“The U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” So said the Congressional Commission on the U.S. National Defense Strategy in September 2024.
With the 2024 presidential election tomorrow, and in light of what this panel dramatically concluded, why have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump completely ignored any serious discussion of the dire state of America’s defenses in the campaign?
One can argue that except in times of crisis, foreign policy and defense have minimal impact on presidential elections. Yes, Harris and Trump may disagree about U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel and defending Taiwan, should China decide to invade. But the illegal immigration, the economy, abortion, character and personality will determine the 47th president.
Further, to most Americans, what this panel concluded is inconceivable. In fiscal 2025, the U.S. will spend nearly $900 billion on national defense, about 40 percent of all global military spending. The administration’s political and uniform leadership still claims that the U.S. possesses the finest military in the world. And yet the more the U.S. spends on defense, ironically, the more America’s forces continue to shrink.
The next president can ignores the state of our defenses at his or her peril. Trump accused the Biden administration of weakening the military he had restored, but those accusations lacked any specific evidence.
The crisis is that the National Defense Strategy approved by the last three administrations is fatally flawed for at least three reasons. If these flaws are not addressed, American fighting power will continue to erode.
The first is that the aim of deterring America’s principal rivals, short of preventing thermonuclear war, has failed.
Where have China and Russia or, for that matter, Iran’s Houthi proxies been deterred? China continues to challenge the West’s rules-based order and threatens Taiwan with its military buildup. Russia has not been stopped from invading Ukraine twice and launching clandestine attacks on Western democracies. And the Houthis have successfully cut off Suez for a large percentage of maritime traffic.
Second, our Defense Department has not dealt with real, uncontrolled annual cost growth as high as 7 percent for every item from precision weapons to people to pencils. With inflation running at just 2.5 to 4 percent, for the $900 billion defense budget, an additional $70-100 billion is crucial just to maintain current capabilities, let alone to increase them.
Third, the Defense Department will not meet future recruiting and retention goals to sustain the current active duty and reserve force, given the attitudes of Gen Z. The current cohort for service show no signs of wishing to serve.
A few obvious questions: Has anyone in either camp had any idea of the potential crisis facing the nation’s defenses? If there is an appreciation of these realities, what planned actions are being considered to reverse these threatening trends? And, if the answer to these questions is no, can the next administration be persuaded of the need to conduct a comprehensive and objective analysis of the nation’s defenses?
In the past, it has taken crises such as Pearl Harbor, the 1950 invasion of South Korea or Sputnik to provoke the U.S. to take action. Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or a full-out Iranian-Israeli war might trigger a major American response. But outside such a catalytic or catastrophic event, in the normal course of politics, defense is unlikely to be subject to other than what is part of the routine transition to install the next administration.
In the past, mandated Congressional Quadrennial Reviews or initiatives of incoming administrations to undergo major defense studies have produced, at best, changes on the margin.
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush’s administration was cautious in reducing America’s military. Thirty years later, the emergence of China has led to bipartisan demands for greater defense spending. Yet without a major change in strategy to correct the flaws in the National Defense Strategy, more money will not provide more capability.
In these conditions, only one realistic method exists to force the next administration to confront this mismatch between strategy-force levels and budgets. The uniform military must conduct an objective assessment of the state of our defenses today and in the future.
Without the full permission of civilian leadership, a truly independent evaluation has proven difficult to undertake.
But without such an assessment, every year, the U.S. military will be decidedly less capable and prepared for war than it is today. Harris and Trump, are you listening?
Harlan Ullman is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.
