Former Rep. Jane Harmon, co-chair of the congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy to assess the viability of America’s defense strategy, warned in a just-released report that the security environment for the United States is “blinking red.” While the report details a number of valid concerns, it is what the report doesn’t say that should be most alarming.
There is a major and alarming imbalance between the United States’ stated strategic objectives and the resources necessary to attain them. This imbalance cannot be rectified by spending more money on national defense. What is needed—desperately needed—is an immediate recognition that without major changes in our foreign policy and military capacity, we place our very national security at unacceptable risk.
The report warns that since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the “no-limits” partnership between China and Russia “has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea.” This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests, the report continued, “creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war.”
America, the authors contend, “is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners,” to engage in such a global fight. To change that dynamic, they argue the U.S. needs to create “much greater capacity to produce, maintain, and replenish weapons and munitions. Addressing the shortfall will require increased investment, additional manufacturing and development capacity, joint and coproduction with allies, and additional flexibility in acquisition systems.”
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