National Security Plank

General Preamble

Democrats support a strong national defense that includes considerations for all aspects of defense, not just defense provided by the Armed Forces.  We recognize that our national security depends upon a strong and just economy, a stable federal budget, a stable environment and our perception in the world as a responsible member of the world community.  We are opposed to the notion of world domination and are committed to a foreign policy that holds the use of military force as the last option for national defense, to be used only when available diplomatic and preventive options have been exhausted consistent with international law and our treaty obligations.  In this regard, we recognize that the current level of military and security spending is partly the result of an industrial military complex whose interests are in generating corporate profits regardless (irrespective) of the military necessity:

• unsustainable and unnecessary, and is crippling our government's ability to deal with our many serious problems, including unemployment, massive debt and looming catastrophic climate change;
• almost entirely spent for projection of power overseas through over 700 military bases and preparations for foreign wars, rather than for actual defense of the country; and
• grossly out of proportion with the rest of the world or any other group of countries.

We will heed President Dwight Eisenhower's admonition that: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.  The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."  In this regard, we recognize that every $100 billion/year reallocated from the military to civilian employment would support some 4 million jobs at the median wage.


We support cooperation between all national defense departments, such as Defense, State, Energy, Homeland Security and others so that redundancies and needless weapons systems and overseas deployments can be eliminated while ensuring that no legitimate aspect of total national defense goes under-served.


To protect and defend California and our Constitution, Democrats will:

Statement of Principles

• Strongly support the maintaining and strengthening of Naval Base Ventura County both militarily and economically;
  
• Rebalance our national security portfolio in the context of a consolidated defense budget to place more emphasis on nonmilitary security tools such as diplomacy and non-military foreign aid;
  
• Reduce the DOD budget substantially - and reallocate the savings to other priorities including assistance to state and local governments to maintain and rehire laid off employees;
  
• Recognize that energy is a national security issue. In this light we need to move towards total reliable renewable energy sources so we are not dependent on unstable, hostile regions of the world which do not support human rights and our core values.
  
• Build out renewable power grids and rebuild the nation's infrastructure, investing in technology and manufacturing jobs in the U.S., and deficit reduction;
  
• Reduce the defense development and procurement programs to those items deemed essential for defense against real threats to our homeland and national security interests;
  
• Ensure that military spending prioritizes defense of the homeland and not the siting of numerous military bases on foreign soil as a substitute for robust diplomatic engagement;
  
• Increase the security of ports by greatly increasing the inspection routine at all air and seaports and by further limiting points of access and strengthening inspection protocols on all land border crossings;
  
• Integrate anti-terrorist information and actions by rapidly establishing the exchange of threat information among the anti-terrorist operating agencies;
  
• Increase foreign non-military aid dedicated to improved anti-terrorist police training, investigation, information exchange, and international cooperation;
  
• Increase federal funding to states and communities for equipping, training and expanding the force of first-responders;
  
• Rebuild and strengthen and reaffirm the primary role of the National Guard as the states' principal means of providing internal security under the command of the Governor;
  
• Recognize that since the United States Constitution is supreme in all matters involving the rights of American citizens, our representatives in Congress should reaffirm the civil and personal rights in that document and not trade them off against invasive and intrusive security legislation against imagined or exaggerated threats.  "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" - the price must not be our constitutional rights; and
  
• When income and wealth disparities become too large the stability of the society and thus national security become unstable.  When large majorities of the country no longer have a stake because they have no assets, no apparent voice in the way the government runs/operates and where the institutions of government are seen as corrupt in ways favoring the wealthy, the political stability of the country becomes subject to revolution, a National Security issue.