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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Kasich, the “Cheap Hawk” for Increased Military Spending

Kasich is so frugal that he thinks the U.S. should embark on a huge surge in military spending.
john kasich

Politico reports on John Kasich’s foreign policy and national security views and advisors:

At Monday night’s forum, Kasich positioned himself as a thrifty national security hawk.

“We have about 10 carriers now, my goal would be to get closer to 15 [bold mine-DL]. And you’ve got to have the ability to project power when you get there,” Kasich said, before immediately circling back to the budget.

In other words, Kasich is so frugal that he thinks the U.S. should embark on a huge surge in military spending to expand the Navy by roughly one-third. I don’t know how Kasich thinks he’s going to pay for this while keeping up the pretense that he is “frugal” and “thrifty” with public money, and I suspect he also has no idea. One problem I keep having with the “cheap hawk” act is that in the end fiscal responsibility always loses out to the impulse to meddle and intervene. It was possible to claim to be a “cheap hawk” in the ’90s when U.S. interventions were small, short, and relatively cheap, but when it came time to choose between being fiscally responsible and being hawkish in the 2000s Kasich predictably cared more about being the latter. His initial support for invading Iraq should also remind us that any skepticism he may have had about earlier military interventions evaporated as soon as his party was in power and proposed starting an unnecessary war.

Kasich isn’t proposing that the U.S. reduce its military presence anywhere, nor does he suggest that the U.S. should be less activist overseas than it is, and the expanded Navy he wants to build would likely create new opportunities and excuses for even more meddling. In spite of all this, he wants us to believe him when he says that he is going to rein in spending. As Kasich says elsewhere in the report, “it’s all about priorities,” and he has made clear that expanding the military takes priority over keeping spending under control.

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