By CHRISTOPHER DREWMARCH 2, 2017

By CHRISTOPHER DREWMARCH 2, 2017
Over the next two weeks, the military services will be scrambling to get their wish lists in front of top defense officials, hoping their requests for more troops, planes, ships
and missiles will be stuffed into President Trump’s proposed $54 billion increase in the Pentagon budget.
At the same time Mr. Trump has been criticized by lawmakers from both parties for cozying up to Russia, his defense
secretary, James Mattis, a retired Marine general, has described that country as America’s “principal threat.”
As a result, independent analysts said, it is hard to square the president’s foreign
and defense policies or know what his final priorities would be if Congress only approved part of the money he is seeking.
“It is not clear to me why we would need 355 ships if our foreign policy says we are going to reduce our commitments around the world
and let allies do more for their own defense,” said Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington research group.
Gordon Adams, who oversaw military budgets in the Clinton White House, said
that while Mr. Trump would not get as much as he was asking for, he might still be able to tilt the spending balance toward the military.
It also would require changes in the budget law, and
that would give Senate Democrats, who want to protect domestic programs, leverage to force Mr. Trump to compromise.