A Bipartisan National Security Agenda

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

Democrats are forlorn over Donald Trump’s electoral victory, and national security-focused Democrats are no exception.

In nominating relative unknowns like Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense and spending his transition period threatening to use coercive power to annex Greenland and retake the Panama Canal, Trump seems to be confirming all of our worst fears.

This, the thinking goes, will be a fundamentally unserious administration, easily distracted by wildly unrealistic ideas and run by people incapable of performing the jobs they hold. 

Yet there is a ray of hope: there is, contrary to many Democrats’ thinking, ample room for bipartisan collaboration on national security. What’s more, given Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House and the sizeable Republican contingent unwilling to agree to any new spending, bipartisanship won’t just be a “nice to have” for the incoming president; it will be a “must-have” if he intends to get anything done. Finally, there are policy priorities that will not require most Democrats–or at least most centrist Democrats–to compromise their fundamental beliefs and morals.

Broadly speaking, both sides want to reinvigorate the defense industrial base, pressure NATO nations to shoulder more of the burden, and make military service more appealing to young men and women. They can and they should. 

Reinvigorate the Defense Industrial Base

America’s famed “Arsenal of Democracy” is a shell of its former self. Democrats and Republicans working together can restore it to its former glory. 

The sad reality is that the American defense industrial base (DIB) is tapped out. Virtually every shipyard in the country capable of producing a warship is working on one now; problem is, that’s not saying much when the U.S. is just the world’s 14th-largest shipbuilder, producing just one-tenth of one percent of the world’s ships. Our warship maintenance backlog is long and growing. We cannot produce 155mm shells–which Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel all desperately need–nearly as fast as our partners and allies are using them, even after ramping up production. It takes us too long and costs too much for us to produce missiles, submarines, fighters, bombers, ammunition, and, of course, ships. All while our primary competitor, China, has a robust defense industrial base that, thanks to economies of scale, can produce military hardware far less expensively and more quickly than we can. 

The DIB is a massive national security vulnerability, and both Republicans and Democrats know it. The longer we leave it in its current state, the more we encourage Chinese aggression. If Chinese President Xi Jinping  believes he can win a war against us, after all, we will struggle to deter him.  

There are countless tactical solutions that a large majority of both sides could support. We could fund the shipbuilding Construction Differential Subsidy. We could loosen regulations to allow for more rapid building and expansion of shipyards, munitions plants, and the like. We could expand job training programs–through community colleges or otherwise–in fields the DIB needs, like welders, electricians, and pipefitters (and Democrats have never come across a job training program they didn’t love). We could leverage AI to better understand the bottlenecks in our supply chain. We could simply build more public shipyards, munitions plants, and maintenance facilities. 

This would, however, have to be bipartisan. All of these solutions cost money. There are enough Republicans refusing to spend another dime to make such proposals dead on arrival without Democratic support. Fortunately, the large majority of Democrats would eagerly support them. 

A Gentleman’s Agreement on NATO

Trump and the Democrats could make a deal on NATO: if Trump takes leaving NATO off the table, Democrats will agree to loudly, forcefully, and repeatedly voice their frustration with Europe’s paltry defense spending and inability to manage its own backyard. Both sides will get what they want. 

How’s that? Democrats have a secret: when it comes to European defense spending, they (somewhat) agree with Trump. Not his apparent misunderstanding of the issue–when Trump talks about European defense spending like it’s money European nations owe America and have not paid up, it’s like nails on a chalkboard–but the fact that many European nations are objectively not meeting their obligations as part of their membership in NATO. Given that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is happening in Europe’s backyard, and that Russia is a far bigger threat to Europe than to the U.S., Europe should not need the U.S. to spend more on Ukraine’s defense than the European Union has.

(To be clear, spending on Ukraine’s defense is still an excellent investment; keeping America’s second greatest adversary bogged down and hollowing out its military while the U.S. suffers no casualties and spends relatively little money is a national security no brainer. Indeed, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria is due largely to our support of Ukraine’s forces fighting Russia. But Ukraine’s defense is more important to Europeans than it is to us, so Europeans should be leading.) 

In fact, frustration over the lack of European spending on its own defense used to be a Democratic bugaboo. Elbridge Colby, Trump’s pick to be Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, has made that exact point. Canada spending just 1.25% of GDP, Italy spending 1.5% of GDP, and even the mighty German economy spending just over 2% of GDP on defense is unacceptable and infuriating. 

What frightens Democrats about Trump, then, isn’t his frustration with lack of European defense spending. It’s what he says he wants to do about it, namely pull out of NATO. That is a bridge too far for nearly all Democrats. It would lead to the collapse of the most effective military alliance in history, strengthen and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and destroy American credibility for a generation or more. Democrats do not want to give Trump cover to do something so catastrophic.

But if Democrats do not have to worry about that, they will be happy to strengthen Trump’s hand when he talks to NATO nations. They can give him something more powerful that a (likely hollow) threat to pull out of NATO. If Democrats are taking European nations to task for their weak defense spending, they will give Trump the ability to say “you can’t just wait me out. Even if a Democrat replaces me, you’re not off the hook.” It will let Europeans know that the longer they wait to start building out their militaries, the angrier America will get, so they might as well get to work. 

If both sides can put away partisan point-scoring, they can do something genuinely valuable for America. 

Make Service Great Again

Finally, Democrats can and should work with the Trump Administration–and Trump himself–to teach younger generations the immense meaning and value of military service.

The Army, Navy, and Air Force face a recruiting crisis that, thanks to demographic trends, is likely to get worse. They combined to miss recruiting goals by 41,000 people in 2023. In 2024, the U.S. military had the smallest number of active-duty military personnel since 1940. With only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 qualified to join the military, an unemployment rate hovering around 4% for an extended period, and a rapidly aging population, America simply will not have a big enough pool of people to fill our ranks of soldiers, sailors, and airmen if present trends continue. 

That makes a bipartisan effort to show that serving our nation goes above partisanship–and to once more highlight the valor of service–an absolute must.  If young Americans never learn the honor of military service, military recruiters will be forced to compete on a purely economic basis. With wages going up for young Americans, that is going to be an increasingly difficult case to make. Particularly since sitting in an air conditioned office carries a lot less risk than going to war or passing a physical fitness test. 

So veterans in the Trump Administration and veteran Democratic politicians must stand side-by-side and extol the virtues of service. I imagine PSAs with Vice President-Elect JD Vance and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) saying “We may not agree with each other or even like each other, but because of our joint military service, we respect each other.” I imagine Trump inviting Democratic leaders or prominent liberal veterans to join him for Veterans Day and Memorial Day events. I imagine contingents of bipartisan members of Congress or governors who served touring college campuses and high schools urging kids to join ROTC, NROTC, JROTC, or enlist. Needless to say, they should invite the press to join them and even post the results on Instagram (or TikTok when it finally gets American ownership).  

In addition to being good for the nation, this is a political necessity for Trump. From reportedly calling those who fell in combat “suckers and losers” to his garish photo op at Arlington National Cemetery to his belittling John McCain and all POWs by saying he “likes people who weren’t captured,” Trump has earned a reputation as someone who fundamentally does not respect the sacrifices of the men and women in uniform. Making a show of his respect for those who serve and making a call for more young people to pursue military service could help him shed that ugly distinction. 

Conclusion

We Democrats have a bitter pill to swallow: we are where we are. Trump has won the election, and his only comeuppance will be in the history books. He has no more campaigns to wage, and there is little we can do to damage him politically. 

Yet national security could serve as the one opportunity for win-win outcomes. There are substantial areas of agreement. We spent an entire campaign saying “country over party.” National security policy gives us a chance to prove we meant it. 

About the Author: Neal Urwitz 

Neal Urwitz is a public relations executive in Washington and a former speechwriter for and advisor to the Secretary of the Navy.