In Foreign Affairs, Hillary Clinton has a laundry list of ideas for U.S. war policy. (I like to say war instead of defense or security. Because that’s what we’re talking about. She talks a little bit about pandemics and climate change early on, but she gets down to war and weapons pretty quickly. This gives us a pretty good idea about what she would have been doing for the last four years.

• Retire aging weapons systems and close unnecessary bases (as she explains, easier to say than do because each factory and each base supports the economy of some place, and the elected officials representing that place will fight tooth and nail against the cuts. She says one way around this is for Congress to agree on an up or down vote on a comprehensive package of reforms, rather than argue over individual bases or factories.)
• “Invest in accelerated maintenance and next-generation submarines” rather than new aircraft carriers, which are vulnerable to clouds of cheap missiles and drones.
• Long range bombers
• “mechanisms that allow for consultation with China and Russia to reduce the chances that a long-range conventional attack is mistaken for a nuclear strike, which could lead to disastrous escalation.” (Joe here, yeah, we’re coming to bomb you, but it’s just the strongest normal bombs we have, nothing to worry about…)
• fewer active-duty soldiers and tanks
• “upgraded intelligence and communications systems” (shuttered tank factories take note, this is the stuff you need to learn about…)
• “a renewed commitment to diplomacy” (Joe here…yeah, we just want to talk…just talk and maybe we won’t have to blow shit up)
• “it will make sense for other NATO members to concentrate on strengthening their conventional ground forces so that they can deter incursions in eastern Europe or lead counterterrorism missions in Africa.” (Joe here…no, those aren’t our guns by your border…we just sold them to the guy who lives there…nothing to worry about, just stay away from your border and everything will be okay…)
• “rebuilding of the country’s industrial and technological strength” (especially things that are useful for war and weapons…) “It’s not enough anymore to prioritize materials and technologies used for weapons systems and semiconductors; the United States’ security also depends on the control of pharmaceuticals, clean energy, 5G networks, and artificial intelligence.” 

Towards the bottom, she gets to nuclear weapons:

Perhaps most important, the United States needs a new approach to nuclear weapons. For starters, it should not be deploying low-yield nuclear warheads on submarines or nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which expand the range of scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons and increase the risk of a misunderstanding escalating quickly into a full-blown nuclear exchange. Nor should the United States spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years on its nuclear arsenal, as is currently planned. Instead, it should significantly reduce its reliance on old intercontinental ballistic missiles, pursue a “newer and fewer” approach to modernization, and revive the arms control diplomacy that the Trump administration scrapped. A top priority should be to extend the New START treaty with Russia, which Ellen Tauscher, the State Department’s top arms control official, and I helped negotiate at the beginning of the Obama administration. It will also be important to persuade China to join nuclear negotiations.

Foreign Affairs

(Joe here…yeah…no, not the small ones, just the really big ones…no, nothing to worry about, they’re so big we would never even think about using them…no…right, we want you to throw yours away…yeah, we’ll throw some of ours away too…right, nothing to worry about, the old ones, not the new, really really big shiny ones, which are so big and pretty we would never even think about blowing them up…yeah, we know we have a lot more of them, just throw some of your new ones away and then maybe we’ll throw some of our old ones away while we’re building the shiny new ones…)