The Next U.S. National Security Strategy Risks Misreading History Again
At the twilight of globalization, as the next U.S. National Security Strategy is about to be finalized, America’s current and future strategic choices are being impacted by a misreading of the drivers of state behavior, as well as the degree to which Washington can shape the global systemic transformation lurking over the horizon. The second Trump administration’s policy decisions that are reshaping the international security environment are not simply, as POTUS’s critics imply, the product of a mercurial presidency. Rather, they are a consistent manifestation of the US policy community’s shared world view, steeped in a historically derived though ultimately flawed diagnosis of what drives great power competition. We seem to have consensus that the prospect of the United States’ relative decline as a great power stems from changes in global power distribution, but what’s missing is a clear recognition that we are locked into an ideological framing of our own making that constrains how we approach the increasingly unstable world. Simply put, we are continuing to misread history.
Three decades of unprecedented U.S. power in the wake of our victory in the Cold War have conditioned America’s policy elites to assume that the international system will ultimately always bend to our will. Drawing on abundant military stocks accumulated during the Cold War, after 1991 successive presidents saw their wins generously rewarded while their policy missteps routinely carried but a marginal penalty. This state of affairs quickly gave rise to a sense of ideological certitude bordering geostrategic arrogance, one that still infuses the nation’s policy debates. The Washington policy community continues to operate on the assumption that the U.S. retains the ability to impose its priorities on other principal players without first incurring additional costs, even though Russia and China have demonstrated repeatedly that the enemy gets a voice when it comes to shaping regional balances close to home and beyond. We believe that we have agency in world affairs, while we remain unwilling to pay for properly resourcing our military and our defense industry, as though we were still living in the post-Cold War world.
The Trump administration’s policy choices, especially in its relations with European NATO allies and of late with India, have accelerated the process of a systemic transformation toward what Beijing and Moscow like to call the “multipolarization” of the world. We have yet to acknowledge that this transformation will inevitably impact America’s ability to protect its national interests. A case in point: Repeated efforts to reset the United States’ relations with Russia to woo it away from China’s embrace have failed, and yet the administration keeps returning to this formula, seemingly convinced that this time the result will be different. And so, instead of communicating to the nation that to retain its competitive edge the United States will need to commit significant additional resources to rebuild its military and its defense industry, our defense planners stipulate that this can be achieved through a strategic sleight of hand, whether through a pivot from Europe to Asia, or perhaps even away from both theaters.
We seem to believe that through this reprioritization and selective focus – with its Kissingerian echoes of a latter-day Concert of Europe – the U.S. will preserve the latitude to shape regional power balances at an acceptable cost. This is a misreading of history, for if the calculated diplomacy of the 19th century offers any lessons in this regard, such balancing can take place not before but after a major system transforming war. Absent a great power conflict, it has never served as a negotiated substitution that preserves the equities of a status quo power or reigns in the geostrategic assertiveness of a country surging to the top of the power pyramid.
For three decades, the U.S. policy community has misread the evolution of the international system, prioritizing normative concepts over hard power indices. The initial hubris that accompanied the “end of history” and alleged “unipolar moment” drove the country to expend its national power in a most profligate fashion in secondary theaters, while China and Russia armed at speed and scale. Today the Trump administration is trying to affect a sweeping policy realignment away from the normative institutionally based policy framework toward one grounded in geopolitics. However, it is doing so at a time when, absent a generational reinvestment in defense, America’s military power position vis-à-vis China and Russia has already declined. And so, in the lead up to the publication of the administration’s new National Security Strategy, the policy debate continues to oscillate between, on the one hand, the “Asia first” school and, on the other, growing talk of a more wide-ranging withdrawal, one which would return the United States to a defensive position in the Western Hemisphere and prioritize continental territorial defense. Both courses of action in effect imply the country’s declining ability to project power, to secure access to the world’s resources, and to deter threats away from the homeland. This is the wrong lesson to learn from history, for the United States is a quintessentially maritime power, and the preconditions for our security and prosperity are antithetical to those that shape the strategic thought of a land-locked state.
Before the next National Security Strategy is adopted, our policy community owes Congress and the public a frank appraisal of the consequences of continuing along this trajectory. We need a national conversation about what these proposed paths would yield in terms of the United States’ power position relative to our adversaries. Only then can the American people decide if we are willing to undertake the costly effort to rearm at scale and bring to bear our abundant latent resources to shore up our sovereign ability to guard vital national security interests. Or determine that at this moment in our history a strategic retreat is the preferred path forward.
Andrew A. Michta is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Views expressed here are his own.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
