By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
There’s a stark warning from an independent commission set up by Congress to assess the nation’s defense strategy: the US faces the potential for a near-term major war and it is not prepared to fight it.
That’s the conclusion of the report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a panel made up of non-governmental experts in national security. The report was issued in July, and there was an open forum on its findings last week hosted by RAND, the nonprofit research organization. RAND provided analytic and administrative support to the commission.
“The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago,” the report says. “It is not prepared today.”
China and Russia are named as the biggest threats to US influence around the globe. The panel found that China “has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment.”
The report notes that China and Russia’s “no-limits” partnership deal reached in 2022 now includes both Iran and North Korea, an alliance that “creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war.”
Commission members were sharply critical of the Pentagon, calling its research & development and procurement systems “byzantine”, and saying that the Defense Department’s “culture of risk avoidance reflect(s) an era of uncontested military dominance.” The report urges that DoD rewrite regulations to speed up the ways it buys weapons.
Furthermore, the report says, “the US military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”
The commission urged the Pentagon to spend more on cyber , space and software, which it calls “central to conflict and have global reach.”
The commission also backed the Air Force’s development of the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, and called for more Virginia-class submarines and unmanned submersibles.
Lawmakers also came in for their share of criticism. The report urges Congress to get rid of the caps on defense spending that have limited real growth in the military budget, and to increase spending that “puts defense and other components of national security on a glide path to support efforts commensurate with the US national effort during the Cold War.”
The panel also said the ballooning budget deficit is a threat to national security, and that increases in defense spending should be accompanied by more taxes and reforms to entitlement spending (a catch-all term that includes programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare).
The report concludes that “The lack of preparedness to meet the challenges to US national security is the result of many years of failure to recognize the changing threats…The United States is still failing to act with the urgency required, across administrations and without regard to governing party.”
