A nation must think before it acts.
A longer version of this piece, “National Security and the Next Four Years,” will appear in the Fall 2024 issue of Orbis.
As much as a president will want to remake the government according to new policies or have their vision impact the world, there are some fundamental national security truisms that provide for continuity across administrations. First, we live in a mutually assured destruction (MAD) world where nine countries have nuclear weapons. Russia and the United States account for about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and can annihilate each other and the planet, but China’s arsenal is quickly developing, and North Korea’s program might lead to proliferation in northeast Asia. While the United States identifies itself in strategic competition with Russia and China, nuclear weapons force leaders to maintain a dialogue regardless of who is elected and appreciate how US actions affect security for Moscow and Beijing.
Second, we live on a planet where the climate is interconnected and necessitates coordinated efforts to reduce the impact of climate change. It is crucial that green policies in the West are not undermined by CO2 emissions in the East. Although the tone about climate change shifts in Washington based on the president’s political party, the United Nations, numerous countries, think tanks, government organizations, and many US states have already integrated climate change mitigation policies into their strategic plans. This widespread commitment will pressure Washington to participate in global discussions and pressure the next president to avoid obstructing ongoing efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change. Regulation will likely play a secondary role to market forces that are already supplying significant wind and solar power, at the same time demand for electric vehicles plateaus.
Finally, we live in an interconnected economic world. Since Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, engaging and protecting international commerce has been an important tenet of US foreign policy with implications on the domestic economy. This is true today even though about 80 percent of the economy is based on domestic production: Of the $5 trillion in trade during 2023, a third of that is within North America. The ubiquitous “made in China” label is more indicative of China’s dependence on exports to the United States (and the rest of North America) rather than US dependence on China. This is an important reality known in Beijing. Nevertheless, trade data do not tell the full story of manufacturing complexity since disruptions in one part of the world can affect the assembly of cars in another part of the world. Corporations will continue near-shoring supply chains and Asian manufacturers will continue investments in North America to insulate their businesses from trade disputes and tariffs.
Accepting the world as it is will guide the next president and there are some national security challenges that do not change with a new administration. In spite of the continuity from one administration to the next, some changes in emphasis occur. Over the last twenty-five years, the China challenge has displaced international terrorism as the principal focus for the United States, but al Qaeda and its regional affiliates and ISIS are just as potent today as they were in the past. The shift from the global war on terrorism to strategic competition with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea illustrates consistency in how the intelligence community perceives threats in addition to how these countries impact national interests. Further, fatigue with counterterrorism policies and failures in post-conflict reconstruction activities propel the national security community to refocus on state-based threats.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will top the next administration’s national security agenda. The PRC has invested heavily in its military giving it the world’s largest Navy, a massive missile force, and global surveillance capabilities through its digital Silk Road initiatives. Intensifying regional military and People’s Liberation Army activity also appears escalatory and increases the potential of accidental conflict. China’s leader Xi Jinping is addressing corruption and development challenges to secure his country’s place at the top of the world order. Its significant military capabilities and “no-limits” partnership with Russia exacerbate the strategic challenge that impacts US economic, diplomatic, informational, and military concerns.
On Inauguration Day, it will be one month before the third anniversary of Russia’s attempted regime change in Ukraine. The war caused millions of civilians to be displaced within Ukraine and across the world, hundreds of thousands of military causalities on both sides and a significant shift in strategic thinking. Conscription has returned, defense production lines have re-opened, and European leaders have awakened to the importance of national security. Germany abandoned its reliance on trade to integrate Russia into Europe, and France shifted from a mediator to a leader in calls to support Ukraine in its existential fight. Russia’s invasion was a wakeup call for Finland and Sweden which recognized the value of collective defense to their own national security by joining NATO. Poland, driven by the memory of Russian imperialism and Soviet domination, is creating the most advanced conventional military in Europe and only second to Turkey in size. Russia’s invasion did what no US president could do through shame: Two-thirds of allies hit the NATO benchmark for defense spending in 2024. Russia’s war recentered NATO from the last two decades of its expeditionary operations in Central Asia and the Middle East back to the territorial defense of Europe. In short, NATO today is not the NATO of 2016 or 2020.
In 2025, the United States and Iran will mark forty-six years of enmity. The decades have seen destructive proxy wars: The United States supported Iraq in its war with Iran in the 1980s, while Iran supported militias fighting the United States in Iraq in the 2000s. Iran’s desire for regime security—threatened internally and externally—drives its use of proxy actors. Tehran views its relationship with Moscow and Beijing as the means to advance its interests and counter Western sanctions. Iran’s support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis with its continued calls to destroy Israel sustains bipartisan support in Washington for Israel. The prospects of Iran as a nuclear weapon state are real and remain a redline for the United States and key regional partners.
Not much has changed in four (or seventy) years on the Korean Peninsula. Presidential efforts since the early 1990s have not prevented North Korea from becoming a nuclear power or stifled North Korea’s conventional military prowess. With no genuine prospect of nuclear disarmament or an official end to the Korean War, Seoul has sought to deepen its ties with Tokyo as a hedge against US retrenchment. Washington played an important role in hosting a trilateral summit in 2023 intended to be a bulwark against an uncertain US defense posture. The three countries are attempting to future-proof a deterrent posture by strengthening diplomatic ties, deepening military cooperation, and promoting trade and investment.
While the four state challenges can be viewed in isolation, they are increasingly intertwined. The China challenge has provoked Asian countries to cooperate in new ways with the United States, which is viewed as the neutral anchor to unite Seoul and Tokyo; Tokyo and Manila; Tokyo, New Delhi, and Canberra through the Quad; and London and Canberra through AUKUS (The Trilateral Security Partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). These overlapping relationships will continue to develop to preserve the status quo in Asia or at least hedge any prospects of US retreat from Asia.
While there are calls in the United States to focus exclusively on the China challenge, these linkages expose the frailty of a single theater strategy. Beijing and Moscow have pledged a friendship with no limits resembling a Kissinger-esque framework to balance the United States. Today, the PRC sustains the Russian economy and by extension its war through the purchase of raw materials and export of machinery. Moscow might well support Beijing with weapons and other materials to strengthen the PRC position in northeast Asia if China imposed a blockade on Taiwan, seized territory from the Philippines, or undermined sovereignty around the world.
To be sure, the United States is a global actor and its commitments place Washington head-to-head against Russia in Europe through NATO. The decades-old alliance forces Washington to think seriously about how to deter war with Pyongyang and be ready to “fight tonight” with South Korea. The alliance with Japan requires Washington to be engaged in northeast Asia through military cooperation to deter China and North Korea and conduct maritime patrols in the South China Sea to support the alliance with the Philippines.
Unexpected international events will emerge during the next administration. This could produce retreat as it has in Afghanistan in 2021 or the Sahel region of Africa in 2024 or advances as it did in response to attacks against Israel and commercial shipping from Yemen in 2023.
US presidents think of themselves as the most powerful persons on the planet. The president does sit atop a very large executive branch and can command influence inside and outside the borders, but there are limits. President Obama could not close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, President Trump could not complete a border wall, and President Biden could not get governors to support COVID-19 mitigation measures such as mask-wearing.
First and foremost is Congress, which provides oversight, confirms or blocks presidential appointments, creates authorities, and issues appropriations for the president to execute. Political gridlock has become a feature of American politics that impacts a president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.
The next limit is when organizations within the Executive Branch compete against each other. Considering defense, several issues must be addressed in the next administration. Due to cost-overruns, there is a perennial debate within the nuclear community on how to balance the triad across the Air Force and Navy with respect to land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers that can deliver nuclear and conventional weapons and ballistic missile submarines.
Meanwhile, bureaucratic competition is evident across the six services of Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force. The shift from counterterrorism to China-war scenarios did not settle the budget wars on behalf of the Navy. Instead, the cessation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Treaty Forces enabled the Army to develop new classes of hypersonic missiles to hold China’s forces at risk without jeopardizing US aircraft carriers. Separately, the Marine Corps divested its tanks and other ground units under its Force Design 2030 with the goal of finding and sinking adversarial ships with its own anti-ship missiles. Ramping up industrial arms production for Ukraine was the precursor to a new defense sector boom focused on the China challenge.
Next are state governments. While the courts have ruled that the federal government has primacy in foreign policy, issues like border security sit at the intersection of domestic and international politics. While former President Donald Trump’s border wall has become the symbol for this intermestic challenge, border insecurity reveals several drivers that pits border state governors against the president.
The United States maintains global interests, but they are not all vital. While presidents inherit the national security system and commitments of their predecessors, they can decide priorities by interpreting how to protect and advance national interests. Certainly, administrations may change, but fundamental US interests have not: protecting the homeland, preserving regional balances of power, sustaining a global trading system, enhancing power through collective security organizations, and preserving an Americanized international order. Combined with an enduring idealistic vision of spreading the benefits of democracy to other parts of the globe, these interests insulate against calls for retrenchment. Culturally, Americans are connected to the world, there is bipartisan support for a global foreign policy, and many countries prefer US leadership to Chinese or Russian.
These foreign policy challenges and limits are familiar and well-studied but belie easy solutions.
Many presidents have attempted to reduce international commitments to generate a peace dividend at home or tried to connect foreign policy directly to the middle class. These efforts have not overcome significant foreign policy losses in Central Asia and the Middle East. The next step may be simply to reconceptualize national interests to address domestic issues as part of a broader national security strategy.
The current system rooted in 1947 with an update in 1986 is ripe for reinvention (again). The system tends to reform after tragedy such as Al Qaeda’s 2001 attack that gave the Secretary of Defense a new combatant command in 2002 and the president of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004. Russian influence operations in 2016 gave rise to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2018. These examples illustrate that failure can produce new policy organizations, but the president also relies on the existing large national security system he or she inherits.
Image: Adobe Stock