Dear Future President of the United States of America 2016,

I am a student at Santa Clara High School. I have many concerns and hopes for the future of this country, but I have one issue that I would like to write to you about. That issue is national defense. Our country has a large store of nuclear weapons, an unnecessarily highly priced arsenal of planes, tanks, and warships. I find a lot of the forces we keep overseas to be useless. Many nations have expressed hatred of the American ideology of “policing the world”, even our allies. This disdain is well placed, as our country’s forays into other lands with the military have always ended poorly. Right now, Iraq is driving back ISIS as a result of the U.S. staying out of their affairs unless otherwise invited. I believe that we should cut back military involvement overseas to reduce the issues we cause and the international tensions those issues create. I know that may also cost money, but it would be more worthwhile to reduce the military’s size too. My argument for the reduction in military size: M.A.D., or mutually assured destruction. M.A.D. has prevented war between nuclear powers for decades and will likely continue to do so. The U.S. also has NATO, which in general should eliminate any fear of defense for the United States.

I would also like to address the trade deficit of the United States. I don’t actually know how to fix this, nor do I have any ideas, but I would like to say that trade with China should be eliminated somehow. We are losing the economy to China, and there is no easy way out of it either. For the future of this nation, I hope you can find a solution to this issue before we hit a massive economic depression. Perhaps the subsidization of industries that are too often wasteful should stop.

Thank you for reading my concerns,

Sincerely, a concerned student