Competing With One Hand Tied Behind the Back.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Editor's Notes

On Feb. 12, Defense Department Comptroller David L. Norquist presented the Trump administration's fiscal year 2019 budget request.

It was, for the most part, what military leadership and industry have been hoping for: a topline $74 billion increase over 2017 including the biggest pay raise for troops in nine years, slots for another 29,000 personnel and the beginning of a long recovery after unfavorable budget cycles.

After years of suffering under budget caps and continuing resolutions, happy days are here again.

Meanwhile, across the Potomac River at Foggy Bottom, the budget rollout was a bloodbath, which followed a year of serious hemorrhaging. The State Department proposed a $14 billion cut that included its international development and aid agencies.

While this was just a proposal--and Congress will more than likely restore much of this funding--the department won't be able to spend it on salaries for personnel who aren't there. Low, mid and top-level diplomats have been departing the State Department in droves. Senior appointed positions have gone unfilled.

In military terms, the diplomatic corps is becoming a "hollowed out force," and it can't come at a worse time.

Back over at the Pentagon, Norquist said: "It is increasingly apparent that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian values and in the process replace the free and open order that has enabled global security since World War II."

The nation needs to leverage all elements of national power, he said. "The Department of Defense's enduring mission is to provide combat ready military forces to deter war and reinforce America's traditional tools of diplomacy."

He continued: "Great power competition, not terrorism, has emerged as the central challenge to U.S. security and prosperity." Both China and Russia are spreading their influence without having to flex much of their military might. True, Russia has done so in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. China built a new military base in disputed waters near the Spratly Islands with none of its neighbors, or the United States, willing to oppose it.

Other than those examples, the peer competitors are spreading their influence through soft power.

China is doing so mostly through its deep pockets, and not just in Asia, but in any country on any continent. The U.S. aid agencies might say, "We'll give you this money if you hold free and fair elections and you stop chopping down your rainforest."

But when the...