BUCHANAN FOR CONGRESS

Peace

No area of policy requires more care, caution, and historical perspective than foreign policy and national defense. Mistakes in this area get people killed.

The main purpose of our foreign and military policy is to protect the independence of our nation and the freedom of its people.

The greatest current threat to our freedom is the United States government, which violates the liberties of its citizens continuously. Spending the blood of our troops and trillions of dollars in far away lands reduces our liberties and increases the very real threats from our government itself. External threats to our freedom are occasional (such as terrorist attacks) or hypothetical (fears that Russia or China seeks world domination).

The Middle East

The "Islamic State" considers itself at war with the United States and has killed Americans. Normally that would be sufficient reason for a decisive war against them. However there are excellent reasons that we should not fight the Islamic State in the way it wants, with U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

Radical Islam is not just in Iraq and Syria, but also in Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, and many other areas. To achieve a clear and decisive victory, as the Allies did in World War 2, we would have to occupy multiple countries covering millions of square miles. We would need to put perhaps ten million American troops in as occupiers, a number reached only through widespread military conscription. We would need to impose military government and impose religious toleration by force, otherwise American forces would be helping intolerant Islamic regimes. We would need to continue this occupation for a long time, perhaps a hundred years or longer, continuously fighting the inevitable resistance. The costs would be perhaps a hundred trillion dollars, but our country would be long bankrupt before that sum was reached. Because radical Islam is much more an idea than a territory, we might still fail.

Many in Congress and our government want to keep fighting indefinitely in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. These war supporters do not deal with the problems of our policies:

• To send supplies for the Afghan war through Pakistan, we paid Pakistan ten billion dollars. They used the money to build Islamic nuclear weapons.
• The Islamic terrorist Taliban in Afghanistan get a significant part of their revenue from protection money paid by U.S. military contractors.
• Large amounts of weapons used by the Islamic State are American weapons taken from the Iraqi Army.
• When we help the Kurds, the most effective fighters against Islamic State, we anger our NATO allies the Turks, who oppose the Kurds.
• When we fight Islamic State, we are allied with Iran, which is also fighting the Islamic State but is also an enemy of Israel.
• We have sold Saudi Arabia, which promotes a fundamentalist version of Islam, one hundred billion dollars in advanced weapons.

The United States should withdraw entirely from the Middle East, including Aghanistan and Iraq. We should stop providing any money or military assistance to any country in the region.

Without United States involvement, the countries in the region still have strong interests in defeating Islamic State, and ample means to do so.

Avoiding Great Power Confrontations

In 1945 atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities. Since then we and other countries have developed arsenals of many thousands of nuclear bombs. Military inventors have also created deadly biological weapons, precision-guided bombs, and killer robots (developed but not yet widely deployed). There have been multiple close calls when World War 3 nearly happened--it would have destroyed much of humanity.

Another war between great nations is not in our interests, not in Russia's interests, and not in China's interests.

The following ten steps can reduce tensions among the great powers and within the broader community of nations:

• Withdraw our troops and weapons from overseas, return military bases to host nations, and stop meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.
• To reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, negotiate with all nuclear weapons states, not just with Russia.
• Cut our own military spending by half, as described below.
• Do not expand NATO to include Georgia or Ukraine.
• Adopt a policy of unilateral free trade rather than lengthy and secretive trade negotiations, which are often influenced by corporate interests.
• Greatly increase and simplify legal immigration into the United States, strengthening human bonds between nations.
• End surveillance and intelligence operations (NSA and CIA) in countries that are not adversaries or possible adversaries.
• Improve worldwide cooperation through the United Nations. With other countries work to reform and improve the UN.
• Keep our commitments to our allies, notably NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. We would be much weaker without our allies.
• Do not create new alliances based on geopolitical concerns about China or other rising powers.

While reduced tensions between the great powers is not guaranteed, these policies improve the possibilities of such cooperation.

Cut Military Spending in Half

If we cut our military spending in half we will still spend more than Russia and China combined.

We also have many more strong allies than those two countries. Our allies include Canada, almost all of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.

Here are ten ways we can cut our military spending (and related national security spending) in half:

• As noted above, end our current wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
• As noted above, withdraw all troops and weapons now overseas, return military bases, and end all military aid to other countries.
• Stop spying on Americans and friendly countries; stop meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Cut the NSA, CIA, and related programs by 75% or more.
• Cut the military's research and development budget by 75%. Defense contractors should pay more of their own R&D costs.
• Emphasize mass production of cheaper weapons rather than producing a handful of new weapons costing hundreds of billions of dollars.
• Make the Army National Guard larger and the permanent Regular Army smaller, perhaps half its present size. When we are not in perpetual wars, the standing army should be a first line of defense and then become the nucleus of a much larger army of mobilized citizen-soldiers in war-time.
• Terminate 50% of the more than 700,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department.
• Terminate 50% of the more than 700,000 additional defense civilian employees who work through contractors.
• For decades the Defense Department has not provided complete or accurate financial data and has not been fully audited by the GAO. Fix it or fire the leaders.
• Do not build any more aircraft carriers. They each cost several billion dollars and can be destroyed by a few advanced cruise missiles.

Note that if we do not make massive cuts in all federal spending, our country will go bankrupt. When Russia went bankrupt in the early 1990s it was unable to pay its military for months, including the officers responsible for nuclear missiles.

Paid for by Martin L. Buchanan