There were plenty of worries that President Trump’s “America First” campaigning signaled a further retreat of American power and leadership abroad—a worry not mitigated either by his Inaugural Address or his speech before Congress, in which foreign and defense policy were given short shrift. Those concerns have not completely gone away, given the uncertainty over how this White House goes about making foreign and defense decisions and over who exactly will end up filling the many vacant policy positions at State, Defense, and the National Security Council.

But adversaries and events have a way of forcing a president’s hand. In recent weeks and days we’ve seen cruise missile strikes against a Syrian air base, the “mother of all bombs” released on an ISIS stronghold in Afghanistan, an uptick in diplomatic and military pressure on North Korea, worsening ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, increased U.S. military involvement in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and plans to add more ground forces into Afghanistan. All of which suggests that the logic behind the president’s desire to rebuild the country’s military capabilities and fix the current massive shortfalls in military readiness is both reasonable and urgent.