Donald Trump will call for more defense spending, outline defense policy
Greenville, N.C. -- Donald Trump will call for a substantial increase in defense spending, and he will outline a foreign policy that seeks to “dispense with regime change and democracy creation” policies the Trump campaign says Hillary Clinton favors.
At a speech Wednesday at the Union League of Philadelphia, Trump will call for the elimination of the sequester on defense spending -- a change which the campaign says will free up money for ships, planes, submarines and a new sea-based missile defense system. The missile defense system would show a “muscular posture” toward governments hostile to the US like Iran and North Korea, a campaign official said.
The official didn’t specify how much Trump’s plan would cost but added that Trump would address that question in the speech. A Trump campaign official acknowledged that changing defense spending levels and lifting the sequester would require a bipartisan negotiation with Congress.
According to the campaign adviser, Trump’s remarks will also contrast Clinton’s “military adventurism” in Syria and Libya (which he spoke about Tuesday evening in North Carolina) with Trump’s isolationist tendencies. Trump believes that democracy cannot be forced upon people who don’t want it and regime change creates instability and a vacuum for terrorism. It’s a stance in opposition to the last Republican president, George W. Bush, who argued that spreading democracy in the Middle East “must be a focus of American policy for decades to come.”
Within in 30 days of taking office, Trump will say that he’ll ask U.S. generals to submit a plan to defeat ISIS, the official said, arguing that Clinton does not listen to military advisers.
“Clarity for our allies and friends begins at home,” the Trump adviser said. After the speech, Trump and Clinton will appear at the same forum on national security.