In the first Republican debate held Thursday night, candidates agreed that the military is in need of a boost after being “weakened” by eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
For the most part, however, specifics on how each candidate would strengthen the services remain elusive.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would increase the number of troops in the Army and Marine Corps while growing the fleets of the Navy and Air Force. Christie was one of the 10 candidates chosen by Fox News to participate in a primetime debate held in Cleveland, Ohio. The cable news network used polling data to trim the long list of 17 candidates campaigning for president to the top 10.
“I’ve put up a really specific plan: No less than 500,000 active-duty soldiers in the Army, no less than 185,000 active duty Marines in the Marine Corps, bring us to a 350-ship Navy again,” Christie said.
Currently, the Army numbers about 490,000 active-duty soldiers, but leaders plan to reduce force structure to 450,000 troops. The Marine Corps’ current active duty troop level is around 184,000. The Navy has 273 ships but plans to grow its fleet to 308 by the early 2020s.
Christie would also fund the Ohio-class replacement submarine, the service’s top acquisition priority, and have 2,600 Air Force aircraft ready for operations at all times. “Those are the kinds of things that are going to send a clear message around the world. Those are the kinds of things we need to start working on immediately to make our country stronger,” he said.
Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with little political experience, said the Budget Control Act was “cutting the heart” out of the military’s force structure.
“We have weakened ourselves militarily to such an extent that it affects all of our military policies. Our Navy is at its smallest size since 1917, our Air Force since 1940,” he said. “In recent testimony, the commandant of the Marine Corps said half of the non-deployed units were not ready.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee lamented the age of older platforms still in use by the services.
“We’re flying B-52s. The most recent one that was put in service was November of 1962,” he said. “A lot of the B-52s we’re flying —we only have 44 that are in service combat ready—and the fact is most of them are older than me, and that’s pretty scary.”
In order to convey strength to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said he would send weapons to Ukraine and work with NATO to deploy forces on the eastern borders of Poland and the Baltic nations. He would also reinstate the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Carson said the situation in Ukraine showed how the United States had turned its back on its allies and partners.
“Ukraine was a nuclear armed state. They gave away their nuclear arms with the understanding that we would protect them,” he said. “We won’t even give them defensive weapons.”
Front-runner Donald Trump offered little in the way of concrete defense policy, but came out swinging against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
“We don’t get anything. We’re giving them $150 billion plus,” he said. “If Iran was a stock, you folks should go out and buy it right now, because you’ll quadruple it. What’s happened in Iran: disgrace. It’s going to lead to destruction in large portions of the world.”
Trump added that this was not the first time Obama had shown weakness in negotiations with U.S. adversaries. Obama’s trade of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured as a prisoner of war, also showcase the president’s weakness, he said.
In the earlier “Happy Hour Debate” with the seven lowest-polling candidates, Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) repeated his plan to put troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State and keep them there as long as it takes to defeat it.
“America has to be part of a regional ground force that will go into Syria and destroy ISIL in Syria,” he said. “According to the generals that I know and trust, this air campaign will not destroy ISIL.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and, in the earlier debate, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, said the United States would not be able to defeat the Islamic State unless the president was willing to call its members “radical Islamic terrorists.”
Cruz also criticized Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey’s comments on the Islamic State. Dempsey has been a staunch defender of the Obama administration’s counter-ISIL strategy, which comprises multiple lines of effort, including military, humanitarian and diplomatic responses.
“When I asked Gen. Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs what would be required militarily to destroy ISIS, he said there is no military solution; we need to change the conditions on the ground so young men are not in poverty and susceptible to radicalization. That, with all due respect, is nonsense,” Cruz said. “What was need is a commander in chief that makes clear if you join ISIS, if you wage jihad on American, then you are signing your death warrant.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said that the U.S. invasion into Iraq was a mistake, but that servicemembers that lost their lives did not do so in vain.
“Barack Obama became president and he abandoned Iraq,” he said. “ISIS was created because of the void that we left, and that void now exists as a caliphate the size of Indiana. To honor the people that died, we need to stop the Iran agreement…and we need to take out ISIS with every tool at our disposal.”
Cyber security was also a major topic of discussion among the candidates.
In the earlier debate, Carly Fiorina, who was CEO of Hewlett-Packard [HP] from 1999 to 2005, said she would compel companies like Google [GOOG] and Apple [APPL] to bring down “cyber walls” and cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigations
“We need to tear down cyber walls not on a mass basis, but on a targeted basis,” she said. “We also need to tear down the cyber walls that China is erecting, that Russia is erecting. We need to be very well aware of the fact that China and Russia are using technology to attack us just as ISIS is using technology to recruit those who would murder American citizens.”
Protecting privacy rights is important, but “there is more collaboration required between private sector companies and the public sector,” she said.
Cruz said that the Russian hack of the Joint Chiefs’ emails and the cyber attacks of the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM)—probably conducted by China—should be considered acts of war.
Walker quipped that “probably the Russian and Chinese governments know more about Hillary Clinton’s email server than do the members of the United States Congress.”