John McNaughton Quotes

It is not how much you spend on defense as much as how you spend it.

No nation, no matter how destitute, likes to be told how much military "security" to buy.

I suspect that Donald Trump is going to be very tough with those countries that don't spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. He will ask them why should we allow a free-ride policy.

As long as I am president, we will maintain the greatest fighting force that the world has ever known.

There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure the peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.

If the military is to show the capabilities that we demand and expect of it, then the defense budget has to continue to rise.

At Concerned Veterans for America, we've made the case that the defense budget could be targeted for spending reform, but in a targeted fashion that genuinely changes unsustainable spending trajectories while preserving U.S. defense capacity.

Well, no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defense, but that doesn't mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank check for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all.

The reality is, the United States has global interests. Our defense budget is about the same as the defense budgets or military budgets of every other country in the world put together.

Today, the US spends less on defense as a percentage of our economy than we did at any time since he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the world's only superpower, that is an invitation to very serious trouble.

The Defense Department has a great deal of influence on foreign policy, and State has very little impact on defense policy.

There is only one way safely and legitimately to reduce the cost of national security, and that is to reduce the need for it.

Armchair generals assume that nations decide on their foreign policy objectives and then subordinate everything else to achieving them. Life is more complicated. Threats, opportunities and risks are always uncertain, but the economic costs of maximum preparedness are definite.

Throughout history every nation has tried to defend itself as far away from home as possible

Americans will cheerfully forgo the luxury of new automobiles in order to assure adequate mechanized equipment for defense.

Japan is the only country in the world that does not call its defense organizations a military. That is absurd, when the government is spending 5 trillion yen a year for self-defense.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. So I think it's a cost-benefit ratio. The more that we put into the State Department's diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.

You're not hearing people like Madeleine Albright argue that the budget of the State Department should be as large as the Defense Department. The Pentagon is going to be larger by its nature. It's going to have more people.

I have spoken to Donald Trump about this. He understands the dramatic budget cuts our military has faced.

We had eight years of Barack Obama depleting our military, ignoring a lot of the threats around the world.

I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is a combination of the budget cuts Barack Obama has, as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is making our future less certain and less secure.

John McCain is the guy that has advocated for war everywhere. He would bankrupt the nation.

The biggest budget is the military budget. For what? We're fighting two wars in very small countries that have no nuclear weapons, that have no capabilities to destroy anything. They probably couldn't even get to America.

Their [the U.S.’s] defense budget in absolute figures is almost 25 times bigger than Russia’s. This is what in defense is referred to as ‘their home — their fortress.’ And good for them, I say. Well done!