Policy Priorities

VOD believes that a large, major-power war would be the single most traumatic event in our Nation’s long history—worse even than World Wars I and II. If an enemy chooses to test us in battle, the U.S. Armed Forces must be primed and ready.

The sole purpose of a military is to train for war and, if called upon, win that war. The United States must never seek war or conflict, but if war and conflict find us, we must be prepared to settle it on our terms and on our timeline. Victory must come as fast as possible with the lowest possible cost in life and treasure. The American people have a right to insist that their military functions as designed: as a war-winning machine that will not rest until total victory is realized. But America does not have a preordained right to success on the battlefield. If we do not fight for a military that wins, we must resign ourselves to a military that loses. And with it, the consequences that follow.

In a time of unprecedented threats to the American homeland, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps are their smallest size since the days before World War II. The Air Force is its smallest and oldest in history. Many bomber pilots fly the same aircraft their grandfathers flew in Korea and Vietnam. This represents an unprecedented risk to our national security—a risk Americans should find intolerable.

America must never make herself an easy target. Because the combined threat from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism has surpassed the threat posed by the Soviet Union, VOD believes the military must, at a minimum, return to Cold War-levels of military readiness and strength. As America is a proud maritime power—and given China’s new claim to the world’s largest navy—our military rebuild must start with our fleet. But all elements of our Armed Forces, from the land to the sea to the skies to space and cyberspace, must be made ready for the harsh realities of 21st-century conflict.

When our sons and daughters go into battle, the American people must have the assurance that they go in with the best training, equipment, and leadership in the world. In the past, political leaders have let our service members down. They allowed the rot of politics to take root in the military and used taxpayer money to fund the decay. They turned the Pentagon into a glorified jobs program—with its number of civilian federal employees at its highest in history—when the services maintained the lowest troop levels in decades. They insisted the military distract itself from true threats like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism and instead concentrated on divisive political issues—most notably, controversial and racist diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. They crushed our troops with mountains of paperwork at the expense of hard, physical training and realistic battle planning. 

That profound lack of focus weakened our national security and diminished the reputation of America’s Armed Forces. But no more. Veterans On Duty stands behind today’s Pentagon leaders who have taken aim at the harmful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies established under previous administrations. We join them in calling for lethality and focus to be restored amongst the ranks of our military.

Success on the battlefield cannot be achieved solely by American troops but by the combined might of our allied forces. We advocate for strengthened ties with our treaty allies and partners, provided those friends and allies pay their fair share of the defense burden, and we applaud the use of strong diplomatic efforts to persuade allied nations to commit to greater defense spending and combat training. Now we must ensure they follow through. We should seek to increase opportunities to train with our allies whenever feasible to ensure seamless allied combat operations and intelligence sharing. It is only by ensuring the strength of those who will fight alongside us in battle that we decrease the chances of a difficult and protracted conflict with capable rivals like China and Russia.