Why Joe Biden Should Be Our Next Commander In Chief
The United States faces multiple overlapping crises right now and meeting this moment is going to take a competent, compassionate, clear-eyed President. It’s always important who we choose to lead the most powerful country on earth, but now more than ever we really have to get this right. I could write whole volumes about the failures of the current occupant of the Oval Office, from the way he’s mismanaged the pandemic to how he encourages white supremacists. But what I want you to know before you vote is this: it’s not just that Donald Trump is the wrong choice — it’s that Joe Biden is the right one.
In particular, with just weeks until Election Day, I want to share a bit about why there is no better person to lead us as Commander-in-Chief. I’ve worked closely with Joe Biden on the most consequential matters of war and peace, I’ve seen his judgement and experience firsthand, and I know he will keep America safe and strong.
Over the past four years, we’ve had a commander-in-chief without experience, vision, or values — and it’s been an unmitigated disaster.
More Americans have died during Trump’s mismanagement of COVID-19 than in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan all put together. While we all wish the President, the First Lady, and the many infected senior administration officials a full recovery, it’s clear that Trump’s already reckless approach to the virus is getting even more dangerous.
That’s not all. American democracy is also under attack, most notably by the President himself who is determined to delegitimize the upcoming election and undermine voting rights. And on top of everything else, he seems hell-bent on jamming through the confirmation of an extreme Supreme Court nominee without letting the American people have their say.
There’s no question: Under Trump, the United States is weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided, and dangerously unprepared for future threats, from new pandemics to the climate crisis to growing challenges from China and Russia. The alliances that keep us safe are frayed, our military has been abused and mismanaged, and other key national security agencies have been hollowed out. And this year, as we scrambled to find basic medical equipment and other key supplies, we’ve seen how much America is dependent on other countries — especially China — instead of building the things we need here at home. That’s part of our national security, too.
We’ve seen what the last four years have looked like under Donald Trump. We can’t afford to give him four more to further weaken our national security, wreck our economy, and divide people. We urgently need to change course.
If you look at American history, sometimes it has taken a dramatic shock — like Pearl Harbor, Sputnik, or 9/11 — to wake up our country to a new threat and prompt a major change in strategy. The pandemic is one of those historic shocks, and it should lead us to take a new approach to national security with a new commander-in-chief.
That’s why I’ve written a new essay for Foreign Affairs about the stakes in this election, what it’s going to take to rebuild America’s strength, and why the pandemic has made it even more urgent and important that we rethink our national security priorities. Earlier this week I also published a piece in Democracy Journal about how to protect and renew our democracy.
The choice before us couldn’t be clearer:
Donald Trump is erratic and thin-skinned. Joe Biden is strong and steady. He won’t stumble into war or embarrass our country.
Trump calls war heroes “losers” and “suckers.” He has tried to turn the U.S. military into part of his political machine — pardoning war criminals over the objections of military leaders just to please his base and deploying National Guard troops against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square so that he could stage a photo-op. By contrast, Joe is a military father who understands the sacrifices our troops and their families make and will bring honor and dignity back to the highest office in the land.
Trump can’t defend democracy or compete against China and Russia because he himself is an authoritarian wannabe hostile to democratic values. Joe has the character and backbone to lead America and the Free World in a global contest of ideas and values that will shape the decades ahead. You won’t hear him call white supremacists “very fine people” or swoon over dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un.
Trump’s own former national security advisor, General H.R. McMaster, recently said that the president is “aiding and abetting” Putin’s attacks on our democracy. It’s no wonder that so many retired generals, admirals, intelligence officers, and Republican national security experts have endorsed Biden.
Writing my Foreign Affairs essay, I spent a lot of time with my longtime collaborator and thought-partner-in-crime Dan Schwerin thinking about how Trump’s failures as commander-in-chief have made America less safe, how some of these problems actually go back decades, and how a Biden administration could right the ship.
For example, the Trump administration never grasped that a tourist carrying home a virus can be as dangerous as a terrorist planting a pathogen. That’s why they ignored the 69-page playbook for responding to pandemics given to them by President Obama’s team, dismantled the National Security Council’s pandemic office, filled a national medical stockpile with drugs for anthrax and small-pox while neglecting the personal protective equipment needed for a pandemic, and repeatedly tried to slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This short-sighted approach is part of a pattern: thinking too narrowly about national security and failing to embrace a broader approach that encompasses threats not just from intercontinental ballistic missiles and insurgencies but also from cyberattacks, viruses, carbon emissions, online propaganda, and shifting supply chains. Just look at how Trump ignores — and exacerbates — the national security threat from climate change: pulling out of the Paris Agreement, deleting any reference to climate change in its National Security Strategy, and even trying to muzzle senior scientists and intelligence officials from warning Congress and the public about it.
Defeating Trump in November is just the first step in digging out of the deep hole he’s put America in. Joe’s call to “build back better” after the pandemic should apply to our foreign policy as well as our economy.
First, we’re going to need to rebuild the State Department that Trump has gutted, even as China has doubled its diplomacy budget and poured untold billions into developing countries in aid and loans. That includes revitalizing America’s alliances, which Trump has treated like a mafia protection racket, and rejoining international agreements such as the Paris climate pact and the Iran nuclear deal.
Second, we have to modernize our military, in particular embracing more innovation and moving away from costly and outdated weapons systems that don’t match up well with the new threats we face from China. Trump likes to brag about ballooning the defense budget, but we’re spending the money in the wrong places and are more vulnerable now than we’ve been in many years. We could save billions of dollars a year by refocusing on technologies and weapons better suited to today’s strategy realities, for example spending less on expensive aircraft carriers that can be hit by cheap Chinese anti-ship missiles and on heavy tanks that won’t have much use in future air, sea, and space conflicts.
Third, we have to renew the domestic foundations of our national power — supporting American innovation and bolstering strategically important industries and supply chains. This would be a smart way to invest the money we save by modernizing the military. Biden has a great plan to invest $700 billion in innovation and manufacturing and impose stronger “Buy American” provisions, with the goal of jump-starting domestic production in key sectors — from steel to robotics to biotechnology — reshoring sensitive supply chains, and expanding stockpiles of essential goods. This will help America compete with China, meet threats like climate change and future pandemics, and create millions of good jobs.
As I write in Foreign Affairs, it’s hard to imagine anyone better suited to lead this important work than Joe Biden, a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with deep expertise in national security policy, a military father who knows how much we owe our men and women in uniform and their families, and a champion of working people who fought to save the auto industry when others would have let it go bankrupt.
If elected, Joe will be the most experienced new commander-in-chief since George HW Bush and the most seasoned Congressional dealmaker since Lyndon Johnson. We haven’t agreed on everything over the years, but I’ve always admired the way he approaches the hard choices that are at the heart of leadership. In the Senate, I saw how Joe moved mountains to get new armored MRAPs to our troops in Iraq, protecting them from deadly roadside bombs. In the Obama Administration, we worked side-by-side in the Situation Room to manage crises and protect our country.
Here’s the bottom line: Joe has the courage to question assumptions, challenge conventional thinking, and offer new ideas. And his values and character are rock solid. That’s what America needs in our commander-in-chief.
I hope you’ll read my pieces in Foreign Affairs and Democracy Journal. And most of all, I hope you’ll vote for a better, stronger, safer America in this election.
