Foreign affairs

National security departments and agencies have been deprioritized

Diplomacy and other non-military tools in America’s toolbox, in other words, have become vital to how the U.S. defends and promotes its national security interests. As Defense Secretary James Mattis himself saidto the Senate Armed Services Committee four years ago, “If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.”

The American people agree with the sentiment. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 61 percent of Americans surveyed believed good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace — 31 points higher than the number who said military strength is the most important. Diplomacy as a second-tier foreign policy tool could partly be why 41 percent of veterans in a Charles Koch Institute/RealClearPolitics survey think America is less safe than it was 20 years ago.

It is time for the foreign policy elite in this country to catch up with what the American people have already recognized. Which is an effective foreign policy that relies on a balanced deployment of national power, leveraging our economic and diplomatic influence to achieve positive outcomes and reserving our military for the missions that most seriously impact American security and prosperity in a negative way.