Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick said the country needs to radically change its approach to the military by increasing its size and adapting to the needs of modern warfare.
And during a speech Friday at the Allegheny HYP Club in Pittsburgh, McCormick argued that the world is an increasingly dangerous place, as adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran coordinate.
“Each one of those adversaries poses a significant challenge to American security and American interests,” he said. “But those adversaries aligned – that gets really complicated.”
McCormick endorsed a plan to restore military spending to levels not seen since the Cold War. The plan, drafted by current Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, would increase defense spending by $55 billion immediately and in the long run increase it from 3% to 5% of GDP.
“Right now, our defense industrial base is woefully small and weak. We must make the hard choices necessary to rebuild it now. And these investments won't be cheap,” McCormick said. “But I've seen what war looks like, and I guarantee you it's cheaper to deter a war than to fight one.”
McCormick graduated from West Point, served as a combat engineer in the Army and then completed a PhD in international relations. He published a book in 1998 about how military cuts after the end of the Cold War hurt morale.
Although McCormick didn’t take issue with many of the United States’ specific policies — including its approach to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel — he said the country needed to project more resolve.
McCormick blamed President Joe Biden for the country’s problems and said that Sen. Bob Casey was also to blame, because he votes with Biden most of the time. The only specific vote by Casey that McCormick criticized was a vote during the Obama administration to try to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities in exchange for economic relief. Donald Trump withdrew from the deal after he was elected President in 2016.
McCormick’s vision of an expanding military role sometimes seemed to be at odds with Trump’s foreign policy approach. McCormick said he supports continued military assistance to Ukraine, despite the opposition of other Republicans including Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance.
The U.S. promised Ukraine assistance when Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1993, McCormick noted.
“We made a promise,” McCormick said. “How we respond to that promise will inform what our allies like Australia, Japan, NATO and others think about our promises.”
Making the bully think twice
McCormick traces the military’s current leadership problems to 2021. That’s when the Biden administration led a chaotic evacuation effort as American troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Biden has said the military was constrained by an agreement Trump made with the Taliban to remove all troops. Military leaders have said they told both Trump and Biden that they should leave 2,500 troops in place. Biden’s generals later blamed him for the withdrawal, in which 13 service members were killed.
McCormick said that as a result, America has lost credibility that it would deter future aggression.
“If the bully thinks that he can push you around and nothing's going to happen, then you're going to get pushed around,” he said. “If the bully thinks there's a decent chance he's going to get punched in the nose, then the bully thinks twice.”
McCormick argued that his experience as a business executive would help the country rethink its military approach. He argued the military was at risk of losing its supremacy, much like a corporation that falls behind more innovative competitors.
“America's ability to out-innovate our adversaries is one of our greatest assets,” he said. “But a generation of misplaced priorities has paralyzed our Pentagon.”
The current military leadership views warfare too much through the lens of previous military efforts rather than what future wars will bring, he said. And changing that approach will require new leaders, including replacing the current Secretary of Defense.
McCormick criticized Biden for sending senior officials to China “to bow to the Communist party.” Last year China built 30 new warships, while the United States built just two, McCormick said – a criticism Republicans have been leveling at Biden for the last couple of years.
Still, in a question-and-answer session after his speech, McCormick cast doubt on the importance of building expensive big ships. “A new aircraft carrier cost about $15 billion, something like that. And, you can buy 1,000 $1 million drones and have the capacity for swarms of drones that can take down an aircraft carrier.” he said. “The next generation of warfare may make the old way of fighting wars obsolete.”
McCormick said a military expansion would bring jobs to Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region, where leaders at Carnegie Mellon University have fostered military innovations.
“The leadership [at CMU] has been very receptive to partnering with the military, which is fantastic,” he said. “Some universities haven't been.”
McCormick said he wouldn’t change the United State’s policy toward Taiwan and he supported continuing to sell it weapons. McCormick also said he continues to support Israel’s leadership and its efforts to limit casualties during its war against Hamas. McCormick opposes efforts to pressure Israel into changing its military strategy, because such pressure violates their sovereignty. Instead, he said, Hamas’ strategy of embedding near civilians makes it difficult for Israel to fight the war.
“It looks to me that there is a lot of care taken on an incredibly tough mission,” he said of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. “So I don’t have any criticisms of it.”
Little to say on Trump
The Constitution makes the president the architect of America’s foreign policy as the leader of its armed forces. But McCormick’s speech offered a notably brief defense of the previous Trump administration’s foreign policy efforts.
McCormick mentioned former President Ronald Reagan, who led the U.S. at the conclusion of the Cold War, four times while mentioning Trump only twice. And he blamed “a generation” of military leaders for the state of the military, without making a case that Trump’s administration was an exception.
McCormick’s defense of the Trump administration’s foreign policy was limited to a couple of sentences, saying only that Trump understands that adversaries will respond to power. “[Trump] put China on notice, and he used military power selectively to restore deterrence in the Middle East and defeat ISIS,” he said. (Experts say the military under Obama and then Trump led to the defeat of ISIS.)
In response to a question after the speech, McCormick also endorsed Trump’s unpredictability: “Our adversaries were very much on their back heels, didn't know how the president would respond.”
