Benjamin H. Friedman
Policy Director
Areas of expertise: grand strategy, American foreign policy, international relations, international security, DoD budgeting, Asia policy, Europe policy, NATO, Middle East policy, and counterterrorism
To request an interview, accredited media can email press@defensepriorities.org.
Benjamin H. Friedman is policy director at Defense Priorities. He previously worked as a defense analyst at the Cato Institute and a researcher at the Center for Defense Information. Friedman is a graduate of Dartmouth College and studied for a PhD in political science at MIT. He has taught graduate courses at the University of Maryland and George Washington. He has edited three books on defense policy and strategy and has published academic essays in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Orbis, Foreign Affairs, and World Affairs. He has written op-eds for many outlets, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Politico, The Atlantic, TIME, The Boston Globe, and the Boston Review.
Media clips
Fox Business: We should remove troops from Iran’s reach
Fox News: After 17 years, it’s in America’s best interest to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan
Fox News: Washington should support policy to bring U.S. troops home from Syria
Fox News: U.S.-Iran policy post-JCPOA
Fox Business: Special coverage of Trump-Kim summit in Singapore
Research and writing
Even as the war with Russia continues, Ukraine is demanding NATO membership, or at least a path to it, and some lesser security guarantees in the interim. The United States should say no, closing the door to committing to fight a future war for Ukraine. The benefits of fighting for Ukraine are lacking—Ukraine is neither a prize that Russia can use to rebuild its Soviet empire nor an example that will destabilize global politics. The risks of fighting for Ukraine meanwhile are severe—entailing a real prospect of nuclear war and mass destruction. Because of these risks, the United States has not and will not directly fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine. That means U.S. commitments to militarily defend Ukraine, even through NATO, will not be credible; they will be an obvious bluff. Such false promises will not only leave Ukraine exposed to Russia, they will increase its peril, by preserving a cause of war and encouraging Ukraine to make poor choices based on the false hope of western protection. Armed neutrality, where the United States and its allies continue to arm Ukraine to deter future Russia aggression is a safer and more credible alternative.
U.S. leaders often express the fear that leaving the Middle East or removing U.S. forces from warzones there and in other parts of the world will leave “vacuums,” which adversaries will fill. This fear misunderstands international politics. Vacuum fears imagine a precarious global balance of power where minor gains by U.S. adversaries create grave dangers, but in reality, the U.S. is quite secure and does not need to worry about its adversaries potentially making minor gains by rushing into U.S.-made vacuums.
The United States is obligated by treaty to defend 51 countries with military force. Beyond its formal allies, the United States also has several quasi-allies, or states the U.S. is not explicitly committed to defend but to which it provides substantial amounts of military and political support. While many experts assume more allies means the United States is more secure, quasi-allies present clear dangers for U.S. interests. The United States should be wary of the risks quasi-allies pose and avoid loose talk and policy that may commit it to a quasi-ally’s defense.
The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to manage it ravaged the U.S. economy and government finances, raising demand for domestic spending, cutting revenue, and increasing debt. U.S. grand strategy—long overly ambitious—should be restrained to manage these budgetary pressures. Domestic needs should take greater priority because the U.S. is fundamentally secure. Restraint prioritizes vital interests, abandons peripheral missions, shifts the burden of securing other regions to allies, and ends military overstretch—it provides more security at lower cost and aids the difficult task of domestic rebuilding.
Following 9/11, the United States was right to target Al-Qaeda and the Taliban government which harbored them—that was a justified, achievable mission. After a swift victory and the establishment of a new, popular Afghan government, policymakers should have removed U.S. troops. Instead, Washington pursued a nation-building effort to establish a central authority to govern all of Afghanistan—a goal unrelated to the core security interests that justified the initial campaign and impossible to achieve at reasonable cost. After nearly 18 years of war and our key goals accomplished long ago, it is past time to withdraw all U.S. forces to focus on vital national security interests.
When President Obama, without congressional authorization, ordered U.S. forces to intervene in Syria, the mission was clear: liberate ISIS-held territory. That mission has been achieved. Leaving behind U.S. forces in Syria involves large risks without any security upside: it threatens to drive adversaries into allying against the United States; to inflame Islamist-nationalist sentiments in Iraq and Syria, making U.S. forces targets; and to risk U.S. conflict with Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Syria for no good reason. Staying also ties down U.S. forces and limits their focus on core missions. With ISIS’s “caliphate” destroyed, U.S. troops have achieved all they reasonably can and should be fully withdrawn.
The Saudi-UAE-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war undermines U.S. interests: It prolongs and exacerbates a civil war that has increased Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) presence there, needlessly breeds new enemies and resentment toward the United States, and undermines U.S. standing as an exemplar of liberal values. None of our limited interests in the Middle East, and no achievable security or prosperity gains in Yemen, justify our involvement. U.S. military support for the Saudi-UAE-led coalition should end.
