America Needs to Take Better Care of Its Military

New York Times

2 days ago

For 12 days in June, the United States teetered on the edge of yet another war in the Middle East. We seem to have avoided the worst for now, but there is a chance that fighting between Israel and Iran could resume — especially if diplomatic efforts to restrain Iran's nuclear ambitions fail. And pressure on President Trump from prominent interventionist Republican policymakers remains to support a regime change operation against Iran, which also risks reigniting the conflict.
At the same time, the threat of war with China looms large. China continues to rapidly expand its Navy and build capabilities that would enable it to seize Taiwan if it so chooses. We are now less than 18 months away from 2027, the year that Admiral Phil Davidson, a former commander of the military Indo-Pacific Command, once said China could be able to seize Taiwan through force. A war with nuclear-armed China would be several orders of magnitude more dangerous than a war with Iran.
Regardless, the United States still must be prepared to wage a major conflict. And while there is no doubt that the U.S. military remains the most powerful and capable fighting force in the world, it is suffering from systemic challenges in a critical component of warfighting success: personnel readiness.
Even on the modern high-tech battlefield, war is still a people business. For the Department of Defense, this means it must care for its people along with developing its weapons in order to maintain lethality while also creating an environment that incentivizes Americans to continue to serve. When service members and their families cannot rely on the programs that are intended to ensure their quality of life, it distracts them from their duties, which inevitably limits their effectiveness in combat.
A critical challenge the second Trump administration inherited is the state of the Military Health System. The system is responsible for caring for over nine million uniformed service members, military families, retirees and contractors around the world, while also providing care for wounded service members at home. But the system has been declining, and budgets for military hospitals have fallen by nearly 12 percent since 2015. As a result, its ability to provide adequate care to these groups and support the Defense Department in a major military conflict has become severely compromised.
Military treatment facilities currently face a global maintenance backlog exceeding $10 billion, which has led many M.H.S. hospitals to fall into disrepair. The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside of Washington, D.C., which routinely treats presidents and members of Congress, had to evacuate several clinics earlier this year, owing to burst pipes that resulted from delayed maintenance.
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