In a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his plan to cut military spending in half. “Military spending is a constant drain on our nation’s vitality,” Kennedy stated, arguing that Americans should not be “obsessed with the idea of our nation’s strength.”
Kennedy urged Americans to accept a diminished role in international affairs and prepare for a multipolar world. “We seem to think that we’re still where we were—in the same world as in 1991,” he said, referencing the end of the Cold War.
Kennedy’s promise to drastically reduce national security spending contrasts sharply with global trends. Military expenditure worldwide has reached a 35-year high, partly due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of China. However, Kennedy believes that much of the U.S. defense budget should be redirected toward addressing “an epidemic of chronic disease, a plague of addiction, and historic economic inequality” at home.
The former Democrat, who briefly challenged Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, holds a position starkly different from that of Donald Trump, the leading presidential candidate. Despite Trump’s commitment to swiftly ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza if re-elected, and his record as the first president since the 1970s who did not start any new wars, he increased military spending, following Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of “peace through strength.”
