From Military.com:
“Joe Biden
Has Been Elected President. Here’s What That Means for the Military”
President-elect
Joe Biden has promised to lead the nation as commander in chief with a steady
hand, challenging increasing competition from China and Russia and reforging
ties with European and other allies. Biden was declared the winner in
Pennsylvania Nov. 7, putting him at 273 electoral votes and clinching the
presidency. The Associated Press, which also, unlike the major news networks,
has called Arizona for Biden, reported he led by 34,458 votes in Pennsylvania
when the state was called for him. That result is likely to face legal
challenges from the campaign of President Donald Trump. "Joe Biden has not
been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly
contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign
has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate
victor," Trump said in a released statement. "In Pennsylvania, for
example, our legal observers were not permitted meaningful access to watch the
counting process. Legal votes decide who
is president, not the news media."
if the results
stand, as is expected, Biden will navigate national security challenges with a
slimmer budget, having promised to shed legacy equipment or systems that aren't
"relevant for tomorrow's wars." "I will be a commander in chief
who always lives up to our most sacred obligation to protect our men and women
in uniform and honors the sacrifice they and their families make," Biden
said in a statement posted to his website Sept. 19. He has pledged to end the
"forever wars" in Afghanistan and the Middle East and, like his
predecessor, said he would pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan "in his first
timer," he told Military Officer magazine last month. Any residual
presence in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq and Syria, would be "focused only
on counterterrorism operations and supporting local partners," he said. "When
I take office, I will want to hear from both our military leadership and our
civilian security experts, as well as our allies before making final decisions
on where and how we should adjust our overseas presence," Biden said.
Defense budgets
could shrink under Biden, who told Military Officer magazine, "We can
maintain a strong defense and protect our safety and security for less." "The
real question is not how much we invest -- it's how we invest," he said. That
could leave big-ticket plans that emerged under the Trump administration --
such as the recently announced plans to build a 500-ship Navy fleet -- on the
chopping block. Biden said he'll prioritize "smart investments in
technologies and innovations" to meet future threats, including in cyber,
space, unmanned systems and artificial intelligence. "We have to move away
from investments in legacy systems that won't be relevant for tomorrow's
wars," he told Military Officer, "and we have to rethink the
contributions we and our allies make to our collective security." But even
with a leaner Defense Department, Biden has said he will seek to exert national
power by increasing reliance on other tools such as diplomacy, economic
strategy, education and science and technology. "We do not need large
deployments of combat forces to maintain our security," he said.
Biden has
promised to relaunch Joining Forces, a program that supports military families
and veterans that his wife Jill jump-started with first lady Michelle Obama. While
the operations tempo is not the same as it was when Biden was vice president,
he said the White House will ensure that military personnel receive competitive
wages and families are supported, with the resources they need to thrive,
including improved child care and opportunities for employment and career
advancement. "The Bidens are a military family, and we know that military
families serve, too. After two decades of sustained warfare, it is our duty to
ensure that military families have the necessary support to thrive," he
told Military Officer. For families hoping that some Trump-era changes remain,
regarding benefits such as housing improvements, Biden said he will "never
balance the budget on the backs of military men and women and their families."
He pledged to continue working on the tenant bill of rights designed to support
service members living in privatized housing and hold the companies that build
and maintain the properties accountable to residents and taxpayers. He also
promised to assess planned health care reforms at the DoD, saying that no
beneficiaries should be transitioned to private care until the data is
available showing that communities can support an influx of new patients. "Individuals'
needs should be assessed to make sure that any such transfer does not lower the
quality of their health care," he said. He would also order a review of
the services' plans to reduce their medical personnel positions -- an effort
underway to cut more than 17,000 jobs.
Regarding the
Department of Veterans Affairs, Biden said he will expand benefits to ensure
that victims of burn pits or exposure to military-related pollutants have
access to health care and compensation, and added that he plans to improve
access to community care under the Mission Act, which he said was not properly
initiated and has been underfunded. "My administration will strike the
right balance between VA and community care, but do it in a timely, responsible
and accountable way for our veterans," he said. He also pledged to expand
telehealth opportunities and focus on veteran suicide and homelessness, giving
them the "attention and priority that they demand."
The former
senator and vice president also said he would follow the recommendation of a
congressional commission that women register for the Selective Service System,
but he said there is no need for a draft. "We should explore targeted
recruiting efforts to build a military that is more geographically and
demographically representative of the nation as a whole and that has the skill
sets needed for modern warfare," Biden said. In an opinion piece for Fox
News on Monday, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, a Republican who served
under President Bill Clinton, called Biden a "steady, stable, responsible
leader who has steered our country through difficult storms in the past." "At
the very core of Joe's being is a visible sense of decency, a genuine humility
and a deep-seated empathy for the pain of others," Cohen wrote.
Who Biden will
choose to lead the Department of Defense, as well as Veterans Affairs, remains
to be seen. Michele Flournoy, the former under secretary of defense for policy
and cofounder of the prominent think tank Center for a New American Security,
has been at the top of many speculative lists. Lawrence Korb, an analyst with
the Center for American Progress and former assistant secretary of defense in
the Reagan administration, said, however, that Biden may choose a woman with
combat experience, like Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., an Army helicopter pilot
who lost her legs in Iraq. It's time, Korb added, for a woman to lead the
Pentagon, after 27 men have held the position.
^ What a Candidate
promises to do while they are running and what they actually do when President don’t
always match up. Hopefully, Biden doesn’t simply slash money from the Military
or from Veterans and that he works to fix the current issues with the Military and
the VA. ^
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