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Having catalyzed 1,200 major global corporations to exit Russia two years ago in protest over the bloody invasion of a peaceful, sovereign nation, we are not surprised to have received scores of alarmed messages. We have been reviewing the economics behind continuing U.S. support to Ukraine, and even setting aside the terrible human suffering amidst thousands of civilian deaths; the fact that helping Ukraine defend itself is saving millions of lives and forestalling World War III given Putin's imperial ambitions; as well as the diplomatic and national security value of such aid, in actuality, the U.S. is the single biggest winner from supporting Ukraine. Here are three tangible reasons why.

90% of Ukraine aid spending stays in the U.S., creating thousands of jobs

Great power conflict is becoming a reality on the global agenda, once again. For the past nearly three decades, the primary focus of the global strategic community was on small wars, counter-terrorism, and climate change, poverty, pandemics and transnational organized crime. Further, during these years, there was optimism that globalization and interdependence could bring about political and economic transformation inducing global peace and stability. The post-Cold War world with the United States as the superpower, a weak Russia, and rising China did not witness the intense geopolitical struggles of the earlier generations. The realigned blocs and alliances and growth of regional organizations across the globe also limited the possibilities of such conflict.

But developments in the past couple of years herald a new era of high politics. The relative decline of the US, the rise of China as America’s leading competitor, the re-emergence of Russia and its desire for greater role in global politics all seem to be serving as stimuli for a renewed round of great power competition. The mounting tensions in East and South China Seas, ‘trade war’ between China and the US, and Russia's assertive engagement in Ukraine and Syria are cases in point.

The finding that U.S. entanglement is rare has important implications for international relations scholarship and U.S. foreign policy. For scholars, it casts doubt on classic theories of imperial overstretch in which great powers exhaust their resources by accumulating allies that free ride on their protection and embroil them in military quagmires.22 The U.S. experience instead suggests that great powers can dictate the terms of their security commitments and that allies often help their great power protectors avoid strategic overextension.

For policy, the rarity of U.S. entanglement suggests that the United States’ current grand strategy of deep engagement, which is centered on a network of standing alliances, does not preclude, and may even facilitate, U.S. military restraint. Since 1945 the United States has been, by some measures, the most militarily active state in the world. The most egregious cases of U.S. overreach, however, have stemmed not from entangling alliances, but from the penchant of American leaders to define national interests expansively, to overestimate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention. Scrapping alliances will not correct these bad habits. In fact, disengaging from alliances may unleash the United States to intervene recklessly abroad while leaving it without partners to share the burden when those interventions go awry.

[Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy, Foreign Policy Brookings Program, written several books regarding the international order and U.S. hegemony, contributing columnist to the Washington Post, 9-18-2018, “The Jungle Grows Back: American and Our Imperiled World,” accessed 3-2-2020]

Despite everything that has happened, if we reject the counsels of the new “realism” and resume our support for the liberal world order, it is still within our capacity to defend it and put off its collapse, perhaps for some time. Today the order remains intact, despite the hostility of the present administration and the weakness of the last. The international structures supporting it are durable. This is partly because they rest on geographical realities and a distribution of power that still favor the liberal order and still pose obstacles to those who would disrupt it. It is also because liberal values, though under assault, remain a force that binds the democratic nations of the world together. Authoritarianism also has its appeal and will always compete with liberalism, but the authoritarian governments do not feel the same sense of commonality as the monarchies and aristocracies of the early nineteenth century. The Chinese and Russians are not adversaries, but they are not allies either. They share little except their antipathy to liberalism. The democratic nations, however, are bound together by more than common adversaries, as the post–Cold War era has proved. America’s alliances in Europe and Asia have so far held, therefore, despite the weakening of America’s commitment under two administrations. There is still a liberal world order to be salvaged, if the American people decide it is worth salvaging.

Notwithstanding the recent flurry of high-level diplomacy between Washington and Beijing, the warning signs are certainly there. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing is amassing ships, planes, and missiles as part of the largest military buildup by any country in decades. Notwithstanding some recent efforts to lure back skittish foreign investment, China is stockpiling fuel and food and trying to reduce the vulnerability of its economy to sanctions—steps one might take as conflict nears. Xi has said China must prepare for “worst-case and extreme scenarios” and be ready to withstand “high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms.” All of this comes as Beijing has become increasingly coercive (and occasionally violent) in dealings with its neighbors, including the Philippines, Japan, and India—and as it periodically advertises its ability to batter, blockade, and perhaps invade Taiwan.

China’s preparatory efforts to invade Taiwan are accelerating. The exercise for attacks on Taiwan, termed Joint Sword 2024A, is significant for the following reasons. First, the naming convention suggests there will be follow-on exercises such as Joint Sword 2024 B and C, which corresponds to the three elements of the Chinese military’s doctrine for an invasion of Taiwan, the Joint Fire Strike Campaign, or JFSC, Joint Anti-Air Raid Campaign, or JAARC, and the Joint Island Landing Campaign, known as JILC. The idea of follow-on exercises was also suggested by a Global Times commentator on May 23 to include a fourth, part D. This means that the pace of exercises is quickening in order to mask Beijing’s intentions and preparations for war. Second, unlike the previous Joint Sword in April 2023, which was four days in duration, 2024A is just two days, an indicator that the Central Military Commission and People’s Liberation Army are honing their skills and sharpening their command and control to bring all their power to bear in a shorter, more concentrated time frame. In essence, fulfilling this iteration of exercises will fulfill their stated goal of being able to conduct a “short, sharp war.” That matters, because if China believes it can win quickly and decisively, then the ability of Taiwan and partners like the United States to deter such an attack is weakened. In addition, the naming of specific training objectives and elements such as “joint sea-air combat-readiness patrol, joint seizure of comprehensive battlefield control, and joint precision strikes on key targets” adds credence to the thesis of the “short, sharp war” objective for the Chinese Communist Party and Central Military Commission. Third, and most obvious, the closure areas are much closer to Taiwan than they were in Joint Sword 2023 or even the August 2022 missile firing exercise. This time the Joint Sword 2024A closure areas are within Taiwan’s contiguous zones — 24 nautical miles. In addition, the Chinese coast guard was noted on May 23 sailing within the territorial waters of Taiwan’s offshore islands of Wuqui and Dongyin — as close as 2.8 nautical miles. By doing this, China is testing to see just how close to Taiwan it will be able to operate before generating a kinetic response from Taiwan, Japan or the U.S. This is invaluable information to obtain and will provide Beijing a great advantage if and when they decide to conduct an invasion. Fourth, the joint nature of these operations is notable. With the reports of Chinese Strategic Rocket Force missile batteries being out of garrison and conducting “mock fire strike” launches, the main emphasis of this two-day Joint Force-2024A is on “joint precision strikes on key targets,’’ again, what the Chinese military doctrinally calls the Joint Fire Strike Campaign. This was occurring while the other services (army, navy and air force) were engaged in “joint sea-air combat readiness patrols” and “joint seizure of comprehensive battlefield control.”

Tensions between China and Taiwan soared to new heights this week as Beijing deployed warplanes and naval vessels in a mock invasion of the island to demonstrate its anger and towards the new president in Taipei. The Chinese military openly said its two-day war games are designed to “test the [armed forces’] ability jointly seize power... and occupy key areas” around Taiwan and the island chains it controls. Xi Jinping is flexing his military muscles in an effort to intimidate the new Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te, who used his first speech after being inaugurated on Monday to urge China to “accept the reality” of the self-governed island’s de facto independence. China views democratically-governed Taiwan as a breakaway province, while Mr Lai says only the Taiwanese people can decide their future. The escalation of China’s military activity around Taiwan is being watched with growing alarm from around the world, with neighbouring powers in the Asia-Pacific urging the two to maintain peace and stability. According to US intelligence, Chinese president Xi Jinping has instructed his country’s military to “be ready by 2027" to invade Taiwan. The 70-year-old autocrat has previously vowed to ensure Taiwan is “reunited” with the mainland during his time in power, and has also said the matter of the island’s future “cannot be passed on from generation to generation”. The CIA director William Burns has said the US must take Mr Xi’s desire to seize control of Taiwan “very seriously”, even if military conflict is not inevitable. “We do know, as has been made public, that president Xi has instructed the PLA, the Chinese military leadership, to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan, but that doesn’t mean that he’s decided to invade in 2027 or any other year as well,” Mr Burns said last year. Many analysts have drawn parallels between Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Mr Xi’s aspirations with Taiwan. For now, Mr Burns argued, Russia’s struggle to make meaningful headway in the war in Europe despite its numerical superiority may be acting as a deterrent to Beijing.

norm to its former allies and enemies aftermath the second world war that led to the formation of the current liberal economic world order provides an explanation as to why in spite of US’ relative decline there is continuity for America’s liberal economic order. The rising challenger China can be considered to have been socialized – it has accepted US led international norms, and participates in various International Organizations. Thus, it makes less sense for China to wage war against the hegemon whose ideals it has internalized. According to this theory, a hegemon creates a stable international economic order characterized by market openness but its decline results in global instability. This hegemonic effect of open trade benefits all participants, especially, weaker states that do not have any burden of public goods. In this sense, global economic stability is born out of hegemony and provides provision of collective public goods and in doing so facilitates a stable international system. The motivation to create an economic openness lie in the interest of the hegemon – it has the largest economy and so benefits most from open markets. In addition, only hegemons have the material capability (political and military) to provide public goods and induce other states to embrace open trade. By virtue of the Hegemonic Stability Theory, the hegemon is an important element in creation and maintenance of the international system. As stated earlier, open trade benefits all participants, even the rising challengers that are accommodated in the system. In contemporary world politics, China is the fastest rising power and it is also reaping the benefits of the open economic order created by the US. By participating in the globalized economy, China has earned a comparative advantage in labor-market and its economy has been growing. On top of that China is an export-based economy and thus, it has very little incentive to jeopardize this benefit by engaging with the hegemon and thereby disrupting the order. In his article, Artur Stein has argued that decline in hegemony does not bring about a complete collapse of the trade regime as long as hegemonic power is committed to economic openness. Taking these two points in consideration, it can be argued that it is not in the interest of China to challenge US hegemony. On account, likelihood of war is averted.

Surely, the same principle applies in the realm of nations. Our world teems with violent regimes and vicious men. And something precious—our notion of peace, sovereignty, liberty, civilization itself—sits exposed to all that danger. In a world where might makes right, the only thing that keeps the peace, defends our sovereignty and liberty, and upholds civilization is the willingness to use our resources to keep the dangers at bay. Yet too many policymakers disregard the wisdom of military deterrence, and too many people of faith forget that the aim of deterrence is, by definition, to prevent wars, not start them. Some people of faith oppose the threat of military force, let alone the use of military force, because of Christ’s message of peace. This is understandable in the abstract, but we must keep in mind two truths. First, governments are held to a different standard than individuals, and hence are expected to do certain things individuals aren’t expected to do—and arguably shouldn’t do certain things individuals should do. For example, a government that turned the other cheek when attacked would be conquered by its foes, leaving countless innocents defenseless. A government that put away the sword—that neglected its defenses—would invite aggression, thus jeopardizing its people. Second, all uses of force are not the same. The sheriff who uses force to apprehend a murderer is decidedly different from the criminal who uses force to commit a murder. The policemen posted outside a sporting event to deter violence are decidedly different from those who plot violence. Moral relativism is anything but a virtue. Some lament the fact that we live in such a violent world, but that’s precisely the point. Because we live in a violent world, governments must take steps to deter those who can be deterred—and neutralize those who cannot. In this regard, it pays to recall that Jesus had sterner words for scholars and scribes than He did for soldiers. In fact, when a centurion asked Jesus for help, He didn’t admonish the military commander to put down his sword. Instead, He commended him for his faith.[i] “Even in the Gospels,” soldier-scholar Ralph Peters reminds us, “it is assumed that soldiers are, however regrettably, necessary.”[ii] They are necessary not only for waging war but, preferably, for maintaining peace. It’s a paradoxical truth that military readiness can keep the peace. The Romans had a phrase for it: Si vis pacem, para bellum. “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” President George Washington put it more genteelly: “There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.” Or, in the same way, “We infinitely desire peace,” President Theodore Roosevelt declared. “And the surest way of obtaining it is to show that we are not afraid of war.” After the West gambled civilization’s very existence in the 1920s and 1930s on hopes that war could somehow be outlawed, the men who crafted the blueprint for waging the Cold War returned to peace through strength. Winston Churchill proposed “defense through deterrents.” President Harry Truman called NATO “an integrated international force whose object is to maintain peace through strength…we devoutly pray that our present course of action will succeed and maintain peace without war.”[iii] President Dwight Eisenhower explained, “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk its own destruction.” President John Kennedy vowed to “strengthen our military power to the point where no aggressor will dare attack.” And President Ronald Reagan steered the Cold War to a peaceful end by noting, “None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong.” Reagan also argued, “Our military strength is a prerequisite for peace.”[iv] Even so, arms alone aren’t enough to deter war. After all, the great powers were armed to the teeth in 1914. But since they weren’t clear about their intentions and treaty commitments, a small crisis on the fringes of Europe mushroomed into a global war. Neither is clarity alone enough to deter war. After all, President Woodrow Wilson’s admonitions to the Kaiser were clear, but America lacked the military strength at the onset of war to make those words matter and thus deter German aggression. In other words, America was unable to deter. “The purpose of a deterrence force is to create a set of conditions that would cause an adversary to conclude that the cost of any particular act against the United States of America or her allies is far higher than the potential benefit of that act,” explains Gen. Kevin Chilton, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command. It is a “cost-benefit calculus.”[v] So, given the anemic state of America’s military before 1917, the Kaiser calculated that the benefits of attacking U.S. ships and trying to lure Mexico into an alliance outweighed the costs. That proved to be a grave miscalculation. In order for the adversary not to miscalculate, a few factors must hold. First, consequences must be clear, which was not the case on the eve of World War I. Critics of deterrence often cite World War I to argue that arms races trigger wars. But if it were that simple, then a) there wouldn’t have been a World War II, since the Allies allowed their arsenals to atrophy after 1918, and b) there would have been a World War III, since Washington and Moscow engaged in an unprecedented arms race. The reality is that miscalculation lit the fuse of World War I. The antidote, as alluded to above, is strength plus clarity. A second important factor to avoid miscalculation: The adversary must be rational, which means it can grasp and fear consequences. Fear is an essential ingredient of deterrence. It pays to recall that deterrence comes from the Latin dēterreō: “to frighten off.”[vi] Of course, as Churchill conceded, “The deterrent does not cover the case of lunatics.”[vii] Mass-murderers masquerading as holy men and death-wish dictators may be immune from deterrence. (The secondary benefit of the peace-through-strength model is that it equips those who embrace it with the capacity to defeat these sorts of enemies rapidly and return to the status quo ante.) Third, the consequences of military confrontation must be credible and tangible, which was the case during most of the Cold War. Not only did Washington and Moscow construct vast military arsenals to deter one another; they were clear about their treaty commitments and about the consequences of any threat to those commitments. Recall how Eisenhower answered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s boast about the Red Army’s overwhelming conventional advantage in Germany: “If you attack us in Germany,” the steely American commander-in-chief fired back, “there will be nothing conventional about our response.”[viii] Eisenhower’s words were unambiguously clear, and unlike Wilson, he wielded the military strength to give them credibility. Discussing military deterrence in the context of Christianity may seem incongruent to some readers. But for a pair of reasons it is not. First, deterrence is not just a matter of GDPs and geopolitics. In fact, scripture often uses the language of deterrence and preparedness. For example, in the first chapter of Numbers the Lord directs Moses and Aaron to count “all the men in Israel who are twenty years old or more and able to serve in the army.” This ancient selective-service system is a form of military readiness. Similarly, I Chronicles 27 provides detail about the Israelites’ massive standing army: twelve divisions of 24,000 men each. II Chronicles 17 explains the military preparations made by King Jehoshaphat of Judah, a king highly revered for his piety, who built forts, maintained armories in strategically located cities “with large supplies” and fielded an army of more than a million men “armed for battle.” Not surprisingly, “the fear of the Lord fell on all the kingdoms of the lands surrounding Judah, so that they did not go to war against Jehoshaphat.” In the New Testament, Paul writes in Romans 13 that “Rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong…Rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.” Again, this is the language of deterrence. Those who follow the law within a country and who respect codes of conduct between countries have nothing to fear. Those who don’t have much to fear. Likewise, to explain the importance of calculating the costs of following Him, Jesus asks in Luke 14, “What king would go to war against another king without first sitting down to consider whether his 10,000 soldiers could go up against the 20,000 coming against him? And if he didn’t think he could win, he would send a representative to discuss terms of peace while his enemy was still a long way off.” In a sense, both kings are wise—one because he recognizes that he’s outnumbered; the other because he makes sure that he’s not. Put another way, both kings subscribe to peace through strength. Again, as with the Centurion earlier, Jesus could have rebuked the martial character of these kings, but he did not. This is not just description but commendation. We ignore their example at our peril. Secondly, it is not incongruent if we understand military deterrence as a means to prevent great-power war—the kind that kills by the millions, the kind humanity has not endured for seven decades. We know we will not experience the biblical notion of peace—of shalom, peace with harmony and justice—until Christ returns to make all things new. In the interim, in a broken world, the alternatives to peace through strength leave much to be desired: peace through hope, peace through violence, or peace through submission. But these options are inadequate. The sheer destructiveness and totality of great-power war testify that crossing our fingers and hoping for peace is not a Christian option. Wishful thinking, romanticizing reality, is the surest way to invite what Churchill called “temptations to a trial of strength.” Moreover, the likelihood that the next great-power war would involve multiple nuclear-weapons states means that it could end civilization. Therefore, a posture that leaves peer adversaries doubting the West’s capabilities and resolve—thus inviting miscalculation—is not only unsound, but immoral and inhumane—unchristian. “Deterrence of war is more humanitarian than anything,” Gen. Park Yong Ok, a longtime South Korean military official, argues. “If we fail to deter war, a tremendous number of civilians will be killed.”[ix] Peace through violence has been tried throughout history. Pharaoh, Caesar and Genghis Khan, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, all attained a kind of peace by employing brutal forms of violence. However, this is not the kind of “peace” under which God’s crowning creation can flourish; neither would the world long tolerate such a scorched-earth “peace.” This option, too, the Christian rejects. Finally, the civilized world could bring about peace simply by not resisting the enemies of civilization—by not blunting the Islamic State’s blitzkrieg of Iraq; by not defending the 38th Parallel; by not standing up to Beijing’s land-grab in the South China Sea or Moscow’s bullying of the Baltics or al-Qaeda’s death creed; by not having armies or, for that matter, police. As Reagan said, “There’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.”[x] The world has tried these alternatives to peace through strength, and the outcomes have been disastrous. After World War I, Western powers disarmed and convinced themselves they had waged the war to end all wars. By 1938, as Churchill concluded after Munich, the Allies had been “reduced…from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it.”[xi] Like predators in the wilderness, the Axis powers sensed weakness and attacked. In October 1945—not three months after the Missouri steamed into Tokyo Bay—Gen. George Marshall decried the “disintegration not only of the Armed Forces, but apparently…all conception of world responsibility,” warily asking, “Are we already, at this early date, inviting that same international disrespect that prevailed before this war?”[xii] Stalin answered Marshall’s question by gobbling up half of Europe, blockading Berlin, and arming Kim Il-Sung in patient preparation for the invasion of South Korea.[xiii] The U.S. military had taken up positions in Korea in 1945, but withdrew all combat forces in 1949.[xiv] Then, in 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced that Japan, Alaska and the Philippines fell within America’s “defensive perimeter.”[xv] Korea didn’t. Stalin noticed. Without a U.S. deterrent in place, Stalin gave Kim a green light to invade. Washington then reversed course and rushed American forces back into Korea, and the Korean peninsula plunged into one of the most ferocious wars in history. The cost of miscalculation in Washington and Moscow: 38,000 Americans, 103,250 South Korean troops, 316,000 North Korean troops, 422,000 Chinese troops and 2 million civilian casualties.[xvi] The North Korean tyranny— now under command of Kim’s grandson—still dreams of conquering South Korea. The difference between 2015 and 1950 is that tens of thousands of battle-ready U.S. and ROK troops are stationed on the border. They’ve been there every day since 1953. The lesson of history is that waging war is far more costly than maintaining a military capable of deterring war. As Washington observed, “Timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it.” Just compare military allocations, as a percentage of GDP, during times of war and times of peace: In the eight years before entering World War I, the United States devoted an average of 0.7 percent of GDP to defense; during the war, U.S. defense spending spiked to 16.1 percent of GDP. In the decade before entering World War II, the United States spent an average of 1.1 percent of GDP on defense; during the war, the U.S. diverted an average of 27 percent of GDP to the military annually. During the Cold War, Washington spent an average of 7 percent of GDP on defense to deter Moscow; it worked. Yet it seems we have forgotten those hard-learned lessons. In his book The World America Made, Robert Kagan explains how “America’s most important role has been to dampen and deter the normal tendencies of other great powers to compete and jostle with one another in ways that historically have led to war.” This role has depended on America’s military might. “There is no better recipe for great-power peace,” Kagan concludes, “than certainty about who holds the upper hand.”[xvii]

The Pentagon has an innovation adoption problem that’s part of a system that does not encourage new techniques, processes or technologies, former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said at a Wednesday rollout of a new report on defense innovation. James used the example of the fast fielding of the B-21 Raider bomber in December as an example of success in remarks during a at the Atlantic Council. The most important reason the bomber was developed quickly, James said was the bomber had “fewer checkers checking the checkers.” It had intentionally been placed in the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, one of “these pockets of innovation” that have sprung up in the Pentagon over the last 10 years. Other keys to speed in unveiling the new strategic bomber were using only mature technologies, keeping the requirements stable and pushing open architecture making the platform more capable of faster modernization once in the inventory. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, another member of the commission with James, said this new era of competition with China particularly, demands that the Pentagon “accelerate … the adoption of new technology.” Quoting President Xi Jinping’s signal to the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for a possible military move against Taiwan in 2027, he added 2027 is only two budget cycles away. Two budget cycles are also the time it would take a new technology to move through the internal Pentagon budgeting process and then through to Congress to begin production. “We’re way behind; we’ve got to be serious about this,” said Esper. Commission member Ellen Lord, who served as the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer in the Trump administration, said “there’s never been a more opportune time” to streamline the acquisition process. But “to start writing contracts” that smaller firms need to survive the so-called valley of death the 18- to 24-month period where a technology, system or platform remains in tightly regulated spending categories. The best way to do that, Lord said, was “to move from piles of paper to electronic databases” dissecting the project that is constantly updated for quicker approval to raise that contract to build to scale. Congress needs to “delegate, delegate, delegate,” as does the Pentagon, Lord said at the Atlantic Council event. The council created the commission consisting of former Pentagon officials and the defense industry with the goal of delivering specific recommendations that can be adopted quickly. James added, now the office of the secretary of defense, the services themselves and “eight different offices” are reviewing that single proposal potentially raising more questions that must be answered and delaying it further. “One ‘no’ shuts it down,” she said. Michèle Flournoy, a former DoD undersecretary for policy, said, “where the department often stumbles is human talent” which puts a premium on being risk-averse across the buying workforce. “You have to train [acquisition officers] on new authorities” available to them to move good ideas into adoption “and why we need them,” she said. Flournoy added those workers must be rewarded and that means having promotion opportunities. The panelists added that taking risks can lead to failures, but lessons can be learned from that experience that will send other projects more speedily into production. “Most of the innovation [in cutting-edge technologies] is being done in the private sector,” Lord said. There are companies large and small that don’t face the cumbersome budgeting cycle or the regulations and rules that cover defense spending. “Input of leadership” at the defense secretary, service secretary and service chief level “to scour the budget to find the money” to spur innovation, like the establishment of the Army’s Future Command, is essential Esper said. That allows teaching the bureaucracy “a different way of doing” business. That hands-on leadership has to continue with Congress to build trust over why these are important changes.

senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, director of the International Security Program, and director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); The U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China; https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-to-deter-conflict-with-China/

A U.S. war with China would be disastrous. Impacts could include large numbers of military and civilian casualties and fatalities, wiping out significant portions of the U.S. and Chinese militaries, expanding to other countries and regions, massive economic disruptions, possible escalation to nuclear war, and creation of large-scale environmental and humanitarian implications. It is critical, then, to deter a Chinese invasion and prevent a war. There are two main types of deterrence in the context of a possible war with China: 1. Deterrence by Denial Preventing an adversary (such as China) from taking an action (such as invading Taiwan) by making the action infeasible or unlikely to succeed, thus denying the adversary confidence in achieving its objectives. 2. Deterrence by Punishment Preventing an adversary (such as China) from taking an action (such as invading Taiwan) by imposing severe costs if the action occurs. In both cases, a strong U.S. industrial base—with sufficient munitions stockpiles and weapons systems—is critical for deterring Chinese action. Effective deterrence is based, in part, on having the necessary capabilities for warfighting. Yet the United States' defense industrial base would have a difficult time sustaining a protracted conflict. So would its major allies and partners in Europe and Asia. With Xi Jinping now in his third term following the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, most likely confident and emboldened, it is unclear what the timelines could be for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. While Xi Jinping appears intent on recovering Taiwan and has tied it to the “mandate from heaven,” there are no guarantees such an invasion will actually occur. For the purposes of U.S. planning and deterrence, it is important to think through what factors China would consider in an invasion, and how heavily those factors would be weighted. These factors include the capabilities and readiness of the People’s Liberation Army, the capabilities and force posture of the United States, the capabilities and force posture of U.S. allies and partners, the progress of Taiwan in reforming its military and the willingness of Taiwan to fight, the degree to which a practical window for peaceful unification is closing, and China’s domestic economic and political conditions. While it is unlikely that China has a concrete timeline for invasion, the United States needs to be ready now. As the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighted, it is difficult to predict the timelines for any war.

The challenges facing the United States are easier to solve than those facing Russia. The gap that Ukraine and its partners need to close to help Ukraine win is smaller than the gap that Russia needs to close to achieve its objectives in Ukraine. The Kremlin has mobilized a lot of its resources — far from all that the Kremlin can mobilize but orders of magnitude higher than what the West has mobilized on behalf of Ukraine. Russia had every advantage in the last ten years and occupied 18% of Ukraine at an enormous cost. Putin will mobilize more manpower and material, but Russia’s surge capacity is neither unlimited nor without costs and constraints.¶ The West is not as fragile as Russia wants us to think. Putin sought but failed to freeze Europe.[67] He has been trying but has failed to break NATO (though he will have a real chance to do so if Russia wins in Ukraine). Minimizing the West’s perception of its own strength is a core component of the Kremlin’s perception manipulation.¶ The West is awakening. Many Western leaders and societies have awakened to the reality that there is no going back to the status quo ante, that Russia is a self-declared adversary, and that the West has two choices: counter the threat or surrender to it. Ukraine’s European and Asia-Pacific partners began forming coalitions for weapon procurement to support Ukraine; European countries began ramping up their defense industrial bases to restock NATO supplies and assist Ukraine.[68] French President Emanuel Macron warned the West against showing any signs of weakness to Russia as he entertained the prospect of sending Western troops into Ukraine.[69] But US leadership remains indispensable.¶ Western advantage is not a permanent condition. Ukrainian lives and the Western advantage over Russia are the costs of US and Western decision-making delays. Ukraine’s agency and will to fight are assets of historical proportions that should not be taken for granted. Delaying resource mobilization decisions in the West will erode this center of gravity. Putin has considered Russia to be at war with the West for a while and has been acting like it. Putin recently signed decrees restoring the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, which may be in preparation for a potential future large-scale conventional war against NATO.[70] The Kremlin intensified the use of rhetorical threats against Finland and the Baltic countries, including accusing Baltic countries of intolerance towards ethnic Russians in the region.[71] The erosion of the West’s capability to counter the Russian threat will be proportionate to the delays in the Western realization of the threat itself.¶ V. The Next Decisions¶ The United States must restore its strategic clarity and get the big idea right: the best course of action for US interests is to support Ukraine to its victory, as the only path to a durable peace rather than a temporary respite, and then help Ukraine rebuild, putting the largest combat-effective friendly military in Europe at the forefront of NATO’s defense.[72]¶ The United States needs to surge and then persist in support of this objective. A sustained US effort, rather than a one-time surge, will grant Ukraine the certainty about resourcing that it can expect from international partners so Ukraine can plan for future operations. The US decision to persist should also stem from a recognition that Russia is a persistent challenge that requires persistent effort. The costs of persistence are minor compared to the catastrophic and irreversible consequences of letting Russia prevail in Ukraine.¶ The United States and other Ukrainian allies need to take several specific and immediate steps:¶ 1. Provide Ukraine with sufficient military aid and other support required for Ukraine to restore maneuver to the battlefield.[73]¶ 2. Support Ukraine’s effort to expand its defense industrial base (DIB) but also ramp up the US and allied DIB to support Ukraine in the medium term and to strengthen our own deterrence capabilities against Russia and other US adversaries. ¶ 3. Target Russia’s capability to sustain the war against Ukraine.[74]¶ Deny Russia’s sanctuaries. Russia is not entitled to sanctuaries when it is trying to erase a nation. The West must abandon the Russian information line that Russia, having launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, can demand immunity from attack with Western or Ukrainian weapons. The United States must remove any existing constraints on Ukraine to target legitimate Russian military and defense industrial capabilities in Russia. The West should also develop a long-term strategy against “sacred Russian cows” in the West, such as the Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom. Rosatom is a major arm of the Kremlin, doing its bidding from Ukraine to the Arctic to Africa largely unimpeded due the Western economic interdependencies.[75] The long-term divestment from Rosatom is likely feasible, but it requires just that — for us to think in terms of a long-term strategy of denying Russia its capability sanctuaries.¶ Focus on asymmetries. Ukraine has exposed numerous Russian weaknesses from the vulnerabilities of the Black Sea Fleet to the vulnerability of Russian defense industrial assets to Ukrainian drone and missile strikes.[76] The United States should amplify and accelerate not constrain these effective asymmetric warfare approaches that also impact Russia’s battlefield operations and force Putin to make hard choices about resource allocation. ¶ Target Russia’s capability globally. Putin is playing the full board, so should we – targeting Russia’s capability from Africa to the Arctic.¶ Strip the Kremlin of its offset capabilities. The United States must defy the Kremlin’s efforts to alter our own decision making and will. The United States must also deny the Kremlin the luxury of time to regroup on the battlefield, and to rebuild Russia’s broader military and perception manipulation capabilities only later to be used against us.

Joseph Clark is a journalist with a focus on defense and military affairs. He has written for various publications, including Eurasia Review, MilitarySpot, and the United States Air Force. His articles cover a range of topics, including defense strategies, military operations, and international collaborations. Us Department of Defense “Resilient Defense Industrial Base Critical for Deterring Conflict” October 25, 2023 AS

A resilient defense industrial base is critical to the Defense Department's ability to deter future conflict, the Pentagon's top acquisition official said today. William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said ensuring that resiliency requires steady demand signals from government to industry, a key takeaway from the war in Ukraine. "Very few people anticipated the prolonged, high-volume conflict we are seeing in Ukraine or that we might see again against a strategic competitor," LaPlante said during this year's Common Defense Conference in Arlington, Virginia. "We are relearning just how resource-intensive this type of warfare can be, and how dialing down our production numbers, and the just-in-time delivery model doesn't work in this kind of conflict," he said. "We need a paradigm shift to meet the needs of today and the future fight." LaPlante said that for decades, the defense industry has been subject to spikes in demand for munitions during conflict only to be faced with plummeting demand during peacetime. "Almost every time after a crisis is over — usually two to three years after the crisis, after demand peaks — demand sharply drops, the industrial base cuts core competencies and workforce, people are laid off and production lines are stopped," he said. "This has happened about four times in the past 30 years. "When folks say they don't understand why it's taking a while to ramp up and why they're not investing, it's because they know that history just like we know that history," he said. "And so, we're trying to stop that." LaPlante said shoring up the defense industrial base and ramping up production lines has been a key focus of his over the past year with an emphasis on multi-year contracts that provide the defense industry and investors with the confidence needed to sustain production. "How do we build up the confidence with industry that they can also do their investment," he said. "This often comes down to contracts. Speeches are wonderful... but contracts are actually more meaningful. And that's what industry pays attention to." LaPlante also emphasized the importance of increasing opportunities for the U.S. and allies to work on co-development and co-production of critical platforms — especially in the Indo-Pacific. He noted several promising steps taken in the past year to foster these relationships including a security of supply arrangement between the U.S. and Japan that creates a streamlined mechanism to resolve supply chain disruptions. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at increasing opportunities for collaboration on emerging defense technology. LaPlante said he expects that the U.S. will continue to seize on similar opportunities with other allies. "Forging and fostering partnerships across the Indo-Pacific is critical for so many nations," he said. "It's more important than it has ever been." Ultimately, LaPlante said, seizing on opportunities to shore up defense production on a global scale is critical to the United States' strategy of deterrence. "Production itself is deterrence," he said. "It's as simple as that. The more we work together to expand global capacity of production and sustainment and foster opportunities for even co-development, co-production and co-sustainment, the better off we will be."

was chief technology officer in the Defense Department’s Industrial Base Policy shop and senior adviser to the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment; Implementing the industrial base strategy won’t be easy; Defense News;

Having a strong and resilient U.S. defense industrial base is a key part of our national security strategy, acting as a deterrent. If our adversaries understand we have the capability and capacity to produce enough weapons systems to enter a conflict and win, they will be less likely to want to engage and more likely to seek a diplomatic solution. But as we’ve seen with supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and industrial base constraints that have limited the U.S. and allied ability to support Ukraine (and foreign military sales to Taiwan), the U.S. is not ready for a conflict with a peer adversary. This is a national crisis that will take an all hands on deck effort to resolve. But it’s not clear the sense of urgency is strong enough. Are we truly ready? The highly anticipated U.S. National Defense Industrial Strategy was released this month by the Department of Defense’s Office of Industrial Base Policy. This document provides a comprehensive outline of the issues in the defense industrial base and details the myriad approaches that must be taken to resolve them. But most of what is in the NDIS is not entirely new. This is not intended as a criticism — the DoD has been tracking and reporting on industrial base issues and the means to mitigate those issues for many years. It sends industrial capabilities reports to Congress annually and produced large reports in 2018 and 2022 on the strength of the defense industrial base. However, the NDIS provides a singular place to find this information. And it seems to have attracted the attention of a much wider audience than previous reports. At this point, it appears most policymakers and intellectuals recognize it’s important to revitalize U.S. manufacturing and that the defense industrial base is a key part of national security. The implementation plan for the NDIS is scheduled to be released at the end of March, but it is already obvious many hard decisions will need to be made to successfully implement this strategy. Most of the solutions will require multiple people, organizations, and resources working in tandem — and many of them are not within DoD’s control. The IBP office has been attempting to address these issues and improve the resilience of the industrial base for years, but they cannot do it alone. And although other parts of DoD, and even other parts of the government and industry, have been talking about supply chain security and resilience as well, there has never been a concerted, sustained effort, where everyone considers this a top priority. The DoD plays a very large role here of course, especially with regards to how it sets requirements, purchases systems, and makes investments in technologies and in the industrial base. Congress plays another large role by ensuring steady, on-time procurement funding, and funding to mitigate industrial base issues. Industry plays a role in developing and using innovative technology and flexible and agile manufacturing processes that improve efficiency and increase resiliency. The interagency too plays a part by helping with trade remedies and foreign investment controls, workforce development and labor regulations, and enabling international collaboration. And our international partners must help co-develop and co-produce systems and provide capability the U.S. can leverage to mitigate industrial base and innovation gaps. It remains to be seen if these at times competing forces can rally around this call to action and take the steps necessary to rescue our industrial base in time.

deputy director in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Prior to joining the Council, Levantovscaia served the US Chamber of Commerce as director for defense, aerospace, and acquisition policy.

Reading between the lines of the new US National Defense Industrial Strategy; Atlantic Council;

Vital Signs 2024: U.S. Defense Industrial Base Still Facing Headwinds; National Defense- NDIA’s Business and Technology Magazine;

During the last 35 years, six U.S. administrations have worked tirelessly to deter peer conflict. But in many ways, the nation both forgot enduring truths regarding what national deterrence against peer competition requires and failed to successfully address the changing social, demographic and financial trends impacting the defense industrial base. In addition, public consciousness lost the direct connection between a strong defense industrial base and effective national deterrence. Informed by the tragedies of current conflict unfolding in multiple regions around the world, U.S. policymakers are more keenly conscious of the consequences of failed deterrence and the inexorable reality of what it would take for the U.S. military to prevail in multiple contingencies occurring simultaneously. While technological advancements provide early tactical advantages, nations usually win or lose conflicts over the long term based on the strength and endurance of their political and military alliances, national treasuries and defense industrial bases.

"The essence of a revolution is that it appears to contemporaries as a series of more or less unrelated upheavals,” Henry Kissinger wrote in 1969. “But the crises which form the headlines of the day are symptoms of deep-seated structural problems.” Kissinger wrote this passage as the postwar international system was coming under unprecedented strain, with profound shifts in the global distribution of power driving incessant disruptions in U.S. foreign policy. His admonition applies just as well today, at the onset of a new era of upheaval. During Donald Trump’s presidency and after, U.S. foreign policy is likely to be wracked by crises. The instability and violence along a resurgent Russia’s periphery, the growing frictions with an increasingly assertive China, the provocations of a rapidly nuclearizing North Korea and the profound chaos at work throughout the Middle East: these and other challenges have recently tested U.S. officials and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future. The world now seems less stable and more dangerous than at any time since the Cold War; the number and severity of global crises are increasing. Yet crises do not occur in a vacuum; they are symptomatic of deeper changes in the international order. Accordingly, America’s responses will be ill-informed and astrategic unless Washington first forms a deeper conception of the current moment. The geopolitical changes underway are often framed in terms of “polarity”—the debate on whether America’s “unipolar moment” is over and a multipolar world has emerged. But this debate is misleading. On the one hand, discussions of polarity frequently exaggerate American decline, obscuring the fact that even though Washington’s international superiority has diminished, its global lead over any single challenger remains quite impressive. On the other hand, the polarity debate actually obscures both the degree and breadth of the ongoing changes in the international system, and of the challenges facing American officials. The fundamental fact of international politics today is that the post–Cold War era has ended. The defining features of that period were uncontested U.S. and Western primacy, marked declines in ideological struggle and great-power conflict, and remarkable global cooperation in addressing key international-security challenges. Now, however, the world has returned to a more normal—which is to say, more dangerous and unsettled—state. The core characteristics of the emerging era are the gradual erosion of U.S. and Western primacy, revived great-power competition across all three key regions of Eurasia, renewed global ideological struggle, and empowerment of the agents of international strife and disorder. What makes the present period so tumultuous is that these forces often compound one another’s destabilizing effects; moreover, their collective impact is magnified by a growing uncertainty about whether America and other traditional defenders of the international system will continue playing that role in the future. American primacy is not dead, in other words, and true multipolarity is still a long ways off. But U.S. primacy is far more contested than at any time in a quarter-century, and the friendly contours of the post–Cold War system have given way to a darker and more challenging environment. The best way to understand the present era is to compare it to the previous one. The post–Cold War era was defined by four phenomena that made it historically favorable to American interests. The first was uncontested U.S. primacy. America emerged from the Cold War with clear economic dominance, possessing nearly 25 percent of global GDP in 1994. It controlled nearly 40 percent of world defense outlays, along with utterly unrivaled advantages in global power-projection capabilities. Crucially, these capabilities not only gave Washington an enormous lead over any geopolitical competitor; they also provided the ability—as Saddam Hussein discovered in 1991—to marshal decisive military might in virtually all the key strategic regions around the world. In the nineteenth century, the British ship of the line symbolized London’s global primacy; in the late twentieth century, the American carrier strike group symbolized an even more imposing preeminence. Nor was American dominance purely unilateral, because it was powerfully accentuated by the strengths of the broader Western coalition. In 1994, America’s treaty allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific accounted for 47 percent of global GDP and 35 percent of global military spending, giving Washington and its closest friends upward of 70 percent of global economic power and military spending. Throughout the post–Cold War era, allied involvement thus lent added force to U.S. diplomacy on key issues of international order; from the Gulf War to the war in Afghanistan, allied contributions reinforced America’s ability to project military power overseas. This was no balance of power; it was one of the most pronounced imbalances the world had ever seen. U.S. dominance was also evident in a second phenomenon—the decline of international ideological competition. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis has been much derided, but it captured three indisputable facts about the post–Cold War era: that democracy and markets were spreading more widely than ever before; that there was no credible global competitor to the liberal-capitalist model; and that even former U.S. enemies, such as Russia, and authoritarian states, such as China, were making unprecedented efforts to integrate into the liberal order either economically, politically or both. To be clear, Western concepts of human rights and political democracy were far from fully accepted in these countries, and Russian and Chinese leaders—among others—sooner or later came to see liberal proselytism as a grave threat. But the intense ideological struggles of the twentieth century were clearly over, and the liberal model seemed incontestably ascendant. These first two phenomena related to a third—the remarkable great-power comity of the post–Cold War era. The end of the Cold War did not, as was widely expected, see a fragmenting of America’s alliances, or a resurgence of Japanese and German revisionism. Rather, the major Western powers remained tied to America, largely because Washington continued to provide crucial global public goods such as security and leadership of an open global economy. Moreover, the sheer geopolitical dominance of the Western coalition meant that it was dangerous if not impossible for countries like Russia and China to mount serious great-power challenges of their own. Admittedly, there remained sometimes-serious disagreements between the United States and these countries, over issues from NATO enlargement to Taiwan, and those disagreements would grow more pronounced with time. But the danger of great-power war was nonetheless historically low during the 1990s, and great-power rivalries were more muted than at any time since the Concert of Europe. All of these characteristics fed into a final post–Cold War phenomenon: remarkable multilateral cooperation in addressing the relatively mild international disorder of the day. With great-power conflict dormant, U.S. foreign policy and the international community focused largely on combating lesser geopolitical “spoilers,” from ethnic cleansing to mass-casualty terrorism to the actions of aggressive regional powers such as Iraq or North Korea. These efforts, in turn, were greatly aided by the relatively tranquil state of international politics. The absence of great-power conflict made it far easier to organize broad coalitions to confront malevolent actors, whether Saddam Hussein in 1990–91 or Al Qaeda after 9/11. In the same vein, great-power peace allowed America and its allies to devote increasing attention to other forms of post–Cold War disorder. The fact that NATO could focus on “out of area” interventions for roughly two decades after the Soviet collapse, for instance, was directly related to the paucity of more traditional geopolitical threats. It would be a mistake, of course, to exaggerate how benign or pliable the post–Cold War environment really was. The “global disorder” of the period hardly seemed mild for the victims of catastrophic terrorism or ethnic cleansing; U.S. primacy was not omnipotence, as Washington’s travails in places from Mogadishu to Srebrenica to Helmand amply demonstrated. But by any meaningful historical comparison, the structure of international politics was uniquely conducive to the promotion of U.S. interests and ideals—a fact that is now the source of some nostalgia as the global system changes in five significant ways. The first key structural shift underway is the erosion of U.S. and Western primacy. It is incorrect to see this change as a transition from unipolarity to multipolarity, for true multipolarity will not arrive anytime soon. The United States still possesses substantial economic advantages over its closest competitor, China, namely an $18 trillion GDP that (as of 2015) was more than $7 trillion larger than China’s, and a per-capita GDP roughly four times that of China. U.S. defense spending also remains around three times that of China, and Washington maintains enormous advantages in the power-projection capabilities—aircraft carriers, advanced tactical aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines and others—that allow it to command the global commons and exert disproportionate influence around the world. What has happened over the past fifteen years, however, is that the extent of U.S. and Western primacy has diminished. The U.S. shares of global wealth and military spending have declined from 25 percent and 42 percent, respectively, in 2004, to around 22 and 34 percent in 2015. The drop-off among America’s allies has been more severe. U.S. allies in Europe and the Asia-Pacific commanded 47 percent of global GDP and 35 percent of global military spending in 1994; those shares had fallen to 39 and 25 percent, respectively, by 2015. Moreover, many of America’s most powerful allies—particularly in Europe—have undergone severe military decline. The British Royal Navy once ruled the waves, but now struggles to rule even the waters around the home islands; the German army faces equipment shortfalls so severe that its troops have had to exercise with broomsticks in place of machine guns. Western overmatch remains impressive by historical standards, but the global playing field is slanted much less dramatically than before. Meanwhile, the relative positions of America’s principal competitors have improved significantly. Russian economic power remains unimpressive, but an aggressive military modernization program has roughly doubled defense spending over a decade while also developing the capabilities needed to compete with the West—airborne assault units, special-operations forces, ballistic and other missile systems, and anti-access/area-denial capabilities, among others. China, meanwhile, has expanded its share of global wealth more than threefold, from 3.3 to 11.8 percent, between 1994 and 2015, and its share of world military spending more than fivefold, from 2.2 to 12.2 percent. As in Russia’s case, China’s military buildup has featured the tools—ballistic and cruise missiles, diesel-electric and nuclear submarines, advanced air defenses, and fourth-generation fighters—needed to offset longstanding U.S. advantages in the Asia-Pacific, as well as capabilities, such as aircraft carriers, needed to project Chinese power even further afield. The uncontested U.S. primacy of the 1990s has become the highly contested primacy of today. This is no academic distinction; the pernicious effects of this shift are already being seen. The decline of allied military power has made it harder for those allies to defend themselves against growing security threats, and to make more than token military contributions to addressing global challenges such as the rise of the Islamic State. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously warned in 2011 that NATO faced a “dim if not dismal future” if European capabilities continued to erode; American frustration has only become more pronounced since then. More fundamentally still, the changing power balance means that U.S. rivals and adversaries now have greater ability to shift the international order to suit their own preferences, a factor driving a second key shift in global politics today. If great-power comity was the post–Cold War norm, great-power competition is the standard today. Authoritarian rivals that were never fully reconciled to the post–Cold War order, and accepted it only to the degree compelled by U.S. and Western primacy, are now using their greater relative power to push back against that order in key geopolitical regions from East Asia to the Middle East to eastern Europe. Because Washington’s principal adversaries can concentrate their resources regionally, rather than having to distribute them globally, the power shifts that have occurred in recent years are having outsized effects at the regional level. And because the regional orders now being challenged have been the foundation of the broader post–Cold War system, these countries are effectively subverting the system “from the bottom up.” Consider Chinese behavior in East Asia. Chinese leaders always saw America’s post–Cold War dominance as a transitory condition to be suffered for a time, not something to be welcomed forever. And so as China’s geopolitical potential has soared, Beijing has taken bolder steps to erect a Sino-centric regional order. It has asserted expansive maritime claims and used techniques such as island building to shift facts on the ground without risking a premature military clash with America. It has challenged longstanding norms such as freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and steadily increased efforts to coerce its neighbors. It has probed and worked to weaken U.S. alliances and partnerships, by simultaneously wooing and intimidating America’s regional friends. Finally, Beijing has conducted a major military buildup focused precisely on capabilities that will give it dominance over its neighbors and prevent the United States from intervening in their defense. These efforts are now having an accumulating effect. Chinese coercion has dramatically altered perceptions of momentum and power in the region, while the Chinese buildup has made the outcome of a Sino-American war over Taiwan or other regional hotspots far more doubtful. Chinese economic diplomacy has drawn many countries in the region closer into Beijing’s economic orbit. “America has lost” the struggle for regional supremacy, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines announced in 2016—an exaggeration, surely, but a marker of how contested the region has become. Great-power competition is even more unvarnished in Europe, where a militarily resurgent Russia is reasserting lost influence and undoing key aspects of the post–Cold War settlement. Moscow has waged wars of conquest against Georgia and Ukraine; it has worked to undermine NATO and the European Union through efforts ranging from paramilitary subversion, to military intimidation, to financial support for anti-EU and anti-NATO politicians and other intervention in Western political processes. In doing all of this, Russia has fundamentally contested the notion of a post–Cold War Europe whole, free and at peace; it has challenged—with some success—the institutions that have long maintained security and prosperity in the region. And as with China, these actions have been underwritten by a military buildup that has restored Russian overmatch along NATO’s exposed eastern flank and enhanced Moscow’s ability to project power as far afield as the Middle East. Russia has become an ambitious great power again: it is asserting its prerogatives in ways that only seem anomalous in contrast to the remarkable cooperation of the post–Cold War era. Finally, geopolitical revisionism is alive and well in the Middle East. Iran is not in the same power-political class as Russia or China, but it is a regional power seeking to assert regional mastery. It is doing so via the use of proxies and its own forces in conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, via the weaponization of sectarianism in countries across the region, and via investments in asymmetric capabilities such as ballistic missiles and special-operations forces. This agenda has led Tehran into conflict with U.S. security partners such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; it has contributed significantly to the instability that plagues the region. Each of these geopolitical challenges is different, of course. But taken collectively, they represent a geopolitical sea change from the post–Cold War era. The revival of great-power competition entails sharper international tensions than have been known for decades, and the return of Cold War phenomena such as arms races and security dilemmas. It entails intensifying conflicts over the global rules of the road, on issues from freedom of navigation in the South China Sea to the illegitimacy of altering borders by force. It entails starker struggles over states that reside at the intersection of rival great powers’ spheres of influence, such as the Philippines, Ukraine and Iraq. Finally, it raises the prospect that great-power rivalry could lead to great-power war—a phenomenon that seemed to have followed the Soviet Union onto the ash heap of history with the end of the Cold War. The world has not yet returned to the titanic geopolitical struggles of the twentieth century, but it is returning to the historical norm of great-power strife—with all the dangers that entails.

president of J.A. Green & Company, a government relations firm based in Washington, D.C. He previously served with the House Armed Services Committee and the U.S. Defense Department.; Lawmakers must find common ground to support the defense-industrial base; Defense News; https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/01/11/lawmakers-must-find-common-ground-to-support-the-defense-industrial-base/

The great benefit of DPA and other industrial-base programs is that, while they ensure the defense-industrial base is able to supply the war fighter, they also deliver very substantial non-security benefits. For instance, a strong defense-industrial base expands opportunities by assisting women and minority-owned businesses to establish a presence in the market, diversifying local economies across the U.S. and indirectly sustaining a large number of jobs outside of the defense industry. Second, stability in the defense portion of the manufacturing sector acts as ballast in an otherwise volatile portion of the economy, giving local communities that are dependent on manufacturing jobs a modicum of protection from the vicissitudes of international trade flows. Third, these programs help preserve a core manufacturing skill set in an economy that is growing increasingly service-sector dominated. Although the overall upward trend in defense spending may come under pressure in the years ahead, Congress should continue robust funding for industrial-base programs given the significant economic benefits, especially in comparison to their rather modest percentage outlay of the overall defense budget. In the last defense appropriations bill, industrial-base programs counted for less than 0.1 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.

Over the past century, the landscape of the United States' economic priorities has undergone a transformative shift, with the defense industry emerging as an indispensable component. What began as a post-World War I demobilization of military forces and a return to peacetime pursuits transformed drastically during the Cold War era. The threat posed by the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities prompted a seismic change in defense spending, paving the way for the establishment of a dedicated private-sector defense industry. The period following World War II witnessed a shift from the traditional American model of minimal peacetime military outlays to a sustained and substantial defense budget. Russia's testing of fission and fusion weapons, coupled with intercontinental ballistic missiles, shattered the illusion of geographical insulation. The Eisenhower years (1953-1960) marked an unprecedented era of peacetime military spending, with over half of the federal budget allocated to defense, averaging nearly ten percent of the entire economy. As we fast forward to 2023, the defense industry has become a formidable force in the U.S. economy. The passage of an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal 2023, allocating $858 billion for national defense, underscores the industry's significance. Approximately half of this budget flows into the private sector through contracts, exceeding $400 billion annually. This figure alone rivals a quarter of the entire Russian economy, highlighting the scale of enterprises involved.

A large body of empirical research has argued that R&D is a key source of firm productivity growth (e.g. Griliches, 1979) and this notion has long been at the heart of modern growth theory. But there are at least two limitations with the existing empirical evidence. First, it is unclear how much of the association between productivity and R&D is causal and how much reflects unobserved factors which are correlated with both. Improving institutions and technology, for example, could cause countries or industries that experience faster R&D investment do tend to also have higher productivity growth. Despite the importance of this issue, few empirical studies make use of plausibly exogenous sources of variation in R&D.53 Second, even if the association of productivity with R&D is entirely causal, the question remains as to what policies can successfully raise R&D, and whether these policies are socially efficient.54∂ In this paper, we study the impact of public R&D spending on private R&D spending and productivity. We address the potential endogeneity of public R&D by using the defense component as an instrument exploiting natural experiments such as the start of hot wars and the ending of cold wars. We uncover some unexpected intellectual spoils of war. First, our results suggest that government R&D “crowds in” rather than “crowds out” private R&D with a long-run elasticity of around 0.3 (i.e. a 10% increase in government funded R&D increases private R&D by 3%). This affects seems causal – when we instrument public R&D with the arguably more exogenous defense related component, this relationship strengthens, suggesting that (if anything) public R&D is often used to compensate industries facing negative shocks.∂ Second, we find that R&D investment plays an important role in raising TFP and therefore economic output. We uncover estimates of the rate of return to R&D that range between from 0.6 to 0.10. This effect is economically meaningful. Public R&D in general, and defense R&D in particular, account for some of the differences across countries in TFP.∂ Finally, we uncover an interesting pattern of international spillovers. An increase in public R&D benefits other countries through a positive productivity spillover, but we also find that on average these other countries respond by cutting back on their R&D investments (which by itself will reduce their productivity growth). Simple simulations suggest that the first effect dominates, however, and that government-funded R&D by one’s neighbors is to be welcomed rather than feared.