powers, particularly China and Russia. By prioritizing defense spending over diplomatic engagement, Project 2025 would increase the likelihood of conflict, rather than reducing it. The focus on expanding military capabilities sends a message to the world that the U.S. is more interested in asserting dominance than in fostering peace and stability.

Expanding Military Spending at the Expense of Domestic Priorities

One of the most glaring flaws in The Common Defense is its call for massive increases in defense spending, which would divert resources away from critical domestic programs like healthcare, education, and infrastructure. While the project insists that such spending is necessary to maintain global leadership, it ignores the significant opportunity costs that come with diverting taxpayer dollars toward military expansion.

At a time when millions of Americans are struggling to access affordable healthcare, pay off student loans, and secure stable employment, increasing defense spending should not be a top priority. The U.S. already spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined, and many of these funds are used inefficiently on outdated weapons systems and bloated defense contracts. Rather than increasing defense spending, the U.S. should focus on reprioritizing its budget to address the needs of its citizens and invest in programs that improve the overall quality of life.

The emphasis on defense spending also risks creating an economy overly dependent on the military-industrial complex. This reliance distorts national priorities, encouraging endless cycles of military intervention abroad to justify continued high levels of defense spending. Instead of promoting long-term peace and stability, this approach incentivizes conflict and perpetual military engagement, which ultimately harms both U.S. troops and the civilian populations affected by these interventions.

Neglecting Diplomacy and International Cooperation

A major shortcoming of Project 2025 is its failure to adequately address the role of diplomacy and international cooperation in maintaining national security. While it promotes an increase in military capabilities, it offers little in the way of concrete strategies for engaging with allies, strengthening international institutions, or promoting peace through diplomatic channels. In fact, the project often views diplomacy as secondary to military strength, underestimating the critical role that soft power and global partnerships play in preventing conflict and addressing global challenges.

Diplomacy is one of the most effective tools for maintaining peace and resolving disputes without resorting to military intervention. By prioritizing military solutions over diplomatic engagement, Project 2025 risks alienating U.S. allies, undermining international cooperation, and making it more difficult to address global issues that require collective action, such as climate change, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation.

Additionally, the project’s militarized approach overlooks the importance of addressing the root causes of conflict, such as poverty, inequality, and lack of access to education. Military force can provide short-term solutions, but it rarely resolves the underlying issues that fuel instability and extremism. A more balanced approach to national security would include investments in diplomacy, development aid, and international cooperation to address these root causes and prevent conflicts from arising in the first place.

Perpetuating Endless Military Interventions

Project 2025 advocates for an aggressive foreign policy that could lead to an increase in U.S. military interventions around the world. The project emphasizes maintaining a global military presence, asserting U.S. dominance, and taking preemptive action against perceived threats. This hawkish approach risks entangling the U.S. in conflicts that are not in its national interest, continuing a pattern of costly and ineffective military interventions that have defined recent decades.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the limitations of military intervention as a means of achieving lasting peace and stability. These conflicts resulted in significant loss of life, drained U.S. resources, and ultimately failed to create stable, democratic governments in the regions. Yet, Project 2025 seems to ignore these lessons, instead advocating for a continued reliance on military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.

Moreover, this approach overlooks the toll that perpetual war takes on U.S. troops and their families. Prolonged military engagements strain military personnel, leading to higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, and physical injury. The cost of endless war is not only financial but human, and Project 2025’s disregard for these consequences is deeply troubling.

Ignoring New Threats: Cybersecurity and Climate Change

Project 2025 also fails to adequately address the emerging security threats of the 21st century, such as cybersecurity and climate change. While the section focuses heavily on traditional military threats, it overlooks the fact that modern security challenges often transcend borders and cannot be solved through military might alone.

Cyberattacks, for example, pose a significant threat to national security, yet Project 2025 offers little in the way of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. As critical infrastructure, government systems, and private sector data become increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats, a robust cybersecurity plan is essential to protecting national security. Military spending alone will not address these challenges, and Project 2025’s failure to prioritize this area leaves the U.S. at risk.

Similarly, climate change is one of the greatest security threats of our time, contributing to resource scarcity, forced migration, and increased conflict over dwindling resources. Yet, Project 2025 largely ignores the security implications of climate change, focusing instead on outdated concepts of defense. Addressing climate change requires global cooperation, investment in renewable energy, and adaptation strategies that mitigate its impacts on vulnerable populations—all areas that are neglected in this section.

Conclusion: A Militarized, Unbalanced Approach to Security

Section 2 of Project 2025, The Common Defense, presents a misguided and dangerous vision for U.S. national security. By emphasizing military solutions, increasing defense spending at the expense of domestic needs, and neglecting diplomacy and global cooperation, the project proposes a strategy that could lead to more conflict, not less. The failure to address emerging threats like cybersecurity and climate change further demonstrates the outdated and shortsighted nature of this approach.

Rather than pursuing a militarized vision of national security, the U.S. must adopt a balanced strategy that prioritizes diplomacy, addresses root causes of conflict, and responds to modern security challenges. Only by moving away from perpetual military intervention and embracing global cooperation can the U.S. ensure long-term peace and security, both at home and abroad.