Hillary Clinton, who earlier endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of the November elections in the US, intimated that America’s defense spending was veering down the “wrong path”, accusing President Donald Trump of mismanagement.
In an essay published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday, the former secretary of state slammed “exorbitant” Pentagon spending on “legacy weapons systems”.
She urged Congress to review the defense spending budget, explaining that considering the array of current adversaries the country was facing, costly weapons systems dating back to the Cold War era and the fight against terror were outdated.
Clinton said that funding ought to be shifted towards “domestic renewal” and foreign diplomacy, with investments boosting “American innovation and bolstering strategically important industries and supply chains”.
“Today’s competition is not a traditional global military contest of force and firepower… Dusting off the Cold War playbook will do little to prepare the United States for adversaries that use new tools to fight in the gray zone between war and peace, exploit its open Internet and economy to undermine American democracy, and expose the vulnerability of many of its legacy weapons systems,” said the former secretary of state.
Clinton, who served as the 67th United States secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, emphatically called for slashing funding for some of the most expensive weapons systems, in favor of embracing “a broader approach”.
She pointed to emerging threats such as cyberattacks, deadly viruses able to generate pandemics, carbon emissions affecting the global climate, online propaganda, and “shifting supply chains”, Sputnik reported, citing the Foreign Affairs’ essay.
Source: Sputnik
