Vice President Mike Pence said that the U.S. would be prepared to engage in cold war to get the concessions Trump wants from China. That would be bad enough in itself but, worse, the U.S. might not win an escalating conflict with Beijing. According to a new study commissioned by Congress, national defense isn’t up to snuff to America’s modern challenges.
The report, published Wednesday by the National Defense Strategy Commission, should be a call to action. If the U.S. wants to retain military superiority, or even stay competitive, Washington needs to make the military a priority and ensure that the Pentagon has a clear, workable strategy — right now, the U.S. isn’t doing well on either.
The committee that drafted the report did praise the goals of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ National Defense Strategy but issued striking criticism of the ability of the U.S. to actually implement them. Among the factors the commission blamed was “political dysfunction.”
Strategically, the U.S. isn’t prepared to meet the growing threat posed by China or Russia because our forces are currently geared toward fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recent efforts to train troops have slightly shifted, but the U.S. remains unprepared to engage and defeat a major power.
Although the U.S. has traditionally had a leg up in terms of conventional weapons, we are rapidly losing ground. The authors of the report explain, “The Commission has serious reservations about DOD’s ability to support its global operations. Inadequate lift and tanker support, a lack of secure communications, and insufficient capabilities and infrastructure are impeding strategic mobility.”
China’s navy, for example, is already larger than that of the U.S. and is on track to soon have three aircraft carriers. That wouldn’t challenge the U.S. position around the world, but it would mean that Washington would be unlikely to face off against China in its self declared territory of, for example, the South China Sea, where a U.S. naval ship came within 45 yards of a Chinese military vessel.
Additionally, as the report notes, China and Russia as well as smaller states such as North Korea and Iran are increasingly prepared to attack U.S. interests with integrated strategies of conventional, nuclear, cyber, and even space that the U.S. does not have a strategy to defend against.
Key to countering these efforts, as well as rapidly developing applications of new technology like artificial intelligence for military purposes, is innovation. But there too, U.S. development is out-paced by competitors. Unless the Pentagon looks beyond its current risk-averse approach to innovation and builds stronger relations with the private sector, we may well fall so far behind competitors that we are unable to meet the needs of modern combat.
To be fair, the Pentagon has made some efforts to address these challenges, but development still lags behind that of other countries.
Moreover, current U.S. priorities have left the military unable to wage a two-front war — meaning that faced with two simultaneous challenges, our forces would be unable to address both. With increasing credible threats from abroad, that’s a key vulnerability that could easily be exploited should Washington find itself entangled abroad.
Of course, Washington’s nuclear capabilities have long been seen as a deterrent from all-out conflict, but even there U.S. dominance is slipping with modernization needed in our nuclear arsenal. After all, it’s not much of a deterrent if it doesn’t work or could be easily taken out by an aggressor.
As the report outlines, “If the United States does not show greater urgency and seriousness in responding to this crisis and does not take decisive steps to rebuild its military advantages now, the damage to American security and influence could be devastating.”
Washington and the Pentagon would do well to heed that warning. Waiting around as China and Russia rapidly gain regional power and North Korea and Iran pursue weapons programs, including weaponized cyberattacks, in addition to nuclear arsenals, is not an option.
