(B) National Defense and Foreign Policy

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 it acts?…The Navy should instead maintain its surface fleet, extending the life of the cruisers and integrating more-advanced, longer-range systems into its missile-launch cells. The Navy can also build—or buy from allies—many small, highly lethal combatants and unmanned platforms. Read More

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 tradition. The Bush administration blocked the deal, branding the entire Taliban as terrorists no different from al Qaeda…At that juncture, the U.S. could have negotiated from a position of strength. Instead, 20 years later, the Biden administration is rushing for the exits, desperate to secure a deal that amounts to surrender. 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 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 is to keep U.S. naval forces at bay. Sixty-four percent of China’s maritime trade and 40% of its overall trade flows through the South China Sea, through which U.S. naval ships sail regularly.

Were hostilities to break out between China and the U.S., the conflict would be a naval one. It would test the U.S. ability to move naval and amphibious forces across the 7,000-mile Pacific moat in time to assist American allies and partners, deny China’s use of the shipping lanes between it and the Middle East, and operate effectively to command the South China, East China and Yellow seas. The Chinese Navy would be a formidable foe. It has long-range missiles, a nascent aircraft-carrier force and increasingly modern ships and weapons of all categories, as well as cyber and space capabilities…. Read More