What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Defense Budget Masterpiece
Susanna V. Blume and Christopher Dougherty
March 8, 2019
In December of 2017, before the Department of Defense released its 2019 budget request, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan tried to manage expectations about its contents. He argued that the National Defense Strategy, with its prioritization of competition with China and Russia, was so new that the Pentagon didn’t have time to fully incorporate its precepts into the 2019 budget submission. But, he told us, the 2020 budget request would be a “masterpiece,†fully funding the strategy’s direction to invest in the capabilities required to sustain the U.S. military’s advantage over China and Russia while finding more economical ways of prosecuting ongoing counter-terrorism campaigns.
https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-a-defense-budget-masterpiece/
