A leading House Republican believes the Biden administration’s defense policy of “integrated deterrence” is deeply flawed after it failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine as the Pentagon touts the strategy to deal with China.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who got the top U.S. general in Europe to admit this week that Western efforts to deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed, has leveled repeated criticism at the concept of integrated deterrence, which has been touted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for a year and which is at the core of the administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy.
Gen. Tod Wolters of U.S. European Command told Gallagher during House testimony Wednesday that he considered it part of his mission to deter Putin from invading and that he considered himself part of an interagency effort to “deter and dissuade” Russia. Gallagher asked if the general agreed that deterrence had failed, and Wolter replied, “I can’t argue with your conclusion.”
“So deterrence failed in Ukraine — specifically, integrated deterrence failed in Ukraine,” Gallagher said. “Now, it may be true that right now, NATO is as unified as it’s been in decades — I celebrate that fact — and the fact that Russia has not expanded its war into NATO territory is a good thing. But it is also a low bar for geopolitical success, and the fact remains, as you have just confirmed, that we attempted to deter an invasion of Ukraine, largely using nonmilitary instruments of national power, and that attempt failed. … Integrated deterrence as conceptualized by the Pentagon and as implemented in the specific case of Ukraine, as a matter of fact, failed.”
The Pentagon released a fact sheet this week on the National Defense Strategy.
“The Department will advance our goals through three primary ways: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages,” the Pentagon said. “Integrated deterrence entails developing and combining our strengths to maximum effect, by working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, other instruments of U.S. national power, and our unmatched network of Alliances and partnerships.”
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Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks stressed the importance of integrated deterrence Tuesday, saying the goal is to ensure the United States “makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear.”
Hicks said, “As we confront Russia’s malign activities, the defense strategy describes how the department will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China as our most consequential strategic competitor.”
Pentagon comptroller Michael McCord also touted integrated deterrence Tuesday. He said Putin is an “adversary” but that China “has the economic power and the military power to really be our primary challenge.” McCord claimed integrated deterrence is “exemplified by what NATO is doing today.”
Gallagher told Fox News on Friday that he believes “generals are under pressure from their political bosses, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party does not want to invest in defense.” He added, “The same people that brought you ‘defund the police’ want to defund the military, and integrated deterrence is a fancy phrase that covers for that fact.”
Austin began touting integrated deterrence early last year, while a host of top Pentagon officials have also repeatedly pushed the strategy.
In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this week, Gallagher argued, “The administration’s embrace of integrated deterrence is an abandonment of the Pentagon’s previous strategy of deterrence by denial. That required the U.S. to maintain enough military strength to turn back an adversary’s aggression, particularly in Taiwan and Eastern Europe.”
“Defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion would require the U.S. to engage directly a nuclear-armed state,” Gallagher wrote. “Deterring such an invasion in the first place, which the destruction on display in Ukraine reminds us is a far preferable outcome, will require America to integrate more conventional hard power into deterrence as quickly as possible.”
The invasion of Ukraine came after weeks of warnings by the U.S. intelligence community. President Joe Biden argued in March that U.S. sanctions against Russia were not meant to deter Putin despite numerous high-ranking Biden administration officials arguing the sanctions were meant to do so.
An anonymous senior Pentagon official touted U.S. successes against Russia, according to the Washington Post this week, saying the last few weeks proved the U.S. can use its “primacy in the global financial system” and its global alliances “in ways that can absolutely pummel aggressors.” The official claimed, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the model of integrated deterrence comes out smelling pretty good from this.”
Gallagher said in response, “That the Biden Pentagon is spiking the football on the so-called success of integrated deterrence in Ukraine is a stunning show of hubris.
“Deterrence, specifically integrated deterrence, failed in Ukraine,” he continued. “The same brave senior Pentagon official speaking on the condition of anonymity … should go to Kyiv or Mariupol and smell the rotting flesh of Putin’s innocent victims.”
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Gallagher brought up integrated deterrence last month, asking Adm. William Lescher what the West had deterred in Ukraine. After a nine-second pause, the admiral replied, “Excellent question, I suppose. So we’re deterring any expansion into the NATO territories that we’re committed to defend.” When asked if it is fair to say the U.S. failed to deter Putin in Ukraine, Lescher said, “Oh, absolutely.”
The Wisconsin Republican questioned deputy undersecretary of defense for policy Sasha Baker during a mid-March hearing, asking if the Pentagon was rethinking the assumptions underlying the National Defense Strategy following Putin’s invasion.
“We believe that the strategy, in fact, took into consideration some of the behavior that we’ve now seen Russia exhibit and that it’s resilient to what we’re seeing from the Russians at this time,” Baker replied.
Gallagher asked if she believed integrated deterrence had succeeded in Ukraine, and Baker contended that “what you’re seeing right now is integrated deterrence in action, bringing together the sanctions, the allies and partners, all of,” but the congressman cut her off and said, “What you’re effectively saying is your entire theory of deterrence requires on a country getting invaded and pillaged in order to galvanize the West into action. And I just don’t want to put our eggs in that basket.”
