The US election in November 2024 may well determine the future direction of US national security strategy. In the past year, there has been a steady stream of thoughtful reports about what America's national security strategy should be. This is a discussion that will hopefully be taken up by the various campaigns of those seeking the presidency.
Four reports are particularly worth attention. They all assess in various detail the current and projected US nuclear posture as well as the nuclear threats the United States faces, especially compared to the situation of a decade and a half ago.
Two of the studies were mandated by Congress. The October 2023 report on the Strategic Posture of the United States and the July 2024 report on the National Defense Strategy of the United States.
The other two reports were both more narrowly focused on US nuclear capability. One was by Robert Peters of the Heritage Foundation, issued in July 2024, the "New American Nuclear Consensus." The other was "The Next Chapter in US Nuclear Policy" by Brad Roberts, the Director of the Center for Global Security Research Center of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
All four reports called for major new investments in US defense spending, completion of the current nuclear deterrent modernization effort, and also recommended, given the projected rise of military power by America's enemies, that the US add serious new nuclear capabilities to its deterrence.
The issue not addressed by all of the reports is: before the improvements in US defense capability are completed, will the US be able to successfully avoid conflicts with the new axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea?
In "Confronting Another Axis? History, Humility, and Wishful Thinking" Hoover Institution fellow Philip Zelikow wrote for the Texas National Security Review an article which concludes that US defense modernization may be completed but only after the US is challenged by armed conflicts initiated by the four new axis members and/or their proxies.
All four studies emphasized that the time was late for US modernization and that the dangers are escalating.
All of the studies also proposed significant upgrades to the US deterrent capability, including nuclear, conventional, space, cyber and missile defense weaponry, and emphasized with the utmost urgency that modernization was needed now.
The US however, will not acquire such nuclear and other capabilities for at least a decade, due to the current defense acquisition system of the US defense department, as Zelikow noted, Some near-term nuclear advances could be implemented sooner, such as acquiring the B61-13 earth-penetrating nuclear bomb, or adding nuclear warheads to America's existing force of ICBMs, SLBMs or strategic bombers. Such an effort might take as long as three to four years to complete.
Modernization, unfortunately, is slow. The system has not achieved what then Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained in 2018 was the ability to buy weapons at "the speed of relevance" -- a capability that remains dangerously elusive, just as Zelikow warns.
The four main enemies of the US -- North Korea, Iran, China and Russia— Zelikow warns, have their own internal clocks. The timetables for the invasion of Ukraine, and the coordinated attacks on Israel, the potential invasions of Taiwan or the Republic of Korea, are in the heads of four dictators, Putin, Xi, Kim and Khamenei. They are not necessarily going to wait for the US to modernize its deterrent strength before striking.
Whatever their current timetable, those internal clocks may also be suddenly reset. Soviet ruler Josef Stalin changed his mind late in the day about supporting North Korea's invasion of the Republic of Korea, as Zelikow notes, and the Japanese leadership decided to go to war in southeast Asia and Indochina only after seeing the Nazi success in seizing France in WWII.
Zelikow relates that these current axis leaders pay particular attention to world events and especially actions by the US that inform them of America's ability and willingness to defend its interests. A key factor is always whether the US is seen as having a credible will to use its deterrent, let alone having the necessary deterrent capability to begin with.
Over a period of recent years, according to the military historian Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institute, the US took actions that gave the impression of seeking to forgo conflict in the short-term interests of keeping the peace, but also mistakenly took off the table the threat of escalation as a means of winning a conflict, out of the fear of triggering a wider conflict, or a nuclear war.
The US, Hanson notes in a July 26 podcast, has made a series of moves that have, in the eyes of our enemies, undermined deterrence:
- Embargoed arms to Ukraine after the 2014 Russian invasion, and in December 2021 had to take back the comment that "a minor incursion" by Russia into Ukraine might be acceptable: "I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do."
- Withdrew from Afghanistan without requiring any quid quo pro from the Taliban, and ending in a tragic killing of American special forces while Afghani citizens, seeking to escape, died trying to hang onto US airplanes. The US also left behind billions in military hardware and a $96 million-dollar military airbase now presumably being used by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), as well as the Taliban
- Failed to challenge Chinese spy balloons roaming over key military installations in the US.
- Failed to rebut accusatory allegations when senior US diplomats were repeatedly insulted by Chinese officials at an official meeting in Anchorage.
With US deterrent strategy perceived as weak, there are serious concerns that US military modernization may not be completed in time, but only "outside the time-zone," as Zelikow notes, meaning after it was needed.
Gordon Chang, a China expert and Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow, has also expressed significant concern that America's military insufficiency, especially in the near future, needs urgent attention to move it front and center in a debate over America's future security policy.
The issue is particularly urgent given that members of this new "axis of evil" may decide at any time to widen their aggression. Zelikow and others stress that this belligerency is possible, most probably in the next few years. All four countries are now part of current wars against American allies, Ukraine and Israel.
Where Zelikow disappoints, however, unlike Chang, is in his implied opposition to the various calls for greater defense spending. Even assuming a more benign view of the world, the US defense strength is not now sufficient to credibly meet our current security obligations, as the two Congressionally-mandated reports referenced above unanimously concluded.
There is no doubt that US defense modernization is critically needed, especially in the nuclear area. Without nuclear modernization of our long-range delivery vehicles, as Admiral Charles Richard, the former commander of Strategic Command, has emphasized, the US is out of the nuclear business. The same point was also made July 29 at an event hosted by the National Institute for Deterrence Studies on Capitol Hill, in remarks by Jill Hruby, Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, on the urgent need to rebuild US nuclear warheads.
Where Zelikow gets it right is in his proposals that the US also use its economic strength as a deterrent, particularly against China -- a point underscored by Institute of World Politics President Emeritus John Lenczowski in his recent essay on taking down China.
As part of an all-of-government approach to security, as highlighted in recent testimony by the chair and vice-chair of the National Defense Strategy Commission to the Senate Armed Service Committee, it makes great sense for the US to use its economic tools as a primary means of deterring the serious dangers presented by the new axis, and to do so aggressively to ensure US success. Success cannot be ensured, however, at the expense of de-emphasizing US military power. As the late Henry Kissinger wrote, "The attempt to separate diplomacy and power results in power lacking direction and diplomacy being deprived of incentives."
If the US fails to deter its enemies, and they are left to believe that, instead, the United States will deter itself from winning for fear of "escalation," the ground is set for major new conflicts, especially over the next few years when the United States may be poorly prepared to win.
Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrent Studies and Dr. Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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