The Defense Stimulus by Tom Donnelly at The Weekly Standard.
The politics of the current economic crisis are fluid -- the Bush administration's original diktats for bailing out the troubled financial sector and the auto industry have generated growing resistance -- but it's likely that Barack Obama will be able to produce a stimulus package quickly after his inauguration. Even House Republican leader Rep. John Boehner "believe[s] Washington has to act." Indeed, the stimulus debate that remains was succinctly framed by his counterpart in the upper house, Sen. Mitch McConnell: "The question is: How big and in what form?"
A key part of the answer on the spending side of the equation is increased defense spending, by at least $20 billion per year, particularly on procurement and personnel. These kinds of expenditures not only make economic good sense, but would help close the large and long-standing gap between U.S. strategy and military resources. If bridges need fixing, so too do the tools with which our military fights. A critical element in any recovery will be strengthening the foundations of the globalized economy, built upon U.S. worldwide security guarantees...
More at The Weekly Standard.