The unpredictable day-to-day behaviour of the new United States administration continues to provoke widespread consternation. Amid the noise, however, one important signal of the unfolding Donald Trump era is being neglected: the rebuilding of the American military.
Why this is so, when the country's armed forces are already by a very large margin the most powerful in the world, is a question worth asking. The Pentagon’s budget is close to 45% of all global military spending, so it seems ludicrous to envisage a further expansion. Yet Trump and his key generals do see a renewed surge as the certain way to turn the slogan “make America great again” from rhetoric into enduring reality (see "Trump and the Pentagon", 17 November 2016).
The precise details of where the money will be spent are not yet clear, but it is likely that two areas will predominate. The first is military power-projection involving substantial conventional forces, especially an expansion of the capacities of the US navy and marine corps. Much of this will be focused on China rather than Russia. About Moscow, two factors mitigate concern: that Russian military forces are actually weak, underfunded and not remotely a match for American, and that Trump firmly believes that he and Vladimir Putin can get along just fine.
