UNKNOWN: Please be seated. When many people in America and around the world hear "peace through strength," they immediately think of Ronald Reagan. And that's fair because it was one of his guiding principles, but it was not his original idea. Some may say we should trace the concept all the way back to the Roman Empire, but let's fast forward to America's founding.
In January 1790, President George Washington said this in his first annual address to Congress: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." In other words, we achieve deterrence, we achieve peace, through strength. Through the centuries, peace through strength has been a concept embraced by many in both parties. It has become a bipartisan tradition, an American tradition.
It's one of the reasons why that at 10 of the 11 annual Reagan National Defense Forums, widely regarded as the preeminent international defense gathering in the world, we have welcomed the sitting secretary of defense, and this year we're honored to welcome Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
It is clear that peace — peace through strength has been a guiding principle for Secretary Hegseth, the department he leads and the Trump administration as a whole. Now, this is the first time that the secretary has been here as the leader of the Pentagon, but it is not his first time at the Defense Forum.
And in fact, as I thought about his keynote address this year, I remembered something he said back in 2018: "We cannot forget that our military is ultimately what undergirds our strength and our ability to project it." That sounds to me like restoring deterrence with peace through strength.
So, Mr. Secretary, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for joining us today –
[Applause]
And for joining your predecessors in the finest tradition of the Defense Forum. Ladies and gentlemen, to deliver the 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum keynote address, followed by a conversation with Lucas Tomlinson of Fox News, please welcome the United States Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth.
[Applause]
SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH: Well, thank you and good afternoon. You know, folks in Washington like to invoke President Reagan's name, often when they criticize President Trump. They say or at least insinuate that Donald Trump is nothing like Ronald Reagan. They say the current president's approach is nothing like the vision championed by Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War as we grappled with the Soviets and ultimately prevailed.
But those folks are wrong. They're dead wrong. Most who invoke Ronald Reagan's name today, especially self-styled Republican hawks, are not much like Ronald Reagan. The policies they've championed are nothing like his. In fact, for the better part of 30 years, they've been quite the opposite.
If you look at actual policies, Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan. It's President Trump who has inherited and restored President Reagan's powerful but focused and realistic approach to national defense. It's therefore only fitting that we gather at the Reagan Presidential Library today to talk about President Trump's America First, peace through strength, common sense agenda and what it means at the Department of War.
One need only look at the results to understand why President Trump is that rightful heir. So, let's look at what Reagan and his administration actually did. Reagan rebuilt the military after Vietnam, and that is rightfully considered one of his greatest achievements. President Trump has done and is doing the same, making historic investments in defense.
But President Reagan also believed sincerely in the peace part of peace through strength, as his actions showed. It was not a popular thing to do at the time at the height of the Cold War to talk to communists, yet President Reagan did. During his high-profile meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev and others, Ronald Reagan saw the prudence and potential in engaging with our nation's adversaries from a position of strength; so he did, even in the face of fierce criticism at home, including from his own party.
Now, President Reagan wasn't naive. He recognized that fruitful engagements with our adversaries were only possible from a position of strength, especially military strength, which is why he focused so much on building up the American military. We still talk about the Reagan buildup, and my kids and yours will someday talk about the Trump buildup.
President Reagan and his team inherited a military worn down from their generation's endless war in Vietnam, and they took the lessons of that war to heart. This is why he was so deliberate in how he used the joint force. Indeed, the most famous military doctrine of the Reagan administration, named for his secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, was specifically designed to correct for the failures that led to Vietnam.
Among other key principles, the Weinberger Doctrine stipulated: one, the United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interest of the United States or its allies are involved; two, U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
Third, U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives. And fourth, the commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.
This is sound stuff, and it was reflected in how President Reagan actually used the American military — namely in a focused, decisive manner and only when he determined that it was in our nation's vital interest to do so. In fact, throughout his time in office, President Reagan only committed U.S. ground forces twice, in Grenada and in Lebanon. Otherwise, he focused the joint force on the Cold War era threat and priority theater, Soviets in Europe.
That's how President Reagan achieved peace through strength, always with a clear eye toward lasting peace. Suffice it to say Ronald Reagan's disciplined, focused and realistic approach was a far cry from the grandiose nation building, moralistic and rudderless wars that many of his self-described acolytes led us into in the decades after Reagan left office, wars my generation fought in.
Indeed, it's only under President Trump's leadership during his first term and now that we've been able to restore America's greatness after years of suffering under the so-called bipartisan consensus, which is really just a euphemism for disastrous foreign policy. Out with utopian idealism, in with hardnosed realism.
To be specific, Ronald Reagan taught us the value of focused, powerful leadership, but his so-called disciples didn't heed that lesson. Since the end of the Cold War, a generation of self-proclaimed neo-Reaganites have touted Reagan's name but didn't govern like him. All the bluster, none of the clarity.
That's especially true in the military realm. This generation of self-proclaimed neo-Reaganites abandoned Reagan's actual wise policies in favor of unchecked neoconservatism and economic globalism. In economics, they dismantled our industrial base, shipping it overseas. At the same time, in diplomacy and defense, they swore off the clear-eyed flexible realism of Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower.
Instead, they set about trying to make America the policeman, the protector, the arbiter of the whole world. Democracy for all they say, even in the Pech River valley, even when people don't want it, can't do it. They turned American allies into dependents, all but encouraging these nations across Europe and around the world to free ride while we subsidize their defense with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
These self-described neo-Reaganites sought global military hegemony under the auspices of peace through strength. Instead, we got rudderless wars in the Middle East, land war in Europe and the economic rise of China. After presiding over such a poor performance, it's remarkable that these people still think they're qualified to speak in public, let alone moralize to the rest of us. Some of them have even been awarded for it on this very stage.
But President Trump knows better. He knows what it means to restore peace through strength on an enduring basis, to put our nation's interests first and the American people first in a way that is practical, applicable and common sense that leaves, importantly, America better but also leaves our allies better off.
It's the vision that he ran on and led on in his first term, and he's building on it now in his second. In — it's a vision, not the quasi-imperialist delusions that led us to so many disasters in the recent decades, that will actually bring us back to the true legacy of Ronald Reagan. Out with utopian idealism, in with hardnosed realism.
Just look at the facts. Like President Reagan, President Trump is dedicated to both sides of the peace through strength coin, not just using that phrase as a thin veil for warmongering. In less than a year, President Trump has secured eight major peace deals, including a historic end to the war in Gaza, and he's not finished yet.
Even as we speak, under the president's leadership, we are working tirelessly to end the tragic war in Ukraine, a war that never would have started in the first place if he had been president. The world sees an entirely different America today. These historic opportunities for peace are not happening by chance. It's President Trump's vision and determination.
Like President Reagan, President Trump is willing to talk to rivals, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today. This is born of strength, not weakness. It is born of clarity of purpose. Folks in Washington like to criticize President Trump for doing so, but those critics forget that this is exactly what Ronald Reagan did, and America was better off for it.
Like President Reagan, President Trump also knows how important it is to negotiate from a position of strength, especially military strength. And at the newly renamed Department of War, thanks to President Trump's leadership and to Congress, we received a historic boost in funding last year and believe that is only just the beginning.
Make no mistake about it. President Trump is hell bent on maintaining and accelerating the most powerful military the world has ever seen, the most powerful, the most lethal and American made, the arsenal of freedom. We're also restoring the warrior ethos back to basics: readiness, accountability, standards, discipline, lethality.
I'm not sure if you saw, but I recently gave a speech on that topic to a few generals in Quantico. The War Department is the sword and the shield of peace through strength. We are the strength department, and we stand ready to wield that sword as President Trump directs.
The opposite of peace through strength is war through weakness, wokeness, weakness and war, all specialties of Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin. The debacle in Afghanistan, a stain on our country and a sin committed against the troops; the weakness that unleashed Islamist war against Israel on October 7th; and that same weakness invited war in Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin saw the open door and he took it; spy balloons flying over our country and SECDEFs going AWOL for a week. Wokeness, weakness, war.
You know, I was recently tempted, when the discussion went out about hitting drug boats, to use the phrase righteous strike. But then my team counseled me against it, said, sir, that's the phrase that was used by Mark Milley when the family — when a family of Afghans was struck as a response to what happened at Abbey Gate. They called it for two straight days a righteous strike, when they would have known within hours exactly what they struck. Weakness, wokeness, war.
It's a new day. With Operation Midnight Hammer, the world saw, after decades of hemming and hawing, the decisive effect of American military strength in obliterating the Iranian nuclear program. President Trump said they can't have a nuclear bomb, and he meant it. Others have said it; President Trump did it.
This was an operate — this operation was a textbook example of the Weinberger Doctrine in action: decisive focus applied in a focused, clear-eyed way that advanced our nation's interests while avoiding another protracted war. Same goes for our limited but lethal actions against the Houthis in Yemen.
Joe Biden tolerated the targeting of U.S. shipping. President Trump restored freedom of navigation, another foundational and core national interest. Somewhere Thomas Jefferson is smiling. And right now, the world is seeing the strength of American resolve and stemming the flow of lethal drugs to our country.
Here again we've been focused and here we've been clear. If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring — bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you. Let there be no doubt about it. President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests. Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.
Like President Reagan, President Trump knows how to do so in a way that is tied to a clear purpose, with a decisive and credible theory of military victory. Just as the lessons of Vietnam informed Ronald Reagan and his Weinberger Doctrine, so too the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan guide President Trump and his secretary today.
For years, a bipartisan consensus of neo conservatives and liberal internationalists led us from one disaster to another. They sent our nation's sons and daughters to war after rudderless war, even as they allowed our allies to grow weaker and our potential rivals stronger. From the very beginning nearly a decade ago, President Trump called this out for what it is – stupid – an America last foreign policy. And they fought him for it. They tried to jail him for it and they failed.
Well, their time is over. Their America last bipartisan consensus is done. It is finished. Under President Trump's leadership, after decades of disastrous decisions by his — by this nation's self-appointed so-called foreign policy elite, we're once again putting American interests first. We're prioritizing our nation's security, freedom and prosperity, our citizens.
As laid out by President Trump, we're doing it in a way that leaves not only our nation better off, but also the world. Out with utopian realism, in — or out with utopian idealism, excuse me, in with hardnosed realism. The president's approach is one of that flexible but practical realism, common sense, if you will, that looks at the world with a clear-eyed perspective essential for serving America's real interests.
The approach is informed by strategic rationality and cost-benefit assessments. We will define our vital interests in ways that are reasonable and that make sense to ordinary Americans. This is the approach and mindset that shapes the department's focus.
As a result, the War Department will not be distracted by democracy building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building. We will instead put our nation's practical, concrete interests first.
We will deter war. We will advance our interests. We will defend our people. Peace is our goal. And in service of that objective, we will always be ready to fight and win decisively if called upon. As part of this mission, we are asking American taxpayers to fund the world's greatest military.
We're asking mothers and fathers across America to trust us with their most precious resource, their sons and daughters, and we will honor their trust and their sacrifice. The historic recruiting and retention numbers of President Trump's first year show who the American people trust.
This means we will not send America's best to advance foolhardy or reckless adventures halfway around the world. It also means not asking them to pick up the tab for allies who should fund their own defense. Instead and above all, it means that we only ask our warriors to fight for things that make America and Americans safe, free and prosperous: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, nothing more and nothing less.
Again, this is common sense, and that's what President Trump's War Department is all about. This commonsense approach means prioritizing four key lines of effort at the Department of War: first, defending the U.S. homeland and our hemisphere; second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation; third, increased burden-sharing for U.S. allies and partners; and fourth, supercharging the U.S. defense industrial base.
As we apply President Trump's approach to flexible — a flexible realism, the first two lines of effort are the primary operational focus of the joint force, for the simple reason that these missions matter the most for safety, freedom and prosperity of Americans.
At the same time, however, other threats persist around the world, including in Europe and the Middle East. We cannot ignore them, nor should we. That's why our approach also prioritizes burden-sharing and burden shifting. Indeed, for the first time since Reagan's era, allied and partner burden-sharing is no longer an afterthought or a nice to have. Today it’s a core element of our national defense.
And finally, the fourth line of effort, maybe the most important: supercharging America's defense industrial base underwrites everything else. Last month I gave another speech in Washington, this time to defense industry leaders to announce a department-wide – not reform – a transformation of requirements, acquisitions and foreign military sales.
Our objective is simple, if monumental: transform the entire acquisition system to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results. The bottom line is a historic generational and transformational changes that we will implement and will move us from the current prime contractor dominated system, defined by limited competition, vendor lock, cost-plus contracts, stressed budgets and frustrating protests, to a future powered by a dynamic vendor space that accelerates production by combining investment at a commercial pace with the uniquely American ability to scale and scale quickly, all at the speed of urgency.
That speech stands on its own, so I'll spend the balance of my time here talking about the other three lines of effort, the first of which are defending the U.S. homeland and hemisphere. The Biden administration was more concerned about Ukraine's borders than our own. They tried to make it controversial to say that border security is national security, but that is, of course, absurd.
Border security is national security, and we are prioritizing it accordingly. Since January 20, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War has made it a top priority to defend our nation's borders, to get 100% operational control of that border. We did so by surging forces where our troops partner with DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] to seal the border.
Under Joe Biden, tens of millions of illegals – and we have no idea where the hell they came from or where the hell they are – flowed across our border, not to mention lethal narcotics responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Today, the number of illegals crossing into our country is zero. We are saving lives and communities, and we are keeping it that way.
We're also proud to support our law enforcement partners as they conduct mass deportations of dangerous illegals who have no business being in our country. We'll secure the border in part by organizing training and equipping units specifically for border defense missions, including operations in the land, maritime and air domains alongside our interagency partners.
We're also leaning on our Mexican counterparts to do more. They have made progress, and we'll need to see more and quickly. And so far in this administration, nobody has built more new border wall than the Department of War.
But our borders shouldn't be the first line of defense for the American homeland. They should be the last line of defense. And that's why we're prioritizing our fight against cartels throughout the Western Hemisphere. You can just look at the news, not all of the news.
The days in which these narco-terrorists, designated terror organizations, operate freely in our hemisphere are over. These narco-terrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaida. We are tracking them, we are killing them, and we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics so lethal that they're tantamount to chemical weapons.
We're not doing this on our own. Throughout our hemisphere, our allies and partners recognize that these narco-terrorists threaten them as well. So, we're working together, sometimes overtly, sometimes not, and we'll keep doing so for the sake of a safer, secure and more stable hemisphere for all of us.
But make no mistake. Where a country cannot or will not do its part, then we at the Department of War will always be ready to take decisive action. In this hemisphere, in our hemisphere, there is no safe haven for narco-terrorists.
Securing the border does not mean we're losing sight of other critical homeland defense missions. On the contrary, we're doubling down. One of the first executive orders signed by President Trump was for the creation of Golden Dome for America, a revolutionary approach to defend our nation from advanced aerial threats.
And we're accelerating efforts on that right now, and Golden Dome will produce tangible protection for this country inside the timeframe of this administration and beyond. President Reagan promised SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative. President Trump's doing the same thing. Now the tech has caught up, and we can actually build a Golden Dome for America, a game-changer.
At the same time, we're also rapidly strengthening our nation's ability to deter and defend against cyber attacks on Department of War and dual use targets, including through the most comprehensive overhaul of U.S. Cyber Command since it was started 15 years ago, nor have we lost sight of the threat of global jihadism.
As with narcoterrorists, working alongside our partners in the IC and other agencies, as well as partners abroad, we will continue to hunt and kill Islamist terrorists with the intent and ability to strike our homeland. All of this, of course, rests upon the power of our nation's nuclear deterrent, which is foundation — which is the foundation of our nation's defense.
Nothing else matters if we don't get this right, and so we will. As President Trump has said, we will modernize our nation's nuclear triad. We will develop additional options to support deterrence and escalation management, and we will never allow this nation to be left vulnerable to nuclear blackmail, even in a world where we face two other major nuclear armed powers. And we will test nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems on an equal basis as others.
Finally, the department's activities throughout the Western Hemisphere aren't just about killing narco-terrorists, they're also about deterring and defending our nation's interests against other threats to that, in the hemisphere. To that end, the president will always provide — the department will always provide the president with credible options when needed.
That includes guaranteeing U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain like the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, the Gulf of America, the Arctic and Greenland. In all instances, we stand ready to work in good faith with our neighbors, but they must do their part to defend shared interests. Where they do not, the War Department stands ready to take focused and decisive action that advances U.S. interests.
This is the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, recently codified so clearly in the National Security Strategy. After years of neglect, the United States will restore U.S. military dominance in the Western Hemisphere. We will use it to protect our homeland and access to key terrain throughout the region.
We will also deny adversaries' ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities in our hemisphere. Past administrations perpetuated the belief that the Monroe Doctrine had expired. They were wrong. The Monroe Doctrine is in effect and it is stronger than ever under the Trump corollary, a common sense restoration of our power and prerogatives in this hemisphere consistent with U.S. interests.
The second line of effort for the War Department is deterrence against China through strength, not through confrontation. Under President Trump's leadership, relations between the United States and China are better and stronger than they've been in many years. President Trump and this administration seek a stable peace, fair trade and respectful relations with China.
In November, President Trump and President Xi reached a major breakthrough trade, putting both nations on a strong economic pathway. Reciprocal state visits in 2026 provide the opportunity for even more progress. The War Department is committed to the same approach, opening a wider range of military-to-military communications with the People's Liberation Army, aimed at deconfliction and de-escalation.
We laid the groundwork for this with our counterparts months ago at ASEAN in Malaysia, and will continue that work. This line of effort is based on flexible realism, not naivete, an approach aimed not at domination but rather at a balance of power, a balance of power that will enable all of us, all countries, to enjoy a decent peace in an Indo-Pacific where trade flows openly and fairly, where we can all prosper, and all interests are respected.
That's the world that we seek in the Indo-Pacific, and that is what our approach is designed to produce. We will be strong but not unnecessarily confrontational. To quote another great Republican president, "We will speak softly and carry a big stick."
As I said at Shangri-La earlier this year, we're not trying to strangle China's growth. We're not trying to dominate or humiliate them, nor are we trying to change the status quo over Taiwan. Our interests in the Indo-Pacific are significant, but also scoped and reasonable.
This includes the ability for us, along with allies, to be postured strongly enough in the Indo-Pacific to balance China's growing power. This means ensuring none of our allies are vulnerable to sustained successful military aggression. This is what we mean by deterrence in the Indo-Pacific: not dominating China, but rather ensuring they do not have the ability to dominate us or our allies. It's common sense.
In this vein, our role at the Department of War is essential. It's our job to make sure Beijing sees unquestionable U.S. military strength that, if necessary, can back up our national interests. Even as we make clear our peaceful intentions, we insist that, as a Pacific nation ourselves, China respect our longstanding interests in the Indo-Pacific – and not just insist, but maintain the manifest strength to underwrite it.
This involves respecting the historic military buildup they are undertaking. Our department maintains a clear-eyed appreciation of how rapid, formidable and holistic the military buildup has been. We take these capabilities seriously. It would be silly and, frankly, disrespectful not to.
This approach requires focus, prioritization and clarity of purpose. That's why we will ensure our military can, if God forbid necessary, project sustained capabilities along the first island chain and throughout the Indo-Pacific. That means being so strong that aggression is not even considered, and that peace is preferred and preserved.
This is deterrence by denial. It is our job to ensure that President Trump is always able to negotiate from a position of strength in order to sustain peace in the Indo-Pacific. This is not a pivot for tomorrow. It is a reality for today.
And finally, our third line of effort is increasing burden-sharing with U.S. allies around the world. Here again, many self-ascribed neo-Reaganites seem to have lost the plot. According to them, only the — only the United States has the ability to provide for defense and deterrence in Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. According to them, if the United States doesn't do it, nobody will.
In fact, according to some, America is actually better off subsidizing these allies' defenses even if they're perfectly capable of doing more for themselves and our collective defense. That is, of course, patently ridiculous, not to mention insulting to our allies.
It's actually vitally important for America's allies and partners to step up and do their part for our collective defense. This isn't just a matter of doing right by Americans who are rightfully frustrated by years of allied freeriding. This is pragmatic.
As we rightly prioritize our homeland, hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, threats persist in other regions, and our allies need to step up and step up for real. Our allies in Europe face Russia. Iran has been set back by the president and Israel's actions, but remains a threat in the Middle East. And of course, North Korea looms on the Korean peninsula.
We must also prepare for the possibility of simultaneous threats in different regions. That doesn't mean we think such simultaneous action is likely or even necessarily inevitable, but it's something the Department of War must be prepared for. And the best way to prepare for this is not by pretending we can do everything or be everywhere, effectively handing a permission slip for our allies' laggardly defense efforts.
This neo-Reaganite attitude led us to fritter away our soldiers' lives, our national resources and our citizens' support in rudderless wars. Our approach is fundamentally different and in keeping with the noble tradition of President Reagan as well as Nixon and Eisenhower.
We will actually, for real, get our allies and partners to step up and do their part. We will no longer tolerate freeriding. President Trump has shown the way with his historic leadership that yielded the commitments at NATO's Hague summit. There, NATO committed to spend 5% of GDP [gross domestic product] on defense, 5 — 3.5 on core military and 1.5 on security related investments, and pledged to take primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense – things most folks sitting here just five years ago would have thought completely impossible.
We're now using this template to press our allies around the world to meet this new global standard the president has set, and it's working. First there was Europe and Canada, and just last month South Korea committed to spend 3.5 of GDP on core military spending and assume the leading role in the ROK's [Republic of Korea] conventional defense. We are optimistic that under — other Indo-Pacific allies will follow suit.
In a few years, thanks to President Trump's visionary leadership, we will have our allies, which include some of the wealthiest and most productive countries in the world, once again fielding combat credible militaries and boasting revived defense industrial industries. This will — will form a powerful shared defensive shield with well-armed allies around the world ready to defend themselves, their interests and our collective interests – real partnerships and alliances based on hard power, not just flags and fancy conferences, based on theories and hot rhetoric.
Our allies are not children. They're nations capable of doing far more for themselves than they have. And it's time they stand up, and they are. In fact, many of them are nations who have proud and powerful martial traditions of their own, and we should treat them that way. We can and should and must expect them to do their part exactly as President Trump has.
Model allies that step up like Israel, South Korea, Poland, increasingly Germany, the Baltics and others will receive our special favor. Allies that do not, allies that still fail to do their part for collective defense will face consequences. President Trump, makes sense to me, likes helping countries that help themselves, and we feel the same way. That's the nature of partnerships rather than dependencies. It's what we owe our friends and, most importantly, what we owe the American people.
This is a period of great consequence for our great republic. Our forefathers fought and won the Cold War, ushering in a unipolar moment during which America stood alone. It was a time of tremendous opportunity, well-earned after a century marked by two world wars and a Cold War, always under a nuclear shadow. Well, as you know, that unipolar moment is over, and we have an opportunity to define what comes next.
Under President Trump's leadership, that's exactly what we're doing. The Department of War, at the president's direction, is laser focused on advancing America first, peace through strength, common sense efforts. We're reviving the warrior ethos. We are rebuilding our great military. And every day, our warriors are reestablishing the deterrence that Joe Biden so foolishly gave away.
We owe safety, freedom and prosperity to the American people, and we will deliver. We will achieve peace through strength, which is what the American people voted for and what President Trump demands. And in doing this, we appeal to Almighty God, just as our forefathers did.
George Washington, the founder of the War Department, appealed to God's providence during every step of our improbable revolution, on — on prayer, on bended knee, on the battlefield. Ronald Reagan did the same, appealing to heaven as the world hung in the balance.
We do the same today with Jesus Christ as our guide. May he grant us the wisdom to see what is right and the courage to do it. May God bless our warriors, and may God bless our great Republic. Thank you.