Trump Can’t Have ‘Peace Through Strength’ on a Biden Defense Budget

It will be difficult for President Trump to implement his ‘Peace Through Strength’ foreign policy with a Biden defense budget. The Trump administration requested a $892.6 billion base defense budget for fiscal year 2026 on May 2, an amount well below the $1 trillion budget the administration promised.

The administration claims its annual defense budget request amounts to a 13 percent increase, but, in an unusual move, the administration included in that calculation the $150 billion defense appropriation in the “reconciliation” legislation that Congress has yet to pass and that will be spent over several years.  

An Axis of Aggressors, consisting of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, is increasingly cooperating to threaten the United States, its partners, and its interests. A base defense budget that does not even keep pace with inflation ignores these growing threats and risks leaving U.S. forces insufficiently prepared to deter and defeat aggression.

Growing Threats and Insufficient Defense Spending

The bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy assessed in its July 2024 report, “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.” Despite this fact, the United States is spending near post-World War II lows on the Department of Defense measured as a percentage of gross domestic production (GDP).

U.S. annual defense spending in recent years has amounted to approximately 3 percent of GDP. Other than three years just before the 9/11 terror attacks, that is the lowest percent of GDP spent on defense since 1940 — the year prior to America’s entry into World War II. If Congress follows the Trump administration’s proposed defense budget and fails to appropriate additional funds as part of the reconciliation process, U.S. defense spending would fall well below the 3 percent mark at a time when the threats to the United States from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are growing. For comparison, the United States spent about 11.4 percent of GDP on the Department of Defense in 1953 (Korean War), 8.6 percent in 1968 (Vietnam War), 5.9 percent in 1986 (Reagan buildup), and 4.5 percent in 2010 (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Peace Through Strength?

 “President Trump successfully campaigned on a Peace Through Strength agenda, but his advisers at the Office of Management and Budget were apparently not listening. For the defense budget, OMB has requested a fifth year straight of Biden administration funding, leaving military spending flat, which is a cut in real terms,” Sen. Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a May 2 statement. “[R]econciliation defense spending does not replace the need for real growth in the military’s base budget. That is what I will work to achieve in Congress with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to implement the President’s Peace Through Strength agenda,” Wicker said.

Failing to provide the Department of Defense and U.S. service members the resources they need to protect our country will simply ensure Americans pay a higher price in the future confronting wars that could have been prevented. Ronald Reagan famously said in an address to the nation on March 23, 1983, “We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression — to preserve freedom and peace.” To ensure that remains a reality and not just rhetoric, Congress should 1) appropriate the full $150 billion in reconciliation defense spending and 2) authorize and appropriate before October 1 a Department of Defense base budget for fiscal year 2026 at least 3 to 5 percent above inflation compared to the fiscal year 2025 enacted level.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ryan Brobst is a senior research analyst. For more analysis from the authors and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Brad on X @Brad_L_Bowman and Ryan @RyanBrobst_ Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.