Cut Defense?

No way, says Jim Talent. An excerpt from his piece today in National Review:

“…every category of international risk facing the United States is demonstrably growing. Islamist extremists remain a formidable threat. They are fighting to reconstitute their safe havens in Afghanistan and to acquire weapons of mass destruction for use against the United States. The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism — a bipartisan panel with the status of the 9/11 Commission — found unanimously that terrorists would “more likely than not” develop and use a weapon of mass destruction against a Western city by 2013. The director of national intelligence publicly agreed with that dire assessment.

Nuclear technology and weaponry advances are cascading through rogue and failing states around the world. Pakistan — an unsteady partner facing an existential threat from terrorists — has a substantial and growing nuclear arsenal. The U.S. must be diligent in ensuring that those nuclear assets stay out of the hands of terrorists. Both North Korea and Iran are steadily increasing the range, payload, and accuracy of their ballistic missiles. No one seriously believes that the Iranians will voluntarily stop their nuclear program or that the West (except perhaps the Israelis) will use force to stop them.

Finally, the last few years have seen the rise of aggressive ‘peer competitors’ who are developing the military capacity to challenge the vital national interests of the United States. China, for example, is rearming at a rate far ahead of American intelligence predictions.”