(B) NATIONAL DEFENSE AND FOREIGN POLICY

By Benhamin Netanyahu - This is a turning point for leaders and nations. It is a time for all of us to decide if we are willing to fight for a future of hope and promise or surrender to tyranny and terror...The barbarians are willing to fight us, and their goal is clear: Shatter that promising future, destroy all that we cherish, and usher in a world of fear and darkness...This is a turning point for leaders and nations. It is a time for all of us to decide if we are willing to fight for a future of hope...

By Franklin C. Miller – U.S. policy makers have lost sight of the crucial link between arms control and deterrence. U.S. nuclear deterrence policy and U.S. nuclear arms-control policy have become dangerously disconnected. Longstanding deterrence policy requires that the U.S. have sufficient capacity to target what potential enemy leaders value most. Arms control is supposed to augment deterrence by limiting, and if possible reducing, the threats while allowing the U.S. to deploy a force that deters an attack on America or our allies. The policies were tightly linked throughout the closing decades of the Cold War, providing the U.S. and...

By Eric Schmidt - The innovations that have led to Kyiv’s remarkable successes against Russia will change combat dramatically. My most recent trip to Ukraine revealed a burgeoning military reality: The future of war will be dictated and waged by drones. Read More

By Hal Brands and Michael Beckley - The U.S. is running out of time to prevent a cataclysmic war in the Western Pacific. While the world has been focused on Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, Xi Jinping appears to be preparing for an even more consequential onslaught against Taiwan. Mr. Xi’s China is fueled by a dangerous mix of strength and weakness: Faced with profound economic, demographic and strategic problems, it will be tempted to use its burgeoning military power to transform the existing order while it still has the opportunity. Read More

By Kate Bachelder Odell - Russia has invaded Ukraine and threatens nuclear war, China is eyeing Taiwan, Iran holds regular military exercises with China and Russia, and North Korea just launched a missile over Japan. If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, Mike Gallagher has worse news: The U.S. is increasingly vulnerable to losing a war, “either by sitting the conflict out or through defeat in combat.” Taiwan is a particular preoccupation. What interest do Americans have in protecting this distant island? If the Chinese subdued it, it would heighten their threat to Japan and the Philippines, which the U.S. is bound by...

By The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal - The latest Pentagon budget request nixes the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, or SLCM-N. This missile is considered a “tactical” nuclear weapon that has a lower yield than “strategic” options and might be used on battlefield targets. The missile could be launched from submarines or destroyers. This weapon is aimed at deterring a known risk: Russia’s up to 2,000 tactical nukes, including weapons “employable by ships, planes, and ground forces,” as the Pentagon’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review noted. The Russian nuclear inventory includes “air-to-surface missiles, short range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs,...

By Andrew A. Michta - Meantime, over the past 30 years the U.S. defense industry has consolidated from 51 to five aerospace and prime defense contractors. This mismatch has led to multiyear delays for weapons and munitions deliveries to our forces and allies. As a result, our military isn’t positioned to fight simultaneous and potentially uncontrollable conflicts on the horizon—a problem that no amount of strategic finessing, rebalancing between theaters, or technological sophistication can resolve. There’s a way forward, but it will require that we invest in expanding the military and the defense industrial base. Read More

By Roger Zakheim - Today’s challenges are no doubt more complex, in part because China poses economic and security risks. Still, the solutions Reagan offered should be no less compelling. Yet 42 years later, leaders in both parties seem eager to make common cause with the detente-pushing realists, assuming that an aggressive Russia and a rising China are merely the facts of life in the 21st century. Even with a bipartisan consensus that China is America’s pre-eminent security challenge and that Russia is a dangerous adversary, many in both parties wonder whether the U.S. has the economic and political strength...

By John P. Walters - Ukraine and Taiwan are on the front lines of the global struggle between freedom and tyranny. Both face larger, wealthier opponents with huge militaries that threaten to extinguish their freedom. Both also depend on America for security. As Mr. Kishida’s and Ms. Tsai’s words suggest, the outcome of the war in Ukraine will shape how the U.S. is perceived far beyond the shores of Europe. Just as America’s feckless withdrawal from Afghanistan reinforced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, so, too, the U.S. performance in Ukraine will affect Beijing’s calculations in the South Pacific....

By Seth Cropsey - The implication of Adm. Davidson’s assessment—and a similar one offered this spring by his successor, Adm. John Aquilino —is that any major reduction in U.S. combat strength, particularly naval power, will tempt the Chinese Communist Party to strike. This assessment should inform the Navy’s recently announced “divest to invest” plan. In other words, the Navy is on track to divest by 2024 to 2026—but the investments may not arrive until one to five years later. The U.S. could be very vulnerable in this gap. Will the People’s Liberation Army sit by watching American military modernization before...

By Walter Russell Mead - These concerns are real and have their place, but they miss the main point. Vladimir Putin’s ill-judged, ill-planned and ill-prosecuted war has ignited a national awakening in Ukraine. The country emerging from Putin’s War will be a formidable new force in Europe whose interests and outlook place it firmly in alignment with the U.S. Read More

By - Walter Russell Mead - The news from Latin America is grim. The reaction from the Biden administration is a yawn… China is offering Cuba billions of dollars in exchange for the construction of a sophisticated intelligence facility to be used against the U.S…Washington’s passivity as drug cartels undermined state structures and as hostile foreign powers established beachheads across the hemisphere handed China, Russia and Iran a historic opportunity. Unless Joe Biden learns to channel the spirit of James Monroe, the toxic cocktail of instability and foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere could soon undermine America’s ability to face challenges farther...

By Seth Cropsey - The reality is that unless the U.S. prepares to win a nuclear war, it risks losing one. Robert C. O’Brien, a former White House national security adviser, proposed a series of conventional responses, which are necessary but not sufficient to deter Russian nuclear escalation. Developing a coherent American strategy requires understanding why Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons and how the U.S. can recalibrate its strategic logic for a nuclear environment. Read More

At the beginning of the 21st century, the world seemed more peaceful and American power more solidly entrenched than ever before. Twenty-two years into the new century, Americans face the most threatening international environment since the darkest days of the Cold War. The war in Ukraine threatens the post-Cold War order in Europe. Iran is well on its way to a nuclear bomb, and China’s shadow looms larger than ever over Taiwan. Read More

By Robert C. O’Brien and Alexander B. Gray - Washington and Taipei can take immediate steps to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from invading the island democracy. A Taiwan that is what retired Admiral James Stavridis has labeled a “porcupine” would require China to mount a difficult amphibious landing and sustain a prolonged counterinsurgency—both of which could produce significant casualties for China. First, the U.S. and its European allies should provide Taipei with significant quantities of the Naval Strike Missile, an anti-ship weapon... Read More

By Michael Allen and Connor Pfeiffer - The twin imperatives of backing Ukraine and bolstering deterrence in Asia are achievable for now. But Ukraine urgently needs more weapons, and the U.S. must act quickly to strengthen deterrence in Asia, even if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan might not come until 2027. ... The good news is that the war in Ukraine has catalyzed action to revitalize America’s industrial base,.. Read More

By John Bolton - Over the longer term, Beijing and Moscow enjoy a natural division of labor in threatening America and its allies, in three distinct theaters: China on its periphery’s long arc from Japan across Southeast Asia out to India and Pakistan; Russia in Eastern and Central Europe; and the Russian-Iranian-Chinese entente cordiale in the Middle East. U.S. planning must contemplate many threats arising simultaneously across these and other theaters. This underscores how strained our defense capabilities are to protect our far-flung interests, especially given the unprecedented domestic spending demands President Biden is now making. Read More

By Michael O’Hanlon - In recent months, as China’s threats against Taiwan have mounted, strategists and policymakers have been debating whether it is time for a change to the somewhat tortured method by which the United States has sought to preserve stability across the Taiwan Strait since the late 1970s. The current policy of “strategic ambiguity” seeks to keep everyone guessing as to whether America would militarily counter a Chinese attack on its much smaller neighbor. Washington’s specific response would depend on how a crisis began and unfolded. That is because America has had multiple, sometimes conflicting goals—to deter China from attack, to preserve good U.S.-China relations,...

By Seth Cropsey - The U.S. Navy is at sea, figuratively as well as literally. It has 101 ships deployed around the world—the same number as during the Cold War—yet the entire fleet is only 297 vessels strong. That’s about half the Reagan-era level of nearly 600... The figurative sense in which the Navy is at sea is more important and more dangerous. The fleet doesn’t have enough ships to meet global commitments, even as the U.S. faces growing naval competition from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Each of these potential adversaries possesses missiles and aircraft whose sole purpose...

By Seth Cropsey - Nov. 2, 2021 Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 ‘Strategic ambiguity” is the longstanding U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but President Biden’s approach has been more ambiguous than strategic. Asked at an Oct. 21 town hall whether he would defend the island nation against a Chinese attack, Mr. Biden replied, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.” The White House then “clarified” his answer by reasserting its commitment to ambiguity. All this begs the question: What should the U.S. do in defense of Taiwan? And it raises a broader one: What should...

By Mike Gallagher - ...Mr. Xi faces an American military that is growing weaker within the decade. As the Heritage Foundation’s recently released 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength makes clear, because of inadequate budgets, truncated modernization and degraded readiness, the U.S. military is set to be weakest when the People’s Liberation Army aims to be strongest. ...Rather than gambling the fate of the free world on Mr. Xi’s restraint, we must learn the lessons from Ukraine and put American hard power in Mr. Xi’s path before it is too late. Long-term investments to rebuild American military superiority in general,...

By Seth G. Jones - These challenges highlight an even more serious concern: The U.S. defense industrial base is inadequately prepared for the wartime environment that now exists. It is operating in a peacetime environment. In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—U.S. munitions needs likely would exceed Pentagon plans and stockpiles. In nearly two dozen iterations of a Center for Strategic and International Studies war game that examined a U.S.-China war in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. expended all its joint air-to-surface standoff missiles and long-range precision-guided antiship missiles within the first week...

By The Editorial Board - WSJ - Biden wants to kill a cruise missile needed to deter Russia and others. Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the Biden Administration says it is worried. This makes it all the more puzzling that President Biden is canceling a new weapon that would be a nuclear deterrent. Read More

By Walter Russell Mead - For good or ill, Mr. Putin’s gamble will shape the future of Europe and the fate of world order. Western leaders have failed to frustrate his campaign to rebuild an illiberal empire on the haunted ruins of the Soviet state. Like their predecessors at the beginning of World War II, their own place in history depends on how they respond to a challenge that wiser, more resolute leadership would have nipped in the bud. It would have been easy to stop Mr. Putin 20 years or even a decade ago. Today it will require a much...

By Toby Harnden - Messrs. Seeger and Tyson knew that imposing American solutions on Afghanistan wouldn’t work. They managed tribal rivalries but didn’t seek to turn Afghan leaders into paragons of virtue. The U.S. role wasn’t to defeat the Taliban for the Afghans. It was their fight and their country....Victory came quickly. So did warnings of the pitfalls of deeper American involvement in Afghanistan—ethnic rivalries, false surrenders, mistreatment of prisoners and errant bombs. In December 2001, Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed new president of Afghanistan, sought to strike a deal with the remnants of the Taliban, a practice consistent with Afghan...