The Army’s Plan for the Next Decade—as Explained by This Goofy-Looking PowerPoint Slide

But behind that ungainly mess of arrows and text boxes, an actual strategy emerged.

President Donald Trump greets US Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley during a Rose Garden event with the Army football team.Alex Wong/Getty Images

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The Army just released an 11-page blueprint for the next decade, providing in equal measure a frank look at the immediate priorities of the military’s largest fighting force and another reminder that graphic design is not necessarily a military specialty. 

Let’s start with the centerpiece of the document—an ungainly mess of arrows and text boxes:

For a document that demands some careful reading and—on close inspection—offers some interesting insights into where the Army intends to deploy its resources, this reaction is probably not what the world’s largest military was hoping for online:

The aesthetic shortcomings aside, here are some of the major takeaways from the next decade of Army planning:

At least one part of Trump’s government still loves the global order

To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s traditional allies like Canada and Germany are “dishonest and weak,” the 18-year war in Afghanistan has been a “total disaster,” and Kim Jong Un—in addition to being the dictator of one of the world’s most repressive regimes—is “very talented” and writes “beautiful letters.” 

Against this geopolitical backdrop, here’s how the Army described the role of the United States in the world:

As the backbone of the international world order following World War II, the United States helped develop international institutions to provide stability and security, which enabled states to recover and grow their economies. Global competitors are now building alternative economic and security institutions to expand their spheres of influence, making international institutions an area of competition. As a result, we must strengthen our alliances and partnerships, and seek new partners to maintain our competitive advantage.

These “alternative economic and security institutions,” a nod perhaps to China and Russia’s growing influence in Eastern Europe and Asia, have flourished in no small part because of Trump’s retreat from global partnerships. “On his third day in office, [Trump] withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a twelve-nation trade deal designed by the United States as a counterweight to a rising China,” the New Yorker reported earlier this year. “To allies in Asia, the withdrawal damaged America’s credibility.”

Despite Trump’s “America first” rhetoric, Secretary of Defense James Mattis has mostly attempted to reassure our allies of our commitment to global cooperation during several trips abroad. Last June, he assured allies during a conference of defense ministers in Singapore that “we have got plenty of valid reasons for many nations to work together in maintaining the rules based order today,” including “the value in commerce and in security where we work together.” Mattis slightly altered his tone at this summer’s conference, when he spoke of taking “a clear-eyed view of the strategic environment” and recognizing “that competition among nations not only persists in the 21st-century, in some regard it is intensifying.” Put simply, the Army’s genial approach to our traditional allies is in stark contrast to Trump’s zero-sum view of foreign affairs.

A budget showdown is coming

Even as the Army strategy promotes “fiscal reforms to improve business processes,” its range of equipment upgrades and bulked-up recruiting will run at loggerheads with Trump’s stated priorities and a vexing appropriations process. Early in his term, Trump promised to build up the military’s fighting force, but this week he reportedly informed the Pentagon of his desire to cut $33 billion from next year’s budget proposal, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Friday.  

The cut would align DoD with the other federal agencies Trump has asked to cut 5 percent from their budgets as part of his self-described “nickel plan.” 

The Army acknowledges this uncertainty in its plan, stating, “fiscal uncertainty and decreased buying power will likely be a future reality, threatening our ability to achieve the Army Vision.” Defense spending bills have been a rare bipartisan affair in the past, but the makeup of the next Congress could explode that fragile consensus. 

Mental health remains a distant priority

Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, the suicide rate among soldiers more than doubled. No shortage of reports and statistics exist—including many commissioned by the Army—on the problem of preventing suicide among active-duty and reserve members of the force. Suicide has become a leading cause of death for US service members—more than deaths caused by the Islamic State in some months.

Despite a widening focus across the services on the root causes of suicide and an acknowledged need for better treatment, intervention, and resilience, the strategic plan contains no references to suicide or mental health. Resilience is mentioned just twice and only to affirm that the Army’s force posture should be “lethal, agile, and resilient.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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