The severe partisan divide currently embroiling the United States creates unnecessary risks that threaten to undermine President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy. If the Trump administration believes in the strategy and wants it to last beyond the 47th president’s tenure—and to project unity to America’s adversaries and enable stronger collective defense with its allies and partners—it must try a new, somewhat unfamiliar approach: bipartisanship.

Fortunately, a practical path exists for both parties to work together, so that the United States and the free world are ready for war and capable of maintaining peace amid escalating threats globally.

Since Trump’s second term began in January, he has issued an executive order to build a “Golden Dome for America,” a multi-layered missile defense shield against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” He has issued another order to rename the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” its name until 1949, projecting a “peace through strength” approach to international relations. Moreover, under Trump’s repeated prodding, NATO finally agreed for each member to commit 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) annually to defense by 2035—a commitment that, once completed, will nearly double the alliance’s annual defense contribution.

These are all defensible steps that, in Trump’s view, strengthen US national security. Yet the president has persistently been pessimistic about the possibility of bipartisan support for his initiatives. Accordingly, he has implemented them through brute force: using presidential authority to issue executive orders without waiting for Congress to pass laws supporting his agenda, and relying on the Republican majority in both chambers to shoot down prospective challenges.

Likewise, the Democratic Party believes the best way to save the United States and the free world from Trump’s initiatives and actions is to capitalize on Pew Research Center’s data that American adults affiliating with or leaning toward the Democratic Party is only one percentage point behind those for the Republican Party. If Democrats campaign aggressively, emphasizing their strengths and exploiting Republican vulnerabilities—instead of helping to repair them—they can likely gain a few additional percentage points of support, theoretically enough to win back Congress in 2026 and the White House in 2028. Thus, both parties’ view toward national security policy is not primarily about how it affects national security, but how it will affect the outcomes of the upcoming elections.

In short, both parties are........

© The National Interest