The Daily Signal - #340: New Report Shows Our Military Isn't Prepared for Conflict With China, Russia

Starting point is 00:00:05 This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, November 15th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Budget cuts have taken a serious toll on the military, putting our servicemen and women at greater risk in a war with China or Russia. We'll sit down today with Air Force veteran John Cooper to take a closer look at the state of our military. Plus, take your parents to work day may not exactly be a thing, but in light of a new

Starting point is 00:00:29 trend, it could be. We'll discuss. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. The Justice Department is fighting CNN's lawsuit over whether the White House can ban CNN's Jim Acosta. In a filing, the Justice Department argued, per the Hill, that, quote, no journalist has a First Amendment right to enter the White House. And the President and White House possess the same broad discretion to regulate access to the White House for journalists and other members of the public that they possess to select which journalists receive interviews or which. journalists they acknowledge at press conferences. End quote.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Meanwhile, Fox News has announced that it will be filing an amicus brief in favor of CNN. Well, the Justice Department is rebuffing Democrats who have alleged that Matthew Whitaker cannot legally serve as acting attorney general. Whitaker was recently appointed by the president to temporarily replace outgoing Attorney General Jeff Sessions. A number of Democrats have objected to that, saying Whitaker is ineligible because he's never been confirmed by the Senate for any job. On Wednesday, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel released a memo saying that Whitaker's appointment is consistent with the Federal Vacancies

Starting point is 00:01:51 Reform Act, and it cited an example from 1866 when an acting attorney general served without confirmation by the Senate. A bipartisan commission created to look at the U.S. Defense Strategy released their report Wednesday, and it wasn't good news. The report from the National Defense Strategy Commission states, the U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win or perhaps lose a war against China or Russia. The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Well, Kevin McCarthy will be the next GOP leader in the House on when Wednesday, the California congressman received broad support from his colleagues to be House Minority Leader, defeating his opponent Jim Jordan by a vote of 159 to 43. McCarthy has been Majority Leader for the last four years, serving under Speaker John Boehner and then Speaker Paul Ryan, who is now retiring. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, talking to reporters Wednesday, said that there would be action on how Congress handles sexual harassment before the end of the year. At issue are the differences between the House and Senate bills that the two chambers are having trouble agreeing on.

Starting point is 00:03:17 But both bills would make one significant change if a lawmaker had a harassment settlement, he or she would have to pay personally. Well, Brenda Snipes, the supervisor of elections in Broward County, Florida, hinted that she might be moving on. Snipes told the Sun Sentinel that she thinks she has, quote, served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our members, end quote. She also said it is time to move on. But she made no actual commitment to resign, so it's unclear what she meant. Snipes has been at the center of a swirling controversy over election irregularities in Broward County. Days after the polls closed and after she was required to report a final tally,

Starting point is 00:04:01 her office continued to count ballots, and she refused to report how many ballots there were left to count in violation of Florida law. Here's an exchange she had Tuesday with CNN's Chris Cuomo. All right, but you have rules that you're supposed to abide by in transparency. That is very important. You refuse to give the Scott campaign the information they wanted. It had to go to court. The judge said you had to turn it over.

Starting point is 00:04:24 You didn't turn it over by the deadline that was given. That is cast as a partisan spat, that you're doing that because you're a Democrat. How do you respond to that? Well, I was talking with a woman today as she came into our office, and she made some statement about a partisan statement. And she said, I know that you're a Republican. I said I have been a Democrat all my life. In this position, I have been very focused on party because I want to treat all of the voters in Broward County the same. And I think if you'd ask the voters, you'd find that I have that reputation.

Starting point is 00:05:01 I don't have a reason to hold anything back, except that I don't want to give out information that's incomplete or incorrect at that particular time. So concerns, allegations that we are not transparent. There's one comment that my staff, and we work very closely together, always bring to my attention is that Dr. Snipes, you'll just take time to walk anybody through our election warehouse. I think that's very important because that gives those persons who take the time to come to us to see our operation a chance to see behind the scenes and there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make an election possible to make it efficient and to make it something that voters want to participate in and obviously we're doing that well if over 700,000 participated in the midterm well if it were that obvious Rick Scott wouldn't have to go to court though with all due respect doctor right I mean he had to go to court to get the this tour that you're saying you give to everybody for no reason, you wouldn't give it to him or his people. He had to go to court to get it. Fear of criticism?

Starting point is 00:06:06 No, it's not. No, it's not. We don't select who we give out information to. We give information to those persons who have requested it. And I believe the public records request says it in a timely manner, and we attempt to do that. And we try to balance everything. We're finishing up one of the biggest elections, as I mentioned earlier, for the midterm. So we're trying to get everything complete. Florida Governor Rick Scott won't certify the results of the state Senate election in which he is the Republican running against Democrat Bill Nelson.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Currently, there, of course, is a recount going on. Scott had previously recused himself in 2014 when he was also on the ballot. Well, as election results continue to come in from some of the closest midterm races, Democrats are gaining seats in the House. In fact, they've picked up more seats now than they've won. since Watergate. Democrats have now taken 34 House seats away from Republicans, and there are still eight races yet to be called. It's already a bigger pickup than 2006 when Democrats won 30 seats during President Bush's last term. Don't look for Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump to be

Starting point is 00:07:16 buddy-buddy again anytime soon. French government spokesman Benjamin Gravo, per ABC News, said on Wednesday, after a series of tweets from President Trump Tuesday, that, quote, we were commemorating the assassination of 130 of our compatriots three years ago in Paris and St. Denis, and so I will reply in English, common decency would have been appropriate. Trump's tweets included, Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China, and Russia, but it was Germany in World Wars 1 and 2. How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along, pay for NATO or not. And on trade, France makes excellent wine, but so does the U.S.

Starting point is 00:08:03 The problem is that France makes it very hard for the U.S. to sell its wines into France and charges big tariffs, whereas the U.S. makes it easy for French wines and charges very small tariffs. Not fair must change. Well, up next, we'll talk to Air Force veteran John Cooper about the state of our military. Hi, this is Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. If you liked hearing about the issues that Washington's not discussing, check out Underreported, a brand-new video series from The Daily Signal looking at other issues that the mainstream media forgot to mention. So, as I mentioned in the headlines, a bipartisan commission released a report Wednesday that showed, our military isn't ready for war on two fronts. Joining us today is John Cooper, the Senior Communications Manager for the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. and of course is himself an Air Force veteran.

Starting point is 00:09:08 John Heritage has its own index of military strength, which was released last month. Are the findings about the same? Yeah. So for broad strokes purposes, they are very similar. And that's what really stood out to me when I first saw this report when it came out from the National Defense Strategy Commission, which is a bipartisan commission that was essentially tasked looking at the state of the military and its ability to carry out the national defense strategy that the Trump administration has laid out.

Starting point is 00:09:33 And two of the main findings, one in particular that you mentioned there, really dovetail very closely with what Heritage has found in essentially every iteration of the index of U.S. military strength that the United States military, as currently structured, could not handle two major conflicts at the same time, which is basically the benchmark historically for looking at the strength of the military and the readiness of the military to handle all the missions that it could be called upon to fulfill for the U.S. So we're not even meeting that basic benchmark, and that's causing a lot of problems for us on the world stage right now. So what kind – you know, you talk about a two-front war. We can't – we're not in a position to successfully wage that kind of war. Just for some geopolitical context, what kind of two fronts would be looking at? Yeah, that's a great question. And if you look at the national defense strategy, you find pretty clearly that the administration is very focused on great power competition. So looking at Russia, looking at China, looking at China.

Starting point is 00:10:30 China, also looking at Iran and North Korea, as well as major terrorist networks in the Middle East, Afghanistan. But primarily, we're shifting away from an era of fighting terrorism like we have for the past 20 years or so after 9-11. That problem is still going to be there for a long time. But our primary adversaries are not going to be those terror groups. They're going to be Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, et cetera. So looking at all of those adversaries, we have to ask ourselves, okay, if we, for some reason, we're drawn into a conflict with North Korea, Korea, let's say. Could we do that successfully? Could our military handle the strain that would be involved in going to war, having some kind of protracted conflict with North Korea? Could the military

Starting point is 00:11:11 handle all of that strain at the same time not open us up to, say, Iran doing something in the Middle East that would be very destabilizing for the region there, drawing us into conflict there? And that's the real question that we have to ask. And so when you look at the military as it's structured, as it's currently staffed and resourced right now, we wouldn't be able to handle both of those conflicts at the same time, which would be very disastrous for us on one or both fronts. So why is the military so underprepared? Is it policy decisions? Is it, you know, we've heard that they've been having a lot of trouble recruiting lately, that most Americans who are the right age would actually not be eligible for various reasons to serve. Is that the factor?

Starting point is 00:11:50 What's going on here? Yeah, it's a multitude of factors. I mean, if you look primarily, you know, you have to start at the top. You look primarily at the defense budget over the last decade plus, It's really declined. You know, we had a lot of defense spending during the Iraq war and the wars in Afghanistan when they're kind of at their height, if you will. But looking at the actual modernization of the military, there's not been a lot of funds devoted to that for the past decade or so. There hasn't been a lot, really a lot of money or enough money going to even basic readiness.

Starting point is 00:12:19 And that's why we're in such a readiness crisis that we've been seeing over the last few years with aircraft not being able to fly, ships running into each other because people aren't trained well and they're not getting enough rest, things like that. that. So the readiness problem, the modernization problem, those deficits there are primarily driven by a lack of funding. And that's just that's basic common sense. It's dollars and cents. And if you look at the problem for more than five seconds, you really kind of realize that that's the case. And the other issues that you bring up, if you look at recruiting, there's more than 70% I believe of American youth are physically, for one reason or another, often physical limitations,

Starting point is 00:12:56 but they're not actually fit to join the military. They're just disqualified off, off the bat from actually becoming a recruit and enjoying the service. And that's going to be really problematic when you look down the road. And so if you look at that from a budgetary standpoint, we have major problems in terms of what we, as a nation, have invested in our military. And really what we're looking at being invested going forward is also very problematic, the signals that we're getting from the Hill for the coming years and also, frankly, from the Trump administration, talking about cutting the defense budget by 5% next year.

Starting point is 00:13:27 All of those are very problematic. but also like you point out, if you look at the, really it's kind of a health care crisis within the military's recruitment wing, if you will. If you look at all the youth across the country who, you know, for age purposes are eligible to join the military between 17 and 24, it's kind of the prime recruiting age, right? If you look at that group of people, the overwhelming majority of the men and women in that age demographic are simply unfit to actually serve. in the U.S. military. So you have this pool of people, many of whom, you know, obviously aren't going to join the military to begin with, but even among those who might be interested, you whittled that population down even more because so many of them for one reason or another, often for physical reasons, are simply unable to actually join the military. They would not be approved to become soldiers or airmen or sailors. So you have lots of different factors that come together to create, you know, this readiness crisis, but also this longer term problem of, you know, a lack of

Starting point is 00:14:28 modernization. And as this report points out, China and Russia are closing the gap in terms of this overwhelming and technological advantage that we've had in the United States military for the past century or so. And when you couple that with the kind of the micro problems, if you will, of pulling in townhood recruits and people who are ready to serve, that's a really big problem. So some people, I know some people, some, you know, fiscal conservatives who would say, oh, it's just the military. They always want more money. And, uh, never get into a war with China and all that stuff. And they'll say, yeah, you know, the military is huge compared to 100 years ago.

Starting point is 00:15:06 How would you respond to that skepticism? Yeah, well, it's a really great question for a number of reasons. One, because a major aspect of conservatism is that we believe as conservatives in the idea of limited government and limited government's primary role being the protection of its people, right? That is the primary responsibility of government. It's defense of the homeland, defense of our constitution. You can't do that if your military is not properly structured and properly resourced and properly funded to be able to handle all these major powers that are arising and showing that they want to be world players. Whether it's China, whether it's Russia or Iran, North Korea, it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:15:47 We're not properly posturing ourselves to defend the homeland, to defend the Constitution, which if you read the preamble of the Constitution, it's exactly what the Constitution is there for. And that's what the government is there for is to defend the homeland. So that's kind of the starting point that we have to have. Reagan's peace through strength. Every conservative loves Reagan. But if you're going to be consistent, you have to agree with that statement of his as well. And I do. I believe that's fully valid.

Starting point is 00:16:16 But also looking at the questions that you ask, you know, the military always wanting more. You know, we spend too much on the military. If you look at what the U.S. military is called upon to do, and what we do around the world, not just defending the homeland, but also maintaining freedom of navigation throughout the world's waterways and making sure that people can trade without fear of piracy or other state actors impinging on their ability to do so. The U.S. military, for example, the Navy in the Strait of Formuz is vital to ensuring that lots of oil can get out to the rest of the world and not be cut off by Iran. And if Iran wants to create a lot of economic hardship for its adversaries, that's just one example. So if you look at all of the different missions that the U.S. military has and the missions that it's called upon to do for the United States to make our lives and that of our partners and that really of, frankly, the entire world, a lot more stable and a lot more secure, you have to fund that. That doesn't just kind of come about by itself.

Starting point is 00:17:19 And I think a lot of people for a very long time have taken for granted, oh, the U.S. military is just always going to be able to go in and do what we need them to do. And we're steadily seeing that's less and less the case as the world grows more dangerous. As our adversaries get more technologically advanced, they close that gap between themselves and us technologically. But then also they show that they want to expand their influence across the world. Russia showing very clearly they want to do that with Ukraine and what they're trying to do in other parts of Eastern Europe. of course, look at the South China Sea. So there's lots of different areas where they're expanding their influence. And the U.S. military is not, you know, frankly, if we continue on the road we're going on,

Starting point is 00:17:59 we're not going to be able to counteract that. Well, I'm going to sleep great tonight. Thanks so much, John, for this very sobering take. But, you know, thank you for explaining to us what's going on right now with the military. Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news.

Starting point is 00:18:23 Until now, did you know that every week, Heritage Explains intermingles personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective. Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:18:46 The Wall Street Journal has a report out on a new trend, Bring Your Parents to Work Day. Turns out about 1% of U.S. companies have such a day per the Society for Human Resource Management. And it's not just millennials, the Wall Street Journal interviewed two 50-year-old women who brought their parents to work. So Daniel, thoughts, would you bring your parents to work? Well, I was one who recently did and introduced them to my bosses. You're my boss for viewers. I endorse this idea.

Starting point is 00:19:19 It's actually funny. I was kind of taken aback by my mom's persistent interest in my place of work. She's been here twice now. And when I first started working here, she said, you know, after a year, she was like, Daniel, you still never take any pictures and send them to me because she wants to see where I work. And I just thought that's really interesting. So I definitely resonate with what this article is saying that parents are very curious about what their offspring do all day.

Starting point is 00:19:47 Well, I think in a way, if you think about it, I mean, Parents in many cases, well, they gave you life. They supported you for the first 18 years. In many cases, they either entirely or in large part paid for your higher education. I mean, I sort of get the whole like, oh, I kind of want to see them being a productive member of society. Right. It's also like it sort of cracks me up. Like when I see my younger siblings working, I'm like, oh, that's so cute.

Starting point is 00:20:13 Right, right, right, right. You learned how to do all this and be old grown up. See, I've never seen it from that angle. But when my sister, you know, she just graduated. So when she gets a job, she will have to, you know, maybe just surprise her at work one day and observe. I would not recommend surprising her. I would not want it. But no, I think, well, I'm not actually sure.

Starting point is 00:20:33 But my mother, my dad is not as interested. My mom has been at least the daily signal. I think she's been other places I've worked, but I could be wrong. But yeah, I think it is interesting visualizing. And I think, you know, it sort of brings to mind work is such a weird, part of our lives. Like it's something we, you know, spend five days a week. We see our colleagues more than we often see our friends. And yet it's despite such a substantial thing, it's not, I guess, as much part of our emotional landscapes. But anyway, it's sort of interesting to just

Starting point is 00:21:05 think about how it is and you don't know how something looks. Yeah. I remember going to work with my dad when I had a day off and he didn't. I think I was like six or seven years old. And I, it was fascinating. I always thought the office was just this different world where there were like rubber bands and like all of these stationary equipment that I used as toys and, you know, like a receipt calculator and all that stuff. But now it's just normal. Well, but yeah, and I think too, take your children to work day is great. I hope that this doesn't mean that like fewer and fewer people are having kids and that's why it's like, oh, take your parents instead of your children to work. But it doesn't sound like. It's displacing it. I don't think so. So, I don't know. Well, we will leave there for today.

Starting point is 00:21:53 Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google, Play, or SoundCloud. And please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and the Learampersad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.

The Daily Signal - #340: New Report Shows Our Military Isn't Prepared for Conflict With China, Russia

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