{"id":61059,"date":"2018-10-30T17:55:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T17:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/10\/30\/ro-khanna-and-progressive-democrats-hope-blue-wave-will-shake-up-american-national-defense-policy\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:36:13","slug":"ro-khanna-and-progressive-democrats-hope-blue-wave-will-shake-up-american-national-defense-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/congress\/2018\/10\/30\/ro-khanna-and-progressive-democrats-hope-blue-wave-will-shake-up-american-national-defense-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ro Khanna and progressive Democrats hope \u2018Blue Wave\u2019 shakes up American defense policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 When California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and other freshman lawmakers visited with President Donald Trump<\/a> at the Oval Office in April, Khanna did something some might consider surprising, especially for a progressive Democrat: He encouraged Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, Trump was under fire for praising North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as \u201cvery honorable<\/a>,\u201d and seeking to meet with Kim with no preconditions. Khanna \u2014 a House Armed Services Committee member \u2014 made a case to Trump to keep up his peacemaking efforts<\/a>. Anything to avoid more military intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, with Democrats eyeing a possible takeover of the House, the left-leaning Khanna is poised to step into an even more vocal role as pacifist foil to Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tagged by Fortune<\/a> magazine as \u201cthe most noteworthy member of Congress you\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d Khanna, the 42-year-old former Obama-era Commerce Department official, already has an outsized voice for a relative newcomer to Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A one-term representative of Silicon Valley, he was asked by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to draft an Internet Bill of Rights, and he made ending U.S. military support to Saudi Arabia a mainstream issue<\/a> for House Democrats in a way that seems forward-looking since journalist Jamal Khashoggi\u2019s death in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If he becomes part of the House majority, Khanna told Defense News, he wants as many as three days of hearings featuring Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford \u2014 something the administration would almost certainly resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go over every single place in the world where we have ground combat troops \u2014 I think they\u2019re 14 to 17, based on the president\u2019s biannual report to Congress \u2014 and let\u2019s go over every place where we have foreign operations and intelligence,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cI want them to justify, for the American people, in that marathon hearing what our mission is, what the costs are, what the risks are and why we\u2019re there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople need to understand how overextended our military is, how much we’re entangled in places where we don’t need to be. And I’d like that to be part of the Democratic strategy to bring more restraint for foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month, Khanna introduced a resolution<\/a> to invoke Congress\u2019 war powers and end U.S. military involvement in Yemen\u2019s civil war. It\u2019s attracted more than 50 sponsors, including some moderate big guns: House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.; House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash.; and House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a winner of a Democratic Congressional primary in New York, addresses supporters at a fundraiser Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a preview of the kind of thorny defense issues that Democratic leadership must navigate alongside a caucus of moderates who back strong military spending and progressive members who have decried Pentagon largesse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That latter group includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old democratic socialist who upset a 10-term incumbent in a New York primary race \u2014 and who wants to slash military spending to pay for safety net programs she supports like Medicare for All. She has endorsed Smith\u2019s challenger, a 30-year-old democratic socialist running as an anti-war candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ocasio-Cortez made headlines by arguing erroneously that the military received a \u201c$700 billion budget increase, which they didn\u2019t even ask for.\u201d In reality<\/a>, the total national defense budget for 2018 increased to $700 billion, which uniformed and civilian military leaders did request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also includes anti-war Rep. Barbara Lee<\/a>, long on the political periphery and now a serious contender for Democratic Caucus chair. Lee, D-Calif., and famously the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 war authorization against al-Qaida, last year<\/a> managed to attract several rank-and-file Republican allies to repeal the authorization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though House GOP leadership managed to derail<\/a> the 2017 effort, Pelosi said<\/a> earlier this year that Democrats discussed and agreed to repealing the authorizations \u2014 but not how. Drafting war authorization language that can navigate the House or the Senate, plus get the president\u2019s signature, has eluded Congress for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a wave of insurgent progressives are coming to Congress within a Democratic \u201cBlue Wave,\u201d Khanna was arguably the vanguard. He prevailed in the second of two bitter, intraparty fights with eight-term Rep. Mike Honda, a win attributed to<\/a> the district\u2019s changing demographics and the growing political muscle of tech executives like Facebook\u2019s Sheryl Sandberg and Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai, who both supported Khanna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unclear how Smith, who would become the Armed Services Committee chairman if Democrats won the House in midterm elections next week, would balance the expectations of the panel\u2019s centrist Democrats with those of progressives like Khanna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two advertised they are working together in a joint video last month, in which they expressed concern over U.S. entanglement in Yemen. They also highlighted their cooperation to win passage of stiffer oversight language of U.S. military action in Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Smith made clear<\/a> not only that he opposes mammoth defense budgets, but that he wants to boost oversight of far-flung military operations in Yemen, Niger and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe U.S. military right now is all over the world in many places that members of Congress are not even aware of,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat should not be. We should have the authority over what our military does, where and when.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, lawmakers inclined to reassert Congress\u2019 war powers have been focused on U.S. military aid to Saudi Arabia. They cite the administration\u2019s reluctance to hold Riyadh accountable for its role in the deaths of Yemeni civilians; and Khashoggi\u2019s murder has added pressure on the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, the only people in the world who a \u2018Blue Wave\u2019 would be worse for than the Republicans is the Saudis,\u201d Khanna said in a Sept. 26 interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I were the Saudis, I\u2019d be very, very afraid. I think they\u2019ve got to [acknowledge]: \u2018Our alliance with the United States is in question in a way it hasn\u2019t been in the past 30 years. There is a fundamental realignment in the United States Congress that\u2019s growing. And we better stop the violence and knock off the brutality and come with humility, asking for the forgiveness of the American people.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadly speaking, Khanna believes American military interventionism has made the U.S. less safe, and that it would be better served by diplomacy and alliance building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He does not doubt the U.S. is in competition with Russia and China \u2014 an idea at the core of the National Defense Strategy \u2014 but he was skeptical military investments, and not domestic investments, are the way to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe way we win the competition is by investing in broadband and fiber, by investing in the expansion of universities, by doubling funding for things like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, by putting more money in artificial intelligence and machine learning, by helping our workforce adapt to the digital age,\u201d Khanna said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the kind of answer you\u2019d expect from Khanna, whose district is home to giants Apple, Intel and Yahoo; Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged to Congress earlier this year that Silicon Valley is \u201can extremely left-leaning place.\u201d Wired<\/a> magazine matched Khanna\u2019s overlap with the region\u2019s shift from libertarianism to deeper support for a robust social safety net.<\/p>\n\n\n\t