Ryan Evans, Dennis J. Blasko, Mackenzie Eaglen, Michael Kofman, Christopher Preble
We asked a group of experts to comb through the National Defense Strategy and tell us what they think.
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1. Introducing the 2018 National Defense Strategy Roundtable
By Ryan Evans
America’s national security thinkers make for a tough crowd, especially when it comes to published or leaked U.S. government strategy documents. These documents tend to be either jargon-saturated monstrosities without real prioritization or so bold as to be controversial. As an example of the latter, in the next issue of the Texas National Security Review, Hal Brands shows how the Defense Planning Guidance that leaked from the first Bush administration in the early 1990s can start an argument well over 20 years later. Debates over the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, the leaked version of its Nuclear Policy Review, and the recently released National Defense Strategy show that these kinds of documents still arouse predictable passions.
Thus far, the National Defense Strategy has been the best-received of the three. The first salvo from the commentariat was largely laudatory in response to the strategy’s clear prioritization of great power competition. Yet some of these same voices have criticized the document’s rickety relationship with the reality of America’s willingness to spend on military power.[1] These features of the strategy constitute the main areas of inquiry in this roundtable, featuring McKenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute; Dennis Blasko, formerly of the U.S. Army; Michael Kofman of CNA; and Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute.
One of the challenges of assessing this strategy is that we do not really know what is in it. The document that has been released is a shorter and unclassified summary of the real document. Still, there are a number of clear insights that this new strategy can provide, and the participants of this roundtable explore them ably.
First, let’s discuss the elephant in the oval-shaped room: the president of the United States. One of the problems with any strategy released by this administration is that no one is quite sure if it truly represents President Donald Trump’s own vision.
The gaps between the president and his administration’s written policies infects the strategy’s approach to competition with China. Blasko compares this new strategy with the National Security Strategy and with Trump’s speech announcing it and finds troubling inconsistencies that he worries will lead to muddled policies. Whereas the Pentagon and the authors of the National Security Strategy seem to have a clear-eyed view of the challenges posed by China, the president says he wants to “build a great partnership” with Beijing. Blasko argues, “If reality is closer to the president’s vision, then some U.S. policies may need adjustment. If the latter, then the global ‘winner takes all’ competition requires radical changes to U.S. policy.”
Eaglen is pleased to see the Pentagon trying to focus American energy and attention on threats posed by Russia and China, but wonders if the president is on board or if he is still fixated on counter-terrorism. “On the campaign trail,” she writes, “candidate Trump was as hard as they come on how to defeat terrorists … Trump will surely seek additional wins on the battlefield wherever he can, and combatting terror will offer the greatest opportunity for these victories in the immediate future.”
Prioritizing great power competition might prove difficult for reasons that are more deeply rooted in our political system than Trump. Shaking America free of the allure and habits of counter-terrorism will be no mean feat for any U.S. leader. Eaglen explains:
Political pressure to continue prioritizing the fight against terrorism means that while Pentagon leaders want more equilibrium between the long-term competition with China and Russia, counter-terrorism operations are likely to remain nearly all-consuming absent daily leadership to buck the system and change course.
Still, China and Russia occupy a prominent place in the Pentagon’s strategy document. But Washington has yet to come to terms with what Preble calls the “ultimate irony”:
Enemy number one, China, is funding our profligate ways by buying U.S. Treasury bills. Indeed, Americans, indirectly at least, are funding part of China’s military modernization through the interest paid on the U.S. notes they hold.
Moscow will undoubtedly be pleased by Russia’s prominence in the National Defense Strategy, no matter what the Kremlin might say publicly. Since its defeat in the Cold War, Moscow has sought to rebuild Russia as a great power and to be recognized as such. As Kofman observes, the National Defense Strategy grants Russia that status, placing it alongside China, an even heftier power. In his stinging critique, Kofman writes:
[I]t seems the only discernible theory of victory is just restoring America’s eroding military advantages. It’s clear how this answers the Pentagon’s needs for more, but what this solves in terms of the Russia problem set, be it in Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, or forms of competition below the threshold of war, remains a mystery. A more effective strategy would signal a clear intent to establish U.S. coercive credibility, demonstrate resolve, and lay out a plan to deter over that which matters, while at the same time assuring America’s adversaries that the competition is not existential, and thus can be bounded.
Interestingly, Kofman, a Russia military expert, and Blasko, a China military expert, each view the other country as posing a more series threat to U.S. power and America’s leading role in the international order. Kofman bemoans the fact that the National Defense Strategy treats Russia and China much too similarly. By trying to step up military competition with Russia, Kofman argues, the Pentagon will make it harder to “marshal resources to manage a much stronger challenge looming from China.”
For his part, Blasko sees Russia as more likely than China to undermine the foundations of the international order since it has been less of a beneficiary of it. And while China’s military modernization is daunting, it has also been disruptive and, according to Blasko, in the near-term, it “is unlikely that the senior PLA leadership believes it has the capability to displace the United States from the Indo-Pacific region.”
Kofman and Blasko both level the same charge at the National Defense Strategy’s assumptions on Russia and China respectively . Kofman argues that Russia is already eminently deterrable and that a war with Russia is avoidable due to the substantial nuclear arsenals held by both nations. Therefore, escalating a military competition with Russia might only make matters worse without advancing U.S. interests. Referring to military competition with China, Blasko writes:
Escalation of the military situation increases the chance of mistakes and miscalculations by all parties involved. Additional nukes, B-2s and carriers won’t fix the problem; U.S. political leaders need more options than flexing their son’s 19-inch biceps. The self-inflicted decimation of the State Department is more of an immediate threat to American national security than is China
Regardless of the wisdom of these strategic decisions, the question remains: How can the United States pay for an ambitious competition with two great powers while meeting a plethora of other security commitments, that include containing Iran and preventing a disaster on the Korean Peninsula? Any strategy should begin with this question — but that is not in the American habit. Nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and tanks are expensive and the National Defense Strategy indicates an appetite for more of them. “That is,” as Preble politely observes, “an unreasonable expectation.” The Pentagon’s vision of the strategic landscape, he writes, is
unlikely to rouse the public to forego domestic spending goodies, or tolerate vastly higher taxes, in order to defeat. Indeed, the primary foe — China — is financing America’s spending binge, and is also a key factor powering the global economy.
Eaglen sketches out an array of competing demands, from the need for more conventional capacity and capability, to nuclear modernization, to key manpower shortages across the military, including and especially pilots. “With all of these competing needs,” she writes, “it is unclear whether the Pentagon will be able to do what previous administrations have not and sustain the aspirational goal Mattis has laid out in the National Defense Strategy.”
For his part, Preble is less concerned about many of these competing choices. He argues that it is possible to defend and advance America’s vital interests without wallowing in bankruptcy, which is where the country could end up if it continues on the path set before it by the National Defense Strategy.
The voices featured in this roundtable are critical, yes. Still, Secretary Jim Mattis and his team deserve credit for bold thinking and for largely avoiding the mealy-mouthed jargon that is too often the norm for documents such as this.
Ryan Evans is the publisher of the Texas National Security Review and the editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks.
2. The Pentagon’s 19-Inch Biceps Versus Revisionist Threats: China in the National Defense Strategy
By Dennis J. Blasko
The Trump administration has been consistently inconsistent in nearly everything it has done in its first year in office. Over the past month, this inconsistency has extended into the realm of national security and defense policy. What the president says is often not consistent with what senior administration officials say or with the documents the bureaucracy produces. When there is a drastic shift in policy, the American public deserves a full explanation — especially when it involves a major power like China. Given the discrepancy between words and deeds, many in the United States and world are confused. This confusion will persist as long as the main principle underlying the Trump foreign policy is “I’m the only one that matters.”[2]
At the rollout of the National Security Strategy, President Donald Trump declared: “A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war…. our strategy is to preserve peace through strength.”[3] The same theme is repeated in the first sentence of the unclassified summary of the National Defense Strategy: “The Department of Defense’s enduring mission is to provide combat-credible military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our nation. Should deterrence fail, the Joint Force is prepared to win.”[4]
In order to prevent war, the National Defense Strategy makes building a more lethal force its first priority. The National Security Strategy expresses the same idea, using the word “overmatch,” which is linked to diplomacy, shaping the world, and producing innovative capabilities:
The United States must retain overmatch— the combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success and to ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight. Overmatch strengthens our diplomacy and permits us to shape the international environment to protect our interests.[5]
It continues, “We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them—not just punish them if they attack the United States.” In other words, the United States must have the will to employ its capabilities and ensure that potential unnamed adversaries understand its intentions.
The president’s words and Pentagon policy reach back at least to the quote, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (If you want peace, prepare for war)[6], attributed to the 4th century Roman Vegitius. This concept of deterrence is not unique to the United States and has a less muscular doppelganger in Chinese military doctrine.[7]
The president’s rollout speech, the National Security Strategy, and the National Defense Strategy provide important insights into the objectives, priorities, and — unfortunately — the inconsistencies and flaws of U.S. security strategy. These three official statements reveal the gaps between what the president says and what the government bureaucracy writes, between administration rhetoric and action (as revealed by funding requests), and between ideological-based versus evidence-based conclusions.
The president’s words are markedly different from the administration’s perception of the immediate Chinese (and Russian) threat to the international system. While the president recognizes Chinese challenges to “American influence, values, and wealth,” he nonetheless seeks to “build a great partnership.” The Pentagon, on the other hand, assesses that the Chinese want to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model,” and displace the United States on its way to world preeminence. If reality is closer to the president’s vision, then some U.S. policies may need adjustment. If the latter, then the global “winner takes all” competition requires radical changes to U.S. policy.
The National Defense Strategy dismisses without refutation official Chinese statements of intentions, the extent of its dependence on foreign trade, and the near-term disruptions in the Chinese armed forces caused by its recent reforms.[8] Yet, despite the differences in our political systems, U.S. policies of deterrence and force modernization are similar to China’s in many ways.
Rivals or Revisionists? How a Country is Categorized sets the Tone for the Relationship
The National Security Strategy is a component of the larger “America First” foreign policy. It assures the world that the United States’ new strategy of “principled realism” is “guided by outcomes, not ideology.” But significant differences in the president’s words and those found in it and National Defense Strategy muddy the nature and intensity of the Chinese threat and the appropriate policies to implement in response. The president speaks of a challenge manageable through “partnership,” while the National Security Strategy warns of a regional Chinese threat and the National Defense Strategy presents an imminent threat to the world order in which China seeks to replace the United States as the global leader. Whatever the magnitude of the Chinese threat, the president and administration are committed to making historic[9], “increased and sustained”[10] investment to deal with the entire gamut of threats, now and in the future.
A major element of “principled realism,” it seems, is labeling China and Russia “revisionist powers” in both the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. The president, however, used the word “rival” in his speech, a much less ominous word than “revisionist,” and wants to “build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest.”
The National Security Strategy does not explain the meaning of “revisionist,” but states that the United States will improve the performance of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization through reforms — reforms that benefit the United States first and foremost. For the United States, such reforms apparently do not rise to the level of “revision” of the international system.
The National Defense Strategy defines revisionism as going far beyond reform to institutions and as threatening other nations’ political systems. It makes the profound assertion that Russia and China are intent on shaping the “world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” This assessment describes a much greater threat to the United States and world than the president’s description of the “challenges” Russia and China pose.
The National Security Strategy includes Chinese capabilities among those used by “adversaries” and the National Defense Strategy calls China a “strategic competitor.” But both documents fall short of identifying China as an enemy.
The Pentagon’s strategy pronounces Beijing’s military objectives as pursuing “a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.” A month earlier the National Security Strategy described narrower military goals: “China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there.”
The National Defense Strategy’s depiction of Chinese intentions elevates the immediate Chinese threat well above the words competitor, rival, or challenge. Though not explained, this epiphany likely is the result of decades of strategic distrust of Chinese intentions, worst-case assumptions, and compressing the timeline for Chinese military modernization to years, not decades.[11]
Similar to the president’s National Security Strategy rollout speech, the statement in the National Defense Strategy about displacing the United States is followed by the incongruous “far-reaching objective” to “set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression.” In light of what the National Defense Strategy describes as China’s intentions to remake the entire world in its own image, “a great partnership” and military relationship of transparency and non-aggression sound like more of the feckless policy of engagement, which the National Security Strategy says the United States must “rethink.”
Needless to say, the Pentagon’s version of Chinese objectives contradicts many years of official Chinese statements about their ambitions toward the United States, their region, and the world.[12] Only last November Xi Jinping revealed, “As I said to the President, the Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate both China and the United States”[13] — an outlook supplemented by a litany of official declarations of “peaceful development,”[14] that “China does not seek regional hegemony or sphere of influence,” and its concept of win-win cooperation.[15]
As policy document, and not an intelligence assessment, the National Defense Strategy is not obliged to offer proof to dispute Xi or to support its interpretation of Chinese intentions. The Defense Department’s last report to Congress, issued in May 2017, included no such goal in the list of the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic objectives.[16]
Diplomacy and the Disconnect between Words and Resources
The strategies’ references to the importance of American diplomacy are belied by the administration’s funding priorities. In his speech, the president did not mention the word “diplomacy” or the role of the State Department. Yet, both the security and defense strategies frequently refer to using diplomatic (and other) tools in the execution of policy objectives so that the United States can negotiate from a position of strength to shape the international environment. However, under-resourcing diplomacy appears to be the actual policy of the administration. The reality is clear: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson supports massive cuts[17] to his department’s budget (down from $55.6 billion in 2017 to $37.6 billion in 2018 compared to the $639 billion defense budget request[18]) and reducing the “ranks of civil servants and foreign service officers by about 2,300 positions.”[19]
Over half a dozen retired four-star flag officers opposed such cuts, quoting what then-Commander of U.S. Central Command, current Defense Secretary James Mattis, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2013,
[I]f you don’t fund the State Department fully then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately…. The more we put into the State Department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.[20]
Another gap between rhetoric and resourcing is the National Security Strategy’s reference to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, “which selects countries that are committed to reform and then monitors and evaluates their projects.” The very next paragraph begins with the admonition to “Commit Selectively.” Selective commitment is illustrated by the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s budget request of $800 million for FY2018 (.13 percent of the defense request) “for programs in Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Togo, and Timor-Leste...”[21] Though not exactly equivalent, the work of the Millennium Challenge Corporation pales when compared to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative.”[22] For a comparison of the scale of U.S. and Chinese efforts in infrastructure development in the region, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has an interactive map[23] that describes over 50 Chinese projects compared to three U.S. efforts.
But enough about us. What about the Chinese goal to achieve “Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term” and displace the U.S. “to achieve global preeminence in the future”? The future can be a long time from now, but usually the near-term runs from two to five years out. Thus, the real question is what will the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) be capable of in the 2020 timeframe?
PLA Modernization and Deterrence
Chinese military doctrine defines warfighting, deterrence, and military operations other than war as the three basic ways of using military force.[24] Warfighting is the core of deterrence. Three conditions are necessary for deterrence: 1) an “adequate deterrent force,” 2) the “determination and volition [to employ] the strategic deterrent force,” and 3) interaction “between the deterrer and the deterred.”[25] Deterrence is China’s preferred method achieve its strategic objectives; warfighting is used when deterrence fails and there is no alternative. As is evident from the quotes cited above, this concept of deterrence parallels in many ways the U.S. policy of “peace through strength.”
Currently, the PLA is focused on defense within the first island chain, but is gradually expanding air and sea operations to more distant seas[26], as seen by numerous methodical flights[27] and cruises[28] in the western Pacific. Over time, the PLA Navy and Air Force seek to establish crew proficiency for their new ships and aircraft, train small units to operate in large formations, prepare commanders and staffs to plan for the employment of combined arms and joint forces, familiarize the forces with new operating areas, and demonstrate newly acquired capabilities to the world. The operative word above is “gradual,” consistent with the PLA’s long-term modernization program.
The PLA’s “three step development strategy” — made public in the 2006 white paper[29] (and revised slightly in the 2008 white paper)[30] — established a generic outline for modernization, setting milestones at 2010, 2020, and the mid-21st century (2049). The nonspecific 2010 goal of laying “a solid foundation” came and went with little fanfare. Last year, Xi announced the 2020 milestone had been completed without tying it directly to the strategy, “The PLA has basically completed mechanization and is moving rapidly toward ‘strong’ informationized armed forces.”[31] At the 19th National Party Congress, he redefined the timeline[32] by moving the mid-century objective of “modernization of national defense and armed forces” forward to 2035. Specifically, he directed the PLA to enhance the modernization of military theory, organization, personnel, and weaponry and equipment by that date (many of these themes are mentioned in the National Defense Strategy as tasks essential for the Department of Defense to address in “rebuilding” the U.S. military). Xi also changed the final, mid-century goal to building the PLA into a “world-class military,” a term left undefined. Officially, the PLA has adopted a generational, not near-term, approach to modernization.
Over the past two years the PLA has implemented the largest organizational changes since the 1950s and launched a 300,000-man reduction. The previous national and regional command structure was replaced in 2016[33] and, beginning in April 2017, operational units underwent even greater changes.[34] The amount of disruption in the PLA has been unprecedented, demonstrated by:
The only existential threat to our nation is a nuclear attack. Nuclear weapons remain the most important mission we have … The choice right now is modernizing or losing deterrence.[72]Work had estimated that with Obama-era plans, the services would need a combined $270 billion between 2021 and 2035 to fully modernize the triad.[73] More recent predictions given the early goals of the Trump administration signaled an even more dramatic expenditure — $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years.[74] Short of a massive change in our nuclear posture, there is little reason to expect these costs to diminish. In fact, if pre-decisional drafts of the Nuclear Posture Review are any indication, spending on the nuclear mission will increase still further.[75] These figures discount likely additional investments in missile defense capabilities, such as those which dominated Trump’s request for additional FY 2018 defense appropriations in November.[76] By design, strategic missile defense capabilities like the Ground Based Interceptor are not meant to defend against general Russian or Chinese attacks. Continuing interceptor production at 12 per year to hedge against serial production of North Korean ICBMs could cost $3 billion over the course of the next five years, discounting the costs for further research and more silos.[77] However, these investments are essential if Mattis hopes to sustain a focus on Russia and China, for if North Korea or Iran were able to develop reliable capabilities to strike the United States with nuclear weapons, they would surely need to be prioritized as greater threats to American security. The National Defense Strategy as a Driver of Uncertainty Throughout the document, there is a single recurring buzzword: “lethality.” This is intended to drive nearly every decision the force will undertake over the course of implementation. The term is likely the brainchild of Mattis himself, considering its proliferation in the Defense Department guidance he authored upon taking this job.[78] But what exactly is lethality? That’s nearly impossible to determine from the unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy. While lethality is intended as a driver for many decisions the force will undertake over the course of implementation, it is never explicitly defined. Nor is it a long-established Pentagon buzzword with relatively consistent meaning, like “modernization.” Lethality first made its appearance in official guidance Mattis authored in fall 2017. In that memo, Mattis distinguishes lethality from capability, suggesting the former is something else altogether.[79] Inside the Pentagon, there are whispers that it is Marine Corps-specific phraseology — a service that “owns no domain” and therefore evaluates dominance through a different and unique cultural lens. Nor can lethality be a potential synonym for modernization — after all, if it was, why not frame it in familiar terms? Like Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “revolution in military affairs,” the definition of this overused term is largely in the eyes of the beholder, and may even change over the course of the administration. However, ambiguity in strategic guidance is a recipe for confusion and perhaps even failure. For that reason, Mattis should clarify what he means by lethality. Based on its use in the National Defense Strategy, the term seems to imply the kind of tactics, concepts, readiness improvements, and technologies needed to prevail in a high-intensity war — in other words, lethality is that subset of modernization programs designed specifically to defeat the Russians and Chinese. Think more “Third Offset Strategy” and less classic upgrades of legacy fleets and inventories. Lethality would then be the investments that will result in war-winning capabilities provided all of the aforementioned distractions can be successfully avoided or mitigated. In other words, it is Mattis’ prized but elusive white whale. As a prolific reader and student of history, Mattis’ should then recall Moby Dick. He must take all the best of Captain Ahab in his relentless pursuit of the white whale (here, a military prepared to defeat China), but learn from the Pequod’s destruction and avoid the inflexibility that would result from only focusing on that objective at the expense of all others. Overall, Mattis will need to manage up, manage down, and catch some lucky political and geostrategic breaks if he hopes to succeed in his quest for lethality. Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness.
is maintaining an advantage in conventional military power, particularly with respect to a given potentially contested area. In particular, scholarship indicates that conventional deterrence has been most effective when adversaries judged that a potential defender’s conventional forces could resist their attacks, particularly in a relatively short timeframe.[98]This perspective discards much of the work of greats like Bernard Brody, that deterrence is not about the myopic pursuit of dominance or superiority, nor is deterring necessarily identified with winning (how can it be with nuclear peers?),[99] but the ‘win to deter’ view clearly undergirds the strategic vision in the National Defense Strategy. America is hardly the first power to face a decline from unipolarity, struggling to find competitive strategies to maintain primacy, while finding its extended network of alliances and partners under threat from capable challengers. Nor is the United States the first to launch ruinous campaigns to the Middle East and Central Asia, only to find it should have husbanded those resources for strategic adversaries. The 2018 National Defense Strategy offers clear answers to these long-term challenges, a direct assault with what resources are left to muster for the coming decades, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead,” from Henry V. Yet the answers found in the current National Defense Strategy are unconvincing. They are better suited for winning table top wargames than winning strategic competitions with actual adversaries. Albeit provocative, it might be easier to conceive of European Command and Pacific Command as the modern day Western and Eastern Roman Empire, taking bets on where conventional deterrence by ‘winning’ and a strategy based on direct competition will prove unsustainable first. Reading the current National Defense Strategy, one wonders how “dynamic force employment,” a “lethal, agile, and resilient force posture,” can truly redress the negative secular trends in the strategic environment described by the text. Is resilience compatible with agility? Expanding alliances and deterrence commitments with dynamism? Clawing back dominance across all domains and spectrums of conflict with sustainability? Expanding the competitive space while trying to keep the international order from weakening due to the expanding competition? The secretary of defense rightfully reminds us that “no strategy can long survive without necessary funding and the stable, predictable budgets required to defend America in the modern age.”[100] Yet perhaps there is a silver lining in this admonition, since it’s unclear that such a strategy focused on direct competition can be sustained by America’s economy in light of other national priorities. Perhaps it is best we stay emergent and lean, keeping our strategy iterative, and adjusting as the future unfolds. This strategy is a good step forward from the strategic miasma in which we were, but it is unlikely to take us where we can, or necessarily should go. Michael Kofman is a Senior Research Scientist at CNA Corporation and a Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. Previously he served as Program Manager at National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.
As hard as the last 16 years have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act's defense spending cuts, worsened by us operating, 9 of the last 10 years, under continuing resolutions, wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayer dollars.[102]Mattis is hardly the first secretary of defense to bemoan the uncertainty surrounding the budgeting process. In 2009, Bob Gates told the Economic Club of Chicago that it was “important ... to have a budget baseline with a steady, sustainable, and predictable rate of growth that avoids extreme peaks and valleys that are enormously harmful to sound budgeting.” He also said, however:
If the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships and planes.[103]Few in Washington today seem to agree with such sentiments. They want more. In one recent exercise, the American Enterprise Institute’s Thomas Donnelly proposed increases to military spending totaling $1.3 trillion over ten years, with spending as a share of GDP averaging about 3 percent.[104] Others find that increment of national wealth woefully inadequate. For example, Eliot Cohen believes that “a new, sustained target of 4 percent [of GDP] would hardly break the bank.”[105] We might ask our banker about that (more on that below). We might also ask the American people, who would be expected under Cohen’s proposal to pony up many hundreds of billions of dollars more for the military than currently projected.[106] That might not seem like much in a $19 trillion economy, but tell that to members of Congress who have struggled to find even a few billion dollars to help their constituents struggling to recover after natural disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes. How Much Is Enough? Adjusting for inflation, Gates’s “half a trillion” would be about $576 billion in today’s dollars. Mattis has reportedly requested, and been granted, a base budget between $610 and $615 billion for FY 2019.[107] But the Budget Control Act caps the FY 2019 budget at $549 billion. We might expect Overseas Contingency Operations spending — which is exempted under the Budget Control Act — to make up for some of the difference, but we should be wary of relying on this gimmick to evade spending limits. It isn’t obvious how Mattis and his staff intend to square the circle. Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, told reporters that planners opted for spelling out the requirements, first, with the hope that the “strategy will then drive the budget.”[108] Pentagon officials seem to underestimate the scale of that challenge, which goes well beyond the Budget Control Act caps. The U.S. federal government is, after all, operating in the red. Although the official debt figure is nearly $20 trillion, some argue that debt held by the public ($14.6 billion) is a more accurate representation of federal liabilities.[109] But a full accounting of obligations in excess of revenues is vastly greater, even, than the official $20 trillion debt. In 2016, my Cato colleague Jeff Miron put the figure at $117 trillion.[110] This is consistent with research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Jagadeesh Gokhale, who concluded “the U.S. fiscal imbalance is about seven times the total national debt held by the public.”[111] It is important to note that promises to pay future retirees are not ironclad commitments, and could be altered at any time by legislation. It is also conceivable that taxes on current workers will be raised, or even that some combination of reduced payments and higher taxes will close the gap. But the political prospects for any such changes are dim. The National Defense Strategy doesn’t ignore the need for spending money more wisely. It counts “reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance and affordability” as one of “three distinct lines of effort.” It affirms a solemn “responsibility to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense,” describes plans to accelerate the development of new technologies and improve innovation, and pledges “to achieve full auditability of all its operations.” The strategy also commits the department to “drive greater efficiency in procurement of materiel and services,” and reduce overhead and headquarters staff, and reaffirms the department’s long-standing desire to shed “excess property and infrastructure” through the Base Realignment and Closure process. These are all worthy goals, but they can’t close the gap between what the department says it needs, and what is likely to be made available. In short, although Mattis himself admitted to the importance of restoring “America's economic viability, because no nation in history has maintained its military power that was not economically viable and did not keep its fiscal house in order,” the U.S. fiscal house is a wreck.[112] At War with Our Banker The ultimate irony? Enemy number one, China, is funding our profligate ways by buying U.S. Treasury bills. Indeed, Americans, indirectly at least, are funding part of China’s military modernization through the interest paid on the U.S. notes they hold.[113] U.S. leaders have been aware of this conundrum for years. Consider, for example, an exchange in March 2009 between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. On the one hand, Clinton “affirmed the U.S. desire for a successful China, with a rising standard of living and improving democracy at a pace Chinese leaders could tolerate.” In addition, Clinton continued, according to a cable published by Wikileaks:
We wanted China to take more responsibility in the global economic sphere, create more of a social safety net for its people, and construct a better regulatory framework for the goods China manufactures. The Secretary also noted the challenges posed by China's economic rise, asking, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?”[114]Contrast such sentiments with the National Defense Strategy, which seems unfazed by the obvious economic links between the two countries, and little interest in seeing China succeed economically or politically:
As China continues its economic and military ascendance ... it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.Similar sentiments appeared in the just-released National Security Strategy, and mark a dramatic departure for U.S. foreign policy. As Zack Cooper and Mira Rapp-Hooper note:
For decades, the United States has sought to make China a “responsible stakeholder” in the existing regional and international order. By incorporating China into existing institutions and power structures, this narrative held, the international order would help to make China a benign major power. At the very least, the order would change China more than China would change it.[115]But the Trump administration appears to have abandoned this approach. The National Security Strategy reads:
[T]he assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners … turned out to be false.[116]If that is the case, does the Trump administration also believe that, on balance, close economic ties between the United States and China no longer serve U.S. strategic interests? That’s not clear. But even if the president and his national security team conclude that our economic co-dependence with China should continue, we still come back to the issue of limited resources. Misplaced Fears Americans haven’t traditionally been willing to spend vast sums of money on the military during times of relative peace. Are the circumstances so different today? Probably not. Americans are scared of terrorists, not China. To the extent that the National Defense Strategy prioritizes one challenge over another, combating ISIL and other counter-terrorism operations — though still important — are less so than five years ago. “Long-term strategic competition with China and Russia,” the document explains, are the “principle priorities” for the department. One could argue that the public should be more afraid of China and Russia than of terrorists. After all, terrorists kill fewer Americans every year than accident-causing deer or falling furniture.[117] Worldwide, the number of people killed in terrorist attacks fell in 2017.[118] But it is more accurate to say that Americans shouldn’t be that afraid, period. Nonetheless, public anxiety about terrorism has not abated in the United States.[119] A poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs taken in June 2017 found that 75 percent of respondents named international terrorism as a critical threat to the United States, whereas only 38 percent named China, and only 30 percent Russia.[120] The Pew Research Center found similar results: 74 percent of Americans labeled the Islamic State as a major threat, whereas Russian and Chinese power and influence registered at 47 and 41 percent, respectively.[121] Notes the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor, “the threat from terrorism is simple to understand and specifically designed to instill fear. In contrast, the threats posed by a rising China and Russia are complicated; the United States does not have a purely adversarial role with either.”[122] Conclusion So, to recap, we’re broke. To the extent that we are able to continue spending more money than we have, we can thank the primary challenger singled out in the National Defense Strategy: China. And we, in turn, are indirectly funding their military modernization. The American people are unlikely to sign onto an ambitious new program to fight the Chinese — in addition to Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, and ISIL. And, we shouldn’t want Americans to harbor greater animosity toward China, in particular. That could stir up protectionist sentiments that would undermine the U.S. economy. In the modern era, trade wars are almost as damaging as real wars. The drafters of the new strategy might reason that a big scary opponent is needed to shake additional dollars loose to fund big-ticket items like warships and aircraft, plus new nukes and space weapons, but the costs and risks of demonizing China far outweigh the benefits to the Department of Defense, and, more importantly, the nation. Dr. Christopher Preble is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Image: U.S. Department of Defense [post_title] => Policy Roundtable: A Close Look at the 2018 National Defense Strategy [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => policy-roundtable-close-look-2018-national-defense-strategy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-02-02 10:44:24 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-02-02 15:44:24 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://tnsr.org/?post_type=roundtable&p=390 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => roundtable [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [lead] => We asked a group of experts to comb through the National Defense Strategy and tell us what they think. [pubinfo] => [issue] => [quotes] => [style] => roundtable [type] => Policy [style_label] => Roundtable [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => ) [authors] => Array ( [0] => 11 [1] => 119 [2] => 120 [3] => 121 [4] => 122 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] => [1] Kori Schake, “Mattis's Defense Strategy is Bold.” Foreign Policy, January 22, 2018. http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/22/mad-dog-mattiss-defense-strategy-is-bold/. [2] Bill Chappell, “‘I’m The Only One That Matters,’ Trump Says Of State Dept. Job Vacancies,” NPR, Nov. 3, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies. [3] The White House, “Remarks by President Trump on the Administration’s National Security Strategy,”, Dec. 18, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-administrations-national-security-strategy/. [4] The Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, Jan., 2018, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. [5] The White House, National Security Strategy of The United States of America, Dec., 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. [6] “Flavius Vegetius Renatus Quotes,” Military Quotes, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.military-quotes.com/vegetius-renatus.htm. [7] Dennis J. Blasko, “‘Peace Through Strength’: Deterrence in Chinese Military Doctrine,” War on the Rocks, March 15, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/03/peace-through-strength-deterrence-in-chinese-military-doctrine/. [8] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [9] National Security Strategy. [10] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [11] John L. Thornton “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” China Center at Brookings Institute, March, 2012, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0330_china_lieberthal.pdf. [12] “The top 10 quotes of Xi on China-U.S. ties,” New China, Sep. 14, 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/14/c_134623163.htm. [13] U.S. Embassy & Consulates in China, “Remarks by President Trump and President Xi of China in Joint Press Statement,” Nov. 9, 2017, https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/selected-quotes-press-statement-president-trump-joint-press-conference-president-xi/. [14] The State Council “China’s Peaceful Development,” People’s Republic of China, September 2011, http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content_281474986284646.htm. [15] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi: The New Concept of Win-win, Multi-win and All-Win is Right Direction of Development of International Relations,”, Feb. 2, 2015, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1234405.shtml. [16] Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2017,”, May 15, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2017_China_Military_Power_Report.PDF?ver=2017-06-06-141328-770. [17] “Testimony of Rex W. Tillerson, Secretary of State,” Opening Remarks Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 14, 2017, https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/06/271895.htm. [18] U.S. Department of Defense, “DoD Releases Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Proposal,” Release No: NR-192-17, May 23, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1190216/dod-releases-fiscal-year-2018-budget-proposal/. [19] Joel Gehrke, “Senators not happy with Rex Tillerson's State Department reform effort,” The Washington Examiner, Nov. 14, 2017, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senators-not-happy-with-rex-tillersons-state-department-reform-effort/article/2640644. [20] Dan Lamothe, “Retired generals cite past comments from Mattis while opposing Trump’s proposed foreign aid cuts,” Washington Post, Feb. 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/02/27/retired-generals-cite-past-comments-from-mattis-while-opposing-trumps-proposed-foreign-aid-cuts/?utm_term=.19359385e14f. [21] “Executive Summary, Congressional Budget Justification, FY 2018,” Millennium Challenge Corporation, United States of America, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, https://www.mcc.gov/resources/story/story-cbj-fy2018-executive-summary. [22] The State Council, “The Belt and Road Initiative,”, People’s Republic of China, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://english.gov.cn/beltAndRoad/. [23] “Reconnecting Asia,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, https://reconnectingasia.csis.org/map/. [24] The Science of Military Strategy, (Military Academic Works, Academy of Military Science, 2013). [25] Blasko, “‘Peace Through Strength’.” [26] “Full Text: China's Military Strategy,” Xinhuanet, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-05/26/c_134271001_4.htm. [27] Yuan Can, “PLA Air Force to regularize training over First Island Chain,” People’s Daily Online, Sep. 3, 2016, http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0913/c90000-9114575.html. [28] “Chinese aircraft carrier heads for West Pacific for blue water training,” Xinhua, Dec. 26, 2016, http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2016-12/26/content_7423537.htm. [29] “National Defense Policy,” accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194485.htm. [30] “China’s National Defense in 2008,” accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.gov.cn/english/official/2009-01/20/content_1210227_4.htm. [31] Li Jiayao, “China Focus: "Be ready to win wars," China's Xi orders reshaped PLA,” Xinhuanet Aug. 2, 2017, http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2017-08/02/content_7699926.htm. [32] “决胜全面建成小康社会夺取新时代中国特色社会主义伟大胜利” [Decisively Build a Well-off Society in a Comprehensive Way, Win the Great Victory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics], China Military Network, Oct. 19, 2017, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2017-10/19/content_189964.htm. [33] Dennis J. Blasko, “Walk, Don’t Run: Chinese Military Reforms in 2017,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 9, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/01/walk-dont-run-chinese-military-reforms-in-2017/. [34] Zhang Tao, “China reshuffles 84 corps-level military units," Xinhuanet, March 18, 2017, http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2017-04/18/content_7567179.htm. [35] Huang Panyue, “PLA stresses combat readiness, reassigns officers based on battle requirements," Xinhuanet, Dec. 11, 2017, http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2017-12/11/content_7861974.htm. [36] Wang Jun, "13个新集团军主官人选均确定，原有的集团军主官全部换岗” [13 New Group Army Leaders Identified, Original Group Army Leaders Changed Posts], The Paper, Aug. 16, 2017, http://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1765430. [37] Yamei, “Facts and Figures on China's military reform," Xinhua, Dec. 19, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-12/19/c_136837189.htm. [38] Over 100 brigade and regiment-level units”: Wang Junkang, Fu Xiaoxiang, “视频丨干得漂亮！中国陆军2017年大事记” [Video: Well Done! Chinese Army Events in 2017] at time mark 00:26, China Military Network, January 2, 2018, http://tv.81.cn/jlwyx/2018-01/02/content_7892906.htm. [39] "解放军今年重大实战化演习一场接一场” [This Year the PLA Conducted Major Realistic Field Exercises One After Another], People’s Daily, December 30, 2015, http://military.people.com.cn/n1/2015/1230/c1011-27995904.html. [40] “中国陆军怎样走过“军改元年”” [How Did the Chinese Army Pass the “First Year of Military Reform”], Xinhuanet, Jan. 5, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/mil/2017-01/05/c_129433633.htm. [41] “中国军队２０１７：打造实战化训练“升级版”” [Chinese Military 2017: Buidling an “Upgraded Version” of Realistic Training], Xinhuanet, Dec. 27, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/2017-12/27/c_1122176158.htm. [42] “图片” [Photo], China Military Network, Aug. 13, 2017, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2017-08/13/content_185391.htm. [43] “学习习近平总书记关于强军目标的重要论述” [Study Xi Jinping's Important Statement on the Goal of Strengthening the Military], People’s Daily, July 22, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0722/c40531-22275029.html. [44] “学习习近平总书记关于强军目标的重要论述” [Study Xi Jinping's Important Statement on the Goal of Strengthening the Military], People’s Daily, July 22, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0722/c40531-22275029.html. [45] “破解“五个不会”难题要从源头入手” [Start From the Source to Break the “Five Incapables” Problem] China Military Network, Oct. 13, 2015, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2015-10/13/content_125880.htm. [46] “沈阳军区司令员张又侠解读新时期军事训练新革命” [Shenyang Military Region Commander Zhang Youxia Interprets the New Revolution in Military Training in the New Period], China.com, Nov. 11, 2009, http://www.china.com.cn/military/txt/2009-11/20/content_18925256.htm. [47] Reuters Staff, “China military training inadequate for winning a war: army paper,” Reuters, Oct. 12, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-military/china-military-training-inadequate-for-winning-a-war-army-paper-idUSKCN0I108Q20141012. [48] Bonnie S. Glasser, “Is China proselytising its path to success?” East Asia Forum, Jan. 11, 2018, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/01/11/is-china-proselytising-its-path-to-success/. [49] Bonnie Glasser (@BonnieGlasser), “Maybe the Chinese are looking for a justification to start operation military assets from their islands in the Spratlys and have decided to use US FONOPs as an excuse,” Twitter post, Jan. 21, 2018, https://twitter.com/BonnieGlaser/status/955429394373324800. [50] ChengCheng, “China vows "necessary measures" after U.S. warship nears Huangyan Island," Xinhuanet, Jan. 20, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/20/c_136910889.htm - 0-twi-1-90797-7250227817ecdff034dc9540e6. [51] The Department of Defense, Summary of the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Jan., 2018, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. [52] The Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review 2014, March 4, 2014, http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf. [53] The White House, National Security Strategy 2006, March 16, 2006, http://nssarchive.us/national-security-strategy-2006/. Politico Staff, “Full text: Donald Trump's speech on fighting terrorism,” Politico, Aug. 15, 2016, https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-terrorism-speech-227025. Aaron Blake, “19 things Donald Trump knows better than anyone else, according to Donald Trump,” Washington Post, October 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/04/17-issues-that-donald-trump-knows-better-than-anyone-else-according-to-donald-trump/?utm_term=.20491d7ec14f. Pamela Engel, “Donald Trump: 'I would bomb the s--- out of' ISIS,” Business Insider, Nov. 13, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-bomb-isis-2015-11. Tom LoBianco, “Donald Trump on terrorists: 'Take out their families,'” CNN, Dec. 3, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terrorists-families/. [54] Peter Bergen, “Bergen: No, Trump didn't defeat ISIS,” CNN, Oct. 18, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/18/opinions/trump-isis-defeat-opinion-bergen/index.html [55] James Mattis, “Secretary of Defense Announces National Defense Strategy,” DoD News, https://www.defense.gov/Videos/videoid/580418/. [56] Ashley Parker and Matthew Rosenberg, “Donald Trump Vows to Bolster Nation’s Military Capacities,” New York Times, Sep. 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/us/politics/donald-trump-speech.html. [57] Congressional Budget Office, “Analysis of the Long-Term Costs of the Administration’s Goals for the Military,” Dec. 4, 2017, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53350. [58] Heather Wilson and David Goldfein, “The Air Force Needs a Budget That Aims Higher,” The Wall Street Journal, Sep. 11, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-air-force-needs-a-budget-that-aims-higher-1505171248?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB 09.13.2017&utm_term=Editorial - Early Bird Brief. Association of the United States Army, “CSA Milley Would Like to See 100,000 More Soldiers,” June 9, 2017, https://www.ausa.org/news/csa-milley-would-100000-more-soldiers. Richard Spencer, “Secretary of the Navy Strategic Readiness Review,” US Naval Institute News, Dec. 14, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/12/14/secnav_readiness_review. [59] John Haltiwanger, “Trump has Dropped Record Number of Bombs on Middle East,” Newsweek, Sep. 19, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/trump-era-record-number-bombs-dropped-middle-east-667505. [60] Mattis, “Secretary of Defense Announces National Defense Strategy.” The Associated Press, “Shutdown cancels North Carolina National Guard training,” Army Times, Jan. 22, 2018, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/01/21/shutdown-cancels-north-carolina-national-guard-training/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ebb 01.22.18&utm_term=Editorial - Early Bird Brief. [61] Geoff Ziezulewicz, “Only one-third of Super Hornets ready to ‘fight tonight’ as of October, admiral says,” Navy Times, Nov. 9, 2017, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/11/09/only-one-third-of-super-hornets-ready-to-fight-tonight-as-of-october-admiral-says/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB-11-10&utm_term=Editorial - Early Bird Brief. Ashley Burns, “Air Force Pilot Shortage Reaches 2,000,” Flying, Nov. 13, 2017, https://www.flyingmag.com/air-force-pilot-shortage-reaches-2000. Sydney Freedberg Jr., “15 Subs Kept Out of Service: 177 Months Of Drydock Backups,” Breaking Defense, Oct. 31, 2017, https://breakingdefense.com/2017/10/15-subs-kept-out-of-service-177-months-of-drydock-backups/. [62] Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs, “Air Force announces initiatives to lessen pilot shortage,” US Air Force, Aug. 25, 2017, http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1290397/air-force-announces-initiatives-to-lessen-pilot-shortage. [63] Courtney McBride, “Leaders Tapped for Eight Cross-Functional Team Pilots,” PMPNT, Oct. 30, 2017, https://www.pmpnt.army.mil/leaders-tapped-for-eight-cross-functional-team-pilots/. [64] Megan Eckstein, “NAVSEA: FY 2019 Navy Budget Request Will Include More Shipbuilding, Life Extensions to Help Grow Fleet,” US Naval Institute News, Jan. 2, 2018, https://news.usni.org/2018/01/02/navys-fy-2019-budget-request-will-include-new-shipbuilding-life-extensions-help-grow-fleet. [65] Meghann Myers, “Chief: The Army has to start preparing for 'the big war,'” Army Times, Jan. 18, 2018, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/01/17/chief-the-army-has-to-start-preparing-for-the-big-war/?utm_source=RC+Defense+Morning+Recon&utm_campaign=f165b41895-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_694f73a8dc-f165b41895-8533. [66] Megan Eckstein, “FY19 Budget Request Will Include 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan,” Real Clear Defense, Jan. 18, 2018, https://www.realcleardefense.com/2018/01/19/fy19_budget_request_will_include_30-year_shipbuilding_plan_299715.html. Eckstein, “NAVSEA: FY 2019 Navy Budget Request Will Include More Shipbuilding, Life Extensions to Help Grow Fleet.” [67] Aaron Mehta, “Here’s how Ellen Lord will reduce acquisition time by 50 percent,” Defense News, Dec. 8, 2017, https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2017/12/08/heres-how-ellen-lord-will-reduce-acquisition-time-by-50-percent/. David Vergun, “US Army Futures Command to reform modernization, says secretary of the Army,” US Army, Dec. 8, 2017, https://www.army.mil/article/197886/us_army_futures_command_to_reform_modernization_says_secretary_of_the_army. [68] Kari Hawkins, “AMC-developed weapons remain vital to Army,” US Army, Sep. 6, 2012, https://www.army.mil/article/86839/amc_developed_weapons_remain_vital_to_army. Patrick Tucker, “US Army Chief Announces Major Reorganization For How Army Develops, Buys Weapons,” Defense One, Oct. 6, 2017, http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/10/feeling-rivals-heat-us-army-streamlining-and-centralizing-way-it-buys-weapons/141603/. [69] Mackenzie Eaglen, “Repair and Rebuild: Balancing New Military Spending for a Three-Theater Strategy,” American Enterprise Institute, Oct. 16, 2017, http://www.aei.org/publication/repair-and-rebuild-balancing-new-military-spending-for-a-three-theater-strategy/. [70] William Miller, “An Unconventional Proposal for Bringing the OA-X to Life,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 15, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/an-unconventional-proposal-for-bringing-the-oa-x-to-life/. [71] Eaglen, “Repair and Rebuild: Balancing New Military Spending for a Three-Theater Strategy.” [72] Kris Osborn, “Pentagon Says It Needs $270 Billion to Upgrade Nuclear Arsenal,” Military.com, June 25, 2015, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/06/25/pentagon-says-it-needs-270-billion-to-upgrade-nuclear-arsenal.html. [73] Robert Burns, “Nuke chief: Time is now to begin updating nukes,” Associated Press, Feb. 29, 2016, https://apnews.com/a12604d546404be9b7846c3d2d128db4/nuke-chief-time-now-begin-updating-nukes. [74] Robert Alvarez, “Yesterday is tomorrow: estimating the full cost of a nuclear buildup,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov. 3, 2017, https://thebulletin.org/yesterday-tomorrow-estimating-full-cost-nuclear-buildup11264. [75] Ashley Feinberg, “Exclusive: Here Is A Draft Of Trump’s Nuclear Review. He Wants A Lot More Nukes.” The Huffington Post, Jan. 11, 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-nuclear-posture-review-2018_us_5a4d4773e4b06d1621bce4c5. [76] Ankit Panda, “The Trump White House Seeks an Additional $4 Billion for Missile Defense in Fiscal Year 2018,” The Diplomat, Nov. 7, 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/11/the-trump-white-house-seeks-an-additional-4-billion-for-missile-defense-in-fiscal-year-2018/. [77] Eaglen, “Repair and Rebuild: Balancing New Military Spending for a Three-Theater Strategy.” [78] Cheryl Pellerin, “Mattis Details Three Lines of Effort in Memo to DoD Personnel,” DoD News, Oct. 11, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1339147/mattis-details-three-lines-of-effort-in-memo-to-dod-personnel/. [79] James Mattis, Memorandum for all Department of Defense Personnel, Oct. 5, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/GUIDANCE-FROM-SECRETARY-JIM-MATTIS.pdf [80] Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Jan. 2018. https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. [81] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [82] Kori Schake, “Mattis’s Defense Strategy is Bold”, Foreign Policy, Jan. 22, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/22/mad-dog-mattiss-defense-strategy-is-bold/. [83] Andrew Hill, “Nostalgia and Strategy: There Never Was a Golden Age”, Policy Roundtable: What to Make of Trump’s National Security Strategy, Texas National Security Review, Dec. 21, 2017, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-make-trumps-national-security-strategy/#essay3. [84] Lt. Col. Timothy Thomas (Ret.), “The Evolving Nature of Russia’s Way of War”, Military Review, Jul-Aug, 2017, http://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/July-August-2017/Thomas-Russias-Way-of-War/. [85] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [86] “GDP Based on PPP, share of the world”, IMF DataMapper, International Monetary Fund, last modified Oct., 2017, http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD. [87] Dmitry Gorenburg, “Russia’s Military Modernization Plans: 2018-2027”, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 495, PONARS Eurasia, Nov., 2017, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/sites/default/files/policy-memos-pdf/Pepm495_Gorenburg_Nov2017.pdf. [88] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [89] President of the Russian Federation. Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, Moscow: Kremlin, 2014, http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d527556bec8deb3530.pdf. [90] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [91] See G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). [93] Dmitri Trenin, “From Greater Europe to Greater Asia? The Sino-Russian Entente”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Apr., 2015, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.. [94] Stephen Kotkin, “Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics”, Foreign Affairs, May-Jun., 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2016-04-18/russias-perpetual-geopolitics. [95] Bernard Brodie, “The Anatomy of Deterrence”, RM-2218, RAND Corporation, 1958, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM2218.html. [96] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [97] Brodie, Anatomy. [98] Elbridge Colby and Jonathan F. Solomon, “Avoiding Becoming a Paper Tiger: Presence in a Warfighting Defence Strategy”, Joint Force Quarterly 82, Jul., 2016, http://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-82/Article/793233/avoiding-becoming-a-paper-tiger-presence-in-a-warfighting-defense-strategy/. [99] Brodie, Anatomy. [100] Jim Garamone, “National Defense Strategy a ‘Good Fit for Our Times,’ Mattis Says”, DoD News, Defence Media Activity, Department of Defence, Jan. 19, 2018, https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1419671/national-defense-strategy-a-good-fit-for-our-times-mattis-says/source/GovDelivery/. [101] Walter Lippmann opined that “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” From U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943), 34-36, quoted in Frank G. Hoffman, “Towards a Balanced and Sustainable Defense,” Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Notes, July 2, 2009, https://www.fpri.org/article/2009/07/towards-a-balanced-and-sustainable-defense/. [102] “Remarks by Secretary Mattis on the National Defense Strategy,” January 19, 2018, https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1420042/remarks-by-secretary-mattis-on-the-national-defense-strategy/. [103] “Secretary of Defense Speech,” Economic Club of Chicago, July 16, 2009, http://archive.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1369. [104] Thomas Donnelly, “Great Powers Don’t Pivot,” in How Much Is Enough? Alternative Defense Strategies, Jacob Cohn and Ryan Boone, ed., Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2016, 7. [105] Eliot A. Cohen, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power & the Necessity of Military Force (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 207, 208. [106] According to the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent projections, defense spending (budget authority) will total $3.322 trillion between FY 2018-2022. Four percent of GDP during that period amounts to $4.287 trillion, a gap of $965 billion. Even a gradual increase, in which Pentagon spending reaches the four percent target over five years, would consume an additional $552 billion, and $225 billion in FY 2022 alone. Author’s calculations from “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2017, Tables 1 and 4, www.cbo.gov/publication/52801. [107] Tony Bertuca, “Sources: Mattis Went to Trump for Pentagon Budget Growth – and Got It,” Inside the Army, January 22, 2018. https://insidedefense.com/inside-army/sources-mattis-went-trump-pentagon-budget-growth-and-got-it. [108] Aaron Mehta, “National Defense Strategy Released with Clear Priority: Stay Ahead of Russia and China,” Defense News, January 19, 2018, https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/01/19/national-defense-strategy-released-with-clear-priority-stay-ahead-of-russia-and-china/. [109] See, for example, “Q&A: Gross Debt Versus Debt Held by the Public,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Sep. 11, 2017, http://www.crfb.org/papers/qa-gross-debt-versus-debt-held-public. [110] Jeffrey Miron, “U.S. Fiscal Imbalance over Time: This Time Is Different,” Cato Institute White Paper, Jan. 26, 2016, https://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/us-fiscal-imbalance-over-time-time-different. [111] Jagadeesh Gokhale, The Government Debt Iceberg, The Institute of Economic Affairs, 2014, https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Gokhale-Interactive-PDF.pdf. [112] “Remarks by Secretary Mattis on the National Defense Strategy.” [113] Jethro Mullen, “China Is America's Biggest Creditor Once Again,” CNN Money, Aug. 16, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/16/investing/china-us-debt-treasuries/index.html. [114] “US Embassy Cables: Hillary Clinton Ponders U.S. Relationship with its Chinese ‘banker,’” The Guardian, December 4, 2010, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/199393. Emphasis added. [115] Zack Cooper and Mira Rapp-Hooper, “China, America, and the End of the Responsible Stakeholder Theory,” Texas National Security Review, Dec. 21, 2017, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-make-trumps-national-security-strategy/#essay5. [116] The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States, Dec., 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. Phil Levy notes the same passage. See Phil Levy, “Economics in the National Security Strategy: Principles vs. Practices,” Texas National Security Review, Dec. 21, 2017, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-make-trumps-national-security-strategy/#essay6. [117] See John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart, “Responsible Counterterrorism Policy,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, September 10, 2014, 5. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/responsible-counterterrorism-policy. [118] Matthew Henman, “Global Militant Attacks Caused Fewer Fatalities in 2017,” IHS Markit, Jan. 18, 2018, https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/global-militant-attacks-caused-fewer-fatalities-in-2017.html. [119] Christopher Preble, “We Are Terrorized: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing, and Why It Can’t Be Easily Fixed,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 8, 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/01/we-are-terrorized-why-u-s-counterterrorism-policy-is-failing-and-why-it-cant-be-easily-fixed/. [120] Dina Smeltz, et al., “The Foreign Policy Establishment or Donald Trump: Which Better Reflects American Opinion?” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 20, 2017, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/foreign-policy-establishment-or-donald-trump-which-better-reflects-american-opinion. [121] Jacob Poushter and Dorothy Manevich, “Globally, People Point to ISIS and Climate Change as Leading Security Threats,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 1, 2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/08/01/globally-people-point-to-isis-and-climate-change-as-leading-security-threats/. [122] Adam Taylor, “The Pentagon Says China and Russia Are Bigger Problems for U.S. than Terrorists. American Voters May not Agree,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/20/the-pentagon-says-china-and-russia-are-bigger-problems-for-u-s-than-terrorists-american-voters-may-not-agree/?utm_term=.4eacee95eb5d. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => Contents [contents] => 1. Introduction, by Ryan Evans 2. The Pentagon's 19-Inch Biceps Versus Revisionist Threats: China in the National Defense Strategy, by Dennis J. Blasko 3. In Search of the White Whale: The National Defense Strategy's Quest for Lethality, by Mackenzie Eaglen 4. Searching for Strategy in Washington's Competition with Russia, by Michael Kofman 5. The National Defense Strategy is Writing Checks that America Can't Cash, by Christopher Preble ) ) ) [post_count] => 1 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 390 [post_author] => 11 [post_date] => 2018-01-26 14:49:12 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-01-26 19:49:12 [post_content] =>
Political pressure to continue prioritizing the fight against terrorism means that while Pentagon leaders want more equilibrium between the long-term competition with China and Russia, counter-terrorism operations are likely to remain nearly all-consuming absent daily leadership to buck the system and change course.Still, China and Russia occupy a prominent place in the Pentagon’s strategy document. But Washington has yet to come to terms with what Preble calls the “ultimate irony”:
Enemy number one, China, is funding our profligate ways by buying U.S. Treasury bills. Indeed, Americans, indirectly at least, are funding part of China’s military modernization through the interest paid on the U.S. notes they hold.Moscow will undoubtedly be pleased by Russia’s prominence in the National Defense Strategy, no matter what the Kremlin might say publicly. Since its defeat in the Cold War, Moscow has sought to rebuild Russia as a great power and to be recognized as such. As Kofman observes, the National Defense Strategy grants Russia that status, placing it alongside China, an even heftier power. In his stinging critique, Kofman writes:
[I]t seems the only discernible theory of victory is just restoring America’s eroding military advantages. It’s clear how this answers the Pentagon’s needs for more, but what this solves in terms of the Russia problem set, be it in Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, or forms of competition below the threshold of war, remains a mystery. A more effective strategy would signal a clear intent to establish U.S. coercive credibility, demonstrate resolve, and lay out a plan to deter over that which matters, while at the same time assuring America’s adversaries that the competition is not existential, and thus can be bounded.Interestingly, Kofman, a Russia military expert, and Blasko, a China military expert, each view the other country as posing a more series threat to U.S. power and America’s leading role in the international order. Kofman bemoans the fact that the National Defense Strategy treats Russia and China much too similarly. By trying to step up military competition with Russia, Kofman argues, the Pentagon will make it harder to “marshal resources to manage a much stronger challenge looming from China.” For his part, Blasko sees Russia as more likely than China to undermine the foundations of the international order since it has been less of a beneficiary of it. And while China’s military modernization is daunting, it has also been disruptive and, according to Blasko, in the near-term, it “is unlikely that the senior PLA leadership believes it has the capability to displace the United States from the Indo-Pacific region.” Kofman and Blasko both level the same charge at the National Defense Strategy’s assumptions on Russia and China respectively . Kofman argues that Russia is already eminently deterrable and that a war with Russia is avoidable due to the substantial nuclear arsenals held by both nations. Therefore, escalating a military competition with Russia might only make matters worse without advancing U.S. interests. Referring to military competition with China, Blasko writes:
Escalation of the military situation increases the chance of mistakes and miscalculations by all parties involved. Additional nukes, B-2s and carriers won’t fix the problem; U.S. political leaders need more options than flexing their son’s 19-inch biceps. The self-inflicted decimation of the State Department is more of an immediate threat to American national security than is ChinaRegardless of the wisdom of these strategic decisions, the question remains: How can the United States pay for an ambitious competition with two great powers while meeting a plethora of other security commitments, that include containing Iran and preventing a disaster on the Korean Peninsula? Any strategy should begin with this question — but that is not in the American habit. Nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and tanks are expensive and the National Defense Strategy indicates an appetite for more of them. “That is,” as Preble politely observes, “an unreasonable expectation.” The Pentagon’s vision of the strategic landscape, he writes, is
unlikely to rouse the public to forego domestic spending goodies, or tolerate vastly higher taxes, in order to defeat. Indeed, the primary foe — China — is financing America’s spending binge, and is also a key factor powering the global economy.Eaglen sketches out an array of competing demands, from the need for more conventional capacity and capability, to nuclear modernization, to key manpower shortages across the military, including and especially pilots. “With all of these competing needs,” she writes, “it is unclear whether the Pentagon will be able to do what previous administrations have not and sustain the aspirational goal Mattis has laid out in the National Defense Strategy.” For his part, Preble is less concerned about many of these competing choices. He argues that it is possible to defend and advance America’s vital interests without wallowing in bankruptcy, which is where the country could end up if it continues on the path set before it by the National Defense Strategy. The voices featured in this roundtable are critical, yes. Still, Secretary Jim Mattis and his team deserve credit for bold thinking and for largely avoiding the mealy-mouthed jargon that is too often the norm for documents such as this. Ryan Evans is the publisher of the Texas National Security Review and the editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks.
The United States must retain overmatch— the combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success and to ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight. Overmatch strengthens our diplomacy and permits us to shape the international environment to protect our interests.[5]It continues, “We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them—not just punish them if they attack the United States.” In other words, the United States must have the will to employ its capabilities and ensure that potential unnamed adversaries understand its intentions. The president’s words and Pentagon policy reach back at least to the quote, “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (If you want peace, prepare for war)[6], attributed to the 4th century Roman Vegitius. This concept of deterrence is not unique to the United States and has a less muscular doppelganger in Chinese military doctrine.[7] The president’s rollout speech, the National Security Strategy, and the National Defense Strategy provide important insights into the objectives, priorities, and — unfortunately — the inconsistencies and flaws of U.S. security strategy. These three official statements reveal the gaps between what the president says and what the government bureaucracy writes, between administration rhetoric and action (as revealed by funding requests), and between ideological-based versus evidence-based conclusions. The president’s words are markedly different from the administration’s perception of the immediate Chinese (and Russian) threat to the international system. While the president recognizes Chinese challenges to “American influence, values, and wealth,” he nonetheless seeks to “build a great partnership.” The Pentagon, on the other hand, assesses that the Chinese want to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model,” and displace the United States on its way to world preeminence. If reality is closer to the president’s vision, then some U.S. policies may need adjustment. If the latter, then the global “winner takes all” competition requires radical changes to U.S. policy. The National Defense Strategy dismisses without refutation official Chinese statements of intentions, the extent of its dependence on foreign trade, and the near-term disruptions in the Chinese armed forces caused by its recent reforms.[8] Yet, despite the differences in our political systems, U.S. policies of deterrence and force modernization are similar to China’s in many ways. Rivals or Revisionists? How a Country is Categorized sets the Tone for the Relationship The National Security Strategy is a component of the larger “America First” foreign policy. It assures the world that the United States’ new strategy of “principled realism” is “guided by outcomes, not ideology.” But significant differences in the president’s words and those found in it and National Defense Strategy muddy the nature and intensity of the Chinese threat and the appropriate policies to implement in response. The president speaks of a challenge manageable through “partnership,” while the National Security Strategy warns of a regional Chinese threat and the National Defense Strategy presents an imminent threat to the world order in which China seeks to replace the United States as the global leader. Whatever the magnitude of the Chinese threat, the president and administration are committed to making historic[9], “increased and sustained”[10] investment to deal with the entire gamut of threats, now and in the future. A major element of “principled realism,” it seems, is labeling China and Russia “revisionist powers” in both the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. The president, however, used the word “rival” in his speech, a much less ominous word than “revisionist,” and wants to “build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest.” The National Security Strategy does not explain the meaning of “revisionist,” but states that the United States will improve the performance of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization through reforms — reforms that benefit the United States first and foremost. For the United States, such reforms apparently do not rise to the level of “revision” of the international system. The National Defense Strategy defines revisionism as going far beyond reform to institutions and as threatening other nations’ political systems. It makes the profound assertion that Russia and China are intent on shaping the “world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” This assessment describes a much greater threat to the United States and world than the president’s description of the “challenges” Russia and China pose. The National Security Strategy includes Chinese capabilities among those used by “adversaries” and the National Defense Strategy calls China a “strategic competitor.” But both documents fall short of identifying China as an enemy. The Pentagon’s strategy pronounces Beijing’s military objectives as pursuing “a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.” A month earlier the National Security Strategy described narrower military goals: “China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there.” The National Defense Strategy’s depiction of Chinese intentions elevates the immediate Chinese threat well above the words competitor, rival, or challenge. Though not explained, this epiphany likely is the result of decades of strategic distrust of Chinese intentions, worst-case assumptions, and compressing the timeline for Chinese military modernization to years, not decades.[11] Similar to the president’s National Security Strategy rollout speech, the statement in the National Defense Strategy about displacing the United States is followed by the incongruous “far-reaching objective” to “set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression.” In light of what the National Defense Strategy describes as China’s intentions to remake the entire world in its own image, “a great partnership” and military relationship of transparency and non-aggression sound like more of the feckless policy of engagement, which the National Security Strategy says the United States must “rethink.” Needless to say, the Pentagon’s version of Chinese objectives contradicts many years of official Chinese statements about their ambitions toward the United States, their region, and the world.[12] Only last November Xi Jinping revealed, “As I said to the President, the Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate both China and the United States”[13] — an outlook supplemented by a litany of official declarations of “peaceful development,”[14] that “China does not seek regional hegemony or sphere of influence,” and its concept of win-win cooperation.[15] As policy document, and not an intelligence assessment, the National Defense Strategy is not obliged to offer proof to dispute Xi or to support its interpretation of Chinese intentions. The Defense Department’s last report to Congress, issued in May 2017, included no such goal in the list of the Chinese Communist Party’s strategic objectives.[16] Diplomacy and the Disconnect between Words and Resources The strategies’ references to the importance of American diplomacy are belied by the administration’s funding priorities. In his speech, the president did not mention the word “diplomacy” or the role of the State Department. Yet, both the security and defense strategies frequently refer to using diplomatic (and other) tools in the execution of policy objectives so that the United States can negotiate from a position of strength to shape the international environment. However, under-resourcing diplomacy appears to be the actual policy of the administration. The reality is clear: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson supports massive cuts[17] to his department’s budget (down from $55.6 billion in 2017 to $37.6 billion in 2018 compared to the $639 billion defense budget request[18]) and reducing the “ranks of civil servants and foreign service officers by about 2,300 positions.”[19] Over half a dozen retired four-star flag officers opposed such cuts, quoting what then-Commander of U.S. Central Command, current Defense Secretary James Mattis, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2013,
[I]f you don’t fund the State Department fully then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately…. The more we put into the State Department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of apparent American withdrawal from the international scene.[20]Another gap between rhetoric and resourcing is the National Security Strategy’s reference to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, “which selects countries that are committed to reform and then monitors and evaluates their projects.” The very next paragraph begins with the admonition to “Commit Selectively.” Selective commitment is illustrated by the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s budget request of $800 million for FY2018 (.13 percent of the defense request) “for programs in Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Togo, and Timor-Leste...”[21] Though not exactly equivalent, the work of the Millennium Challenge Corporation pales when compared to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative.”[22] For a comparison of the scale of U.S. and Chinese efforts in infrastructure development in the region, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has an interactive map[23] that describes over 50 Chinese projects compared to three U.S. efforts. But enough about us. What about the Chinese goal to achieve “Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term” and displace the U.S. “to achieve global preeminence in the future”? The future can be a long time from now, but usually the near-term runs from two to five years out. Thus, the real question is what will the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) be capable of in the 2020 timeframe? PLA Modernization and Deterrence Chinese military doctrine defines warfighting, deterrence, and military operations other than war as the three basic ways of using military force.[24] Warfighting is the core of deterrence. Three conditions are necessary for deterrence: 1) an “adequate deterrent force,” 2) the “determination and volition [to employ] the strategic deterrent force,” and 3) interaction “between the deterrer and the deterred.”[25] Deterrence is China’s preferred method achieve its strategic objectives; warfighting is used when deterrence fails and there is no alternative. As is evident from the quotes cited above, this concept of deterrence parallels in many ways the U.S. policy of “peace through strength.” Currently, the PLA is focused on defense within the first island chain, but is gradually expanding air and sea operations to more distant seas[26], as seen by numerous methodical flights[27] and cruises[28] in the western Pacific. Over time, the PLA Navy and Air Force seek to establish crew proficiency for their new ships and aircraft, train small units to operate in large formations, prepare commanders and staffs to plan for the employment of combined arms and joint forces, familiarize the forces with new operating areas, and demonstrate newly acquired capabilities to the world. The operative word above is “gradual,” consistent with the PLA’s long-term modernization program. The PLA’s “three step development strategy” — made public in the 2006 white paper[29] (and revised slightly in the 2008 white paper)[30] — established a generic outline for modernization, setting milestones at 2010, 2020, and the mid-21st century (2049). The nonspecific 2010 goal of laying “a solid foundation” came and went with little fanfare. Last year, Xi announced the 2020 milestone had been completed without tying it directly to the strategy, “The PLA has basically completed mechanization and is moving rapidly toward ‘strong’ informationized armed forces.”[31] At the 19th National Party Congress, he redefined the timeline[32] by moving the mid-century objective of “modernization of national defense and armed forces” forward to 2035. Specifically, he directed the PLA to enhance the modernization of military theory, organization, personnel, and weaponry and equipment by that date (many of these themes are mentioned in the National Defense Strategy as tasks essential for the Department of Defense to address in “rebuilding” the U.S. military). Xi also changed the final, mid-century goal to building the PLA into a “world-class military,” a term left undefined. Officially, the PLA has adopted a generational, not near-term, approach to modernization. Over the past two years the PLA has implemented the largest organizational changes since the 1950s and launched a 300,000-man reduction. The previous national and regional command structure was replaced in 2016[33] and, beginning in April 2017, operational units underwent even greater changes.[34] The amount of disruption in the PLA has been unprecedented, demonstrated by:
The only existential threat to our nation is a nuclear attack. Nuclear weapons remain the most important mission we have … The choice right now is modernizing or losing deterrence.[72]Work had estimated that with Obama-era plans, the services would need a combined $270 billion between 2021 and 2035 to fully modernize the triad.[73] More recent predictions given the early goals of the Trump administration signaled an even more dramatic expenditure — $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years.[74] Short of a massive change in our nuclear posture, there is little reason to expect these costs to diminish. In fact, if pre-decisional drafts of the Nuclear Posture Review are any indication, spending on the nuclear mission will increase still further.[75] These figures discount likely additional investments in missile defense capabilities, such as those which dominated Trump’s request for additional FY 2018 defense appropriations in November.[76] By design, strategic missile defense capabilities like the Ground Based Interceptor are not meant to defend against general Russian or Chinese attacks. Continuing interceptor production at 12 per year to hedge against serial production of North Korean ICBMs could cost $3 billion over the course of the next five years, discounting the costs for further research and more silos.[77] However, these investments are essential if Mattis hopes to sustain a focus on Russia and China, for if North Korea or Iran were able to develop reliable capabilities to strike the United States with nuclear weapons, they would surely need to be prioritized as greater threats to American security. The National Defense Strategy as a Driver of Uncertainty Throughout the document, there is a single recurring buzzword: “lethality.” This is intended to drive nearly every decision the force will undertake over the course of implementation. The term is likely the brainchild of Mattis himself, considering its proliferation in the Defense Department guidance he authored upon taking this job.[78] But what exactly is lethality? That’s nearly impossible to determine from the unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy. While lethality is intended as a driver for many decisions the force will undertake over the course of implementation, it is never explicitly defined. Nor is it a long-established Pentagon buzzword with relatively consistent meaning, like “modernization.” Lethality first made its appearance in official guidance Mattis authored in fall 2017. In that memo, Mattis distinguishes lethality from capability, suggesting the former is something else altogether.[79] Inside the Pentagon, there are whispers that it is Marine Corps-specific phraseology — a service that “owns no domain” and therefore evaluates dominance through a different and unique cultural lens. Nor can lethality be a potential synonym for modernization — after all, if it was, why not frame it in familiar terms? Like Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “revolution in military affairs,” the definition of this overused term is largely in the eyes of the beholder, and may even change over the course of the administration. However, ambiguity in strategic guidance is a recipe for confusion and perhaps even failure. For that reason, Mattis should clarify what he means by lethality. Based on its use in the National Defense Strategy, the term seems to imply the kind of tactics, concepts, readiness improvements, and technologies needed to prevail in a high-intensity war — in other words, lethality is that subset of modernization programs designed specifically to defeat the Russians and Chinese. Think more “Third Offset Strategy” and less classic upgrades of legacy fleets and inventories. Lethality would then be the investments that will result in war-winning capabilities provided all of the aforementioned distractions can be successfully avoided or mitigated. In other words, it is Mattis’ prized but elusive white whale. As a prolific reader and student of history, Mattis’ should then recall Moby Dick. He must take all the best of Captain Ahab in his relentless pursuit of the white whale (here, a military prepared to defeat China), but learn from the Pequod’s destruction and avoid the inflexibility that would result from only focusing on that objective at the expense of all others. Overall, Mattis will need to manage up, manage down, and catch some lucky political and geostrategic breaks if he hopes to succeed in his quest for lethality. Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow in the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness.
is maintaining an advantage in conventional military power, particularly with respect to a given potentially contested area. In particular, scholarship indicates that conventional deterrence has been most effective when adversaries judged that a potential defender’s conventional forces could resist their attacks, particularly in a relatively short timeframe.[98]This perspective discards much of the work of greats like Bernard Brody, that deterrence is not about the myopic pursuit of dominance or superiority, nor is deterring necessarily identified with winning (how can it be with nuclear peers?),[99] but the ‘win to deter’ view clearly undergirds the strategic vision in the National Defense Strategy. America is hardly the first power to face a decline from unipolarity, struggling to find competitive strategies to maintain primacy, while finding its extended network of alliances and partners under threat from capable challengers. Nor is the United States the first to launch ruinous campaigns to the Middle East and Central Asia, only to find it should have husbanded those resources for strategic adversaries. The 2018 National Defense Strategy offers clear answers to these long-term challenges, a direct assault with what resources are left to muster for the coming decades, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead,” from Henry V. Yet the answers found in the current National Defense Strategy are unconvincing. They are better suited for winning table top wargames than winning strategic competitions with actual adversaries. Albeit provocative, it might be easier to conceive of European Command and Pacific Command as the modern day Western and Eastern Roman Empire, taking bets on where conventional deterrence by ‘winning’ and a strategy based on direct competition will prove unsustainable first. Reading the current National Defense Strategy, one wonders how “dynamic force employment,” a “lethal, agile, and resilient force posture,” can truly redress the negative secular trends in the strategic environment described by the text. Is resilience compatible with agility? Expanding alliances and deterrence commitments with dynamism? Clawing back dominance across all domains and spectrums of conflict with sustainability? Expanding the competitive space while trying to keep the international order from weakening due to the expanding competition? The secretary of defense rightfully reminds us that “no strategy can long survive without necessary funding and the stable, predictable budgets required to defend America in the modern age.”[100] Yet perhaps there is a silver lining in this admonition, since it’s unclear that such a strategy focused on direct competition can be sustained by America’s economy in light of other national priorities. Perhaps it is best we stay emergent and lean, keeping our strategy iterative, and adjusting as the future unfolds. This strategy is a good step forward from the strategic miasma in which we were, but it is unlikely to take us where we can, or necessarily should go. Michael Kofman is a Senior Research Scientist at CNA Corporation and a Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute. Previously he served as Program Manager at National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.
As hard as the last 16 years have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act's defense spending cuts, worsened by us operating, 9 of the last 10 years, under continuing resolutions, wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayer dollars.[102]Mattis is hardly the first secretary of defense to bemoan the uncertainty surrounding the budgeting process. In 2009, Bob Gates told the Economic Club of Chicago that it was “important ... to have a budget baseline with a steady, sustainable, and predictable rate of growth that avoids extreme peaks and valleys that are enormously harmful to sound budgeting.” He also said, however:
If the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to defend the United States on a budget of more than half a trillion dollars a year, then our problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships and planes.[103]Few in Washington today seem to agree with such sentiments. They want more. In one recent exercise, the American Enterprise Institute’s Thomas Donnelly proposed increases to military spending totaling $1.3 trillion over ten years, with spending as a share of GDP averaging about 3 percent.[104] Others find that increment of national wealth woefully inadequate. For example, Eliot Cohen believes that “a new, sustained target of 4 percent [of GDP] would hardly break the bank.”[105] We might ask our banker about that (more on that below). We might also ask the American people, who would be expected under Cohen’s proposal to pony up many hundreds of billions of dollars more for the military than currently projected.[106] That might not seem like much in a $19 trillion economy, but tell that to members of Congress who have struggled to find even a few billion dollars to help their constituents struggling to recover after natural disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes. How Much Is Enough? Adjusting for inflation, Gates’s “half a trillion” would be about $576 billion in today’s dollars. Mattis has reportedly requested, and been granted, a base budget between $610 and $615 billion for FY 2019.[107] But the Budget Control Act caps the FY 2019 budget at $549 billion. We might expect Overseas Contingency Operations spending — which is exempted under the Budget Control Act — to make up for some of the difference, but we should be wary of relying on this gimmick to evade spending limits. It isn’t obvious how Mattis and his staff intend to square the circle. Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, told reporters that planners opted for spelling out the requirements, first, with the hope that the “strategy will then drive the budget.”[108] Pentagon officials seem to underestimate the scale of that challenge, which goes well beyond the Budget Control Act caps. The U.S. federal government is, after all, operating in the red. Although the official debt figure is nearly $20 trillion, some argue that debt held by the public ($14.6 billion) is a more accurate representation of federal liabilities.[109] But a full accounting of obligations in excess of revenues is vastly greater, even, than the official $20 trillion debt. In 2016, my Cato colleague Jeff Miron put the figure at $117 trillion.[110] This is consistent with research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Jagadeesh Gokhale, who concluded “the U.S. fiscal imbalance is about seven times the total national debt held by the public.”[111] It is important to note that promises to pay future retirees are not ironclad commitments, and could be altered at any time by legislation. It is also conceivable that taxes on current workers will be raised, or even that some combination of reduced payments and higher taxes will close the gap. But the political prospects for any such changes are dim. The National Defense Strategy doesn’t ignore the need for spending money more wisely. It counts “reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance and affordability” as one of “three distinct lines of effort.” It affirms a solemn “responsibility to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense,” describes plans to accelerate the development of new technologies and improve innovation, and pledges “to achieve full auditability of all its operations.” The strategy also commits the department to “drive greater efficiency in procurement of materiel and services,” and reduce overhead and headquarters staff, and reaffirms the department’s long-standing desire to shed “excess property and infrastructure” through the Base Realignment and Closure process. These are all worthy goals, but they can’t close the gap between what the department says it needs, and what is likely to be made available. In short, although Mattis himself admitted to the importance of restoring “America's economic viability, because no nation in history has maintained its military power that was not economically viable and did not keep its fiscal house in order,” the U.S. fiscal house is a wreck.[112] At War with Our Banker The ultimate irony? Enemy number one, China, is funding our profligate ways by buying U.S. Treasury bills. Indeed, Americans, indirectly at least, are funding part of China’s military modernization through the interest paid on the U.S. notes they hold.[113] U.S. leaders have been aware of this conundrum for years. Consider, for example, an exchange in March 2009 between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. On the one hand, Clinton “affirmed the U.S. desire for a successful China, with a rising standard of living and improving democracy at a pace Chinese leaders could tolerate.” In addition, Clinton continued, according to a cable published by Wikileaks:
We wanted China to take more responsibility in the global economic sphere, create more of a social safety net for its people, and construct a better regulatory framework for the goods China manufactures. The Secretary also noted the challenges posed by China's economic rise, asking, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?”[114]Contrast such sentiments with the National Defense Strategy, which seems unfazed by the obvious economic links between the two countries, and little interest in seeing China succeed economically or politically:
As China continues its economic and military ascendance ... it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future.Similar sentiments appeared in the just-released National Security Strategy, and mark a dramatic departure for U.S. foreign policy. As Zack Cooper and Mira Rapp-Hooper note:
For decades, the United States has sought to make China a “responsible stakeholder” in the existing regional and international order. By incorporating China into existing institutions and power structures, this narrative held, the international order would help to make China a benign major power. At the very least, the order would change China more than China would change it.[115]But the Trump administration appears to have abandoned this approach. The National Security Strategy reads:
[T]he assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners … turned out to be false.[116]If that is the case, does the Trump administration also believe that, on balance, close economic ties between the United States and China no longer serve U.S. strategic interests? That’s not clear. But even if the president and his national security team conclude that our economic co-dependence with China should continue, we still come back to the issue of limited resources. Misplaced Fears Americans haven’t traditionally been willing to spend vast sums of money on the military during times of relative peace. Are the circumstances so different today? Probably not. Americans are scared of terrorists, not China. To the extent that the National Defense Strategy prioritizes one challenge over another, combating ISIL and other counter-terrorism operations — though still important — are less so than five years ago. “Long-term strategic competition with China and Russia,” the document explains, are the “principle priorities” for the department. One could argue that the public should be more afraid of China and Russia than of terrorists. After all, terrorists kill fewer Americans every year than accident-causing deer or falling furniture.[117] Worldwide, the number of people killed in terrorist attacks fell in 2017.[118] But it is more accurate to say that Americans shouldn’t be that afraid, period. Nonetheless, public anxiety about terrorism has not abated in the United States.[119] A poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs taken in June 2017 found that 75 percent of respondents named international terrorism as a critical threat to the United States, whereas only 38 percent named China, and only 30 percent Russia.[120] The Pew Research Center found similar results: 74 percent of Americans labeled the Islamic State as a major threat, whereas Russian and Chinese power and influence registered at 47 and 41 percent, respectively.[121] Notes the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor, “the threat from terrorism is simple to understand and specifically designed to instill fear. In contrast, the threats posed by a rising China and Russia are complicated; the United States does not have a purely adversarial role with either.”[122] Conclusion So, to recap, we’re broke. To the extent that we are able to continue spending more money than we have, we can thank the primary challenger singled out in the National Defense Strategy: China. And we, in turn, are indirectly funding their military modernization. The American people are unlikely to sign onto an ambitious new program to fight the Chinese — in addition to Russians, North Koreans, Iranians, and ISIL. And, we shouldn’t want Americans to harbor greater animosity toward China, in particular. That could stir up protectionist sentiments that would undermine the U.S. economy. In the modern era, trade wars are almost as damaging as real wars. The drafters of the new strategy might reason that a big scary opponent is needed to shake additional dollars loose to fund big-ticket items like warships and aircraft, plus new nukes and space weapons, but the costs and risks of demonizing China far outweigh the benefits to the Department of Defense, and, more importantly, the nation. Dr. Christopher Preble is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. Image: U.S. Department of Defense [post_title] => Policy Roundtable: A Close Look at the 2018 National Defense Strategy [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => policy-roundtable-close-look-2018-national-defense-strategy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-02-02 10:44:24 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-02-02 15:44:24 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://tnsr.org/?post_type=roundtable&p=390 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => roundtable [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [lead] => We asked a group of experts to comb through the National Defense Strategy and tell us what they think. [pubinfo] => [issue] => [quotes] => [style] => roundtable [type] => Policy [style_label] => Roundtable [download] => Array ( [title] => PDF Download [file] => ) [authors] => Array ( [0] => 11 [1] => 119 [2] => 120 [3] => 121 [4] => 122 ) [endnotes] => Array ( [title] => Endnotes [endnotes] => [1] Kori Schake, “Mattis's Defense Strategy is Bold.” Foreign Policy, January 22, 2018. http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/22/mad-dog-mattiss-defense-strategy-is-bold/. [2] Bill Chappell, “‘I’m The Only One That Matters,’ Trump Says Of State Dept. Job Vacancies,” NPR, Nov. 3, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies. [3] The White House, “Remarks by President Trump on the Administration’s National Security Strategy,”, Dec. 18, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-administrations-national-security-strategy/. [4] The Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, Jan., 2018, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. [5] The White House, National Security Strategy of The United States of America, Dec., 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. [6] “Flavius Vegetius Renatus Quotes,” Military Quotes, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.military-quotes.com/vegetius-renatus.htm. [7] Dennis J. Blasko, “‘Peace Through Strength’: Deterrence in Chinese Military Doctrine,” War on the Rocks, March 15, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/03/peace-through-strength-deterrence-in-chinese-military-doctrine/. [8] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [9] National Security Strategy. [10] Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. [11] John L. Thornton “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” China Center at Brookings Institute, March, 2012, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0330_china_lieberthal.pdf. [12] “The top 10 quotes of Xi on China-U.S. ties,” New China, Sep. 14, 2015, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/14/c_134623163.htm. [13] U.S. Embassy & Consulates in China, “Remarks by President Trump and President Xi of China in Joint Press Statement,” Nov. 9, 2017, https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/selected-quotes-press-statement-president-trump-joint-press-conference-president-xi/. [14] The State Council “China’s Peaceful Development,” People’s Republic of China, September 2011, http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/09/09/content_281474986284646.htm. [15] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Wang Yi: The New Concept of Win-win, Multi-win and All-Win is Right Direction of Development of International Relations,”, Feb. 2, 2015, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1234405.shtml. [16] Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2017,”, May 15, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2017_China_Military_Power_Report.PDF?ver=2017-06-06-141328-770. [17] “Testimony of Rex W. Tillerson, Secretary of State,” Opening Remarks Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, June 14, 2017, https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/06/271895.htm. [18] U.S. Department of Defense, “DoD Releases Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Proposal,” Release No: NR-192-17, May 23, 2017, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1190216/dod-releases-fiscal-year-2018-budget-proposal/. [19] Joel Gehrke, “Senators not happy with Rex Tillerson's State Department reform effort,” The Washington Examiner, Nov. 14, 2017, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senators-not-happy-with-rex-tillersons-state-department-reform-effort/article/2640644. [20] Dan Lamothe, “Retired generals cite past comments from Mattis while opposing Trump’s proposed foreign aid cuts,” Washington Post, Feb. 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/02/27/retired-generals-cite-past-comments-from-mattis-while-opposing-trumps-proposed-foreign-aid-cuts/?utm_term=.19359385e14f. [21] “Executive Summary, Congressional Budget Justification, FY 2018,” Millennium Challenge Corporation, United States of America, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, https://www.mcc.gov/resources/story/story-cbj-fy2018-executive-summary. [22] The State Council, “The Belt and Road Initiative,”, People’s Republic of China, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://english.gov.cn/beltAndRoad/. [23] “Reconnecting Asia,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, https://reconnectingasia.csis.org/map/. [24] The Science of Military Strategy, (Military Academic Works, Academy of Military Science, 2013). [25] Blasko, “‘Peace Through Strength’.” [26] “Full Text: China's Military Strategy,” Xinhuanet, accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2015-05/26/c_134271001_4.htm. [27] Yuan Can, “PLA Air Force to regularize training over First Island Chain,” People’s Daily Online, Sep. 3, 2016, http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0913/c90000-9114575.html. [28] “Chinese aircraft carrier heads for West Pacific for blue water training,” Xinhua, Dec. 26, 2016, http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2016-12/26/content_7423537.htm. [29] “National Defense Policy,” accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194485.htm. [30] “China’s National Defense in 2008,” accessed Jan. 25, 2018, http://www.gov.cn/english/official/2009-01/20/content_1210227_4.htm. [31] Li Jiayao, “China Focus: "Be ready to win wars," China's Xi orders reshaped PLA,” Xinhuanet Aug. 2, 2017, http://english.chinamil.com.cn/view/2017-08/02/content_7699926.htm. [32] “决胜全面建成小康社会夺取新时代中国特色社会主义伟大胜利” [Decisively Build a Well-off Society in a Comprehensive Way, Win the Great Victory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics], China Military Network, Oct. 19, 2017, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2017-10/19/content_189964.htm. [33] Dennis J. Blasko, “Walk, Don’t Run: Chinese Military Reforms in 2017,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 9, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/01/walk-dont-run-chinese-military-reforms-in-2017/. [34] Zhang Tao, “China reshuffles 84 corps-level military units," Xinhuanet, March 18, 2017, http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/view/2017-04/18/content_7567179.htm. 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See Phil Levy, “Economics in the National Security Strategy: Principles vs. Practices,” Texas National Security Review, Dec. 21, 2017, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-make-trumps-national-security-strategy/#essay6. [117] See John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart, “Responsible Counterterrorism Policy,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, September 10, 2014, 5. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/responsible-counterterrorism-policy. [118] Matthew Henman, “Global Militant Attacks Caused Fewer Fatalities in 2017,” IHS Markit, Jan. 18, 2018, https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/global-militant-attacks-caused-fewer-fatalities-in-2017.html. [119] Christopher Preble, “We Are Terrorized: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing, and Why It Can’t Be Easily Fixed,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 8, 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/01/we-are-terrorized-why-u-s-counterterrorism-policy-is-failing-and-why-it-cant-be-easily-fixed/. [120] Dina Smeltz, et al., “The Foreign Policy Establishment or Donald Trump: Which Better Reflects American Opinion?” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, April 20, 2017, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/foreign-policy-establishment-or-donald-trump-which-better-reflects-american-opinion. [121] Jacob Poushter and Dorothy Manevich, “Globally, People Point to ISIS and Climate Change as Leading Security Threats,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 1, 2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/08/01/globally-people-point-to-isis-and-climate-change-as-leading-security-threats/. [122] Adam Taylor, “The Pentagon Says China and Russia Are Bigger Problems for U.S. than Terrorists. American Voters May not Agree,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/20/the-pentagon-says-china-and-russia-are-bigger-problems-for-u-s-than-terrorists-american-voters-may-not-agree/?utm_term=.4eacee95eb5d. ) [contents] => Array ( [title] => Contents [contents] => 1. Introduction, by Ryan Evans 2. The Pentagon's 19-Inch Biceps Versus Revisionist Threats: China in the National Defense Strategy, by Dennis J. Blasko 3. In Search of the White Whale: The National Defense Strategy's Quest for Lethality, by Mackenzie Eaglen 4. Searching for Strategy in Washington's Competition with Russia, by Michael Kofman 5. 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