On top of ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific, the next administration will inherit structural domestic and international obstacles that have been mounting for decades. Addressing these challenges while keeping our current U.S. foreign policy strategy on autopilot simply won’t cut it—it is time for a new approach.
Since America’s victory in the Cold War, our national security elites in both parties have avoided asking fundamental questions about what missions the United States should be engaged in. These experts insist that maintaining a heavy military footprint across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia simultaneously is necessary for American security.
Focusing on how to resource these missions without reflecting on their wisdom or sustainability misses the forest for the trees. Twenty years of open-ended nation-building efforts in the Middle East cost thousands of service members’ lives. These conflicts also came at the price of $6 trillion, damaged American military readiness, and aided our great power rivals by diverting our focus and energy.
After decades of deficit spending, our national debt is approaching $36 trillion, a ten-fold increase from the end of the Cold War. After the COVID pandemic, our nation’s debt hadn’t been so large in relation to our economy since the Second World War. At this point, our interest payments alone are exceeding U.S. defense spending from this year.
On top of these challenges, the trust funds for our biggest domestic programs—Social Security and Medicare—are on track to be insolvent in a decade and impose benefits cuts unless the next administration makes difficult domestic choices to secure their future.
Taken together, the United States now experiences a strategic scarcity that our national security class has not had to deal with for generations.
We cannot buy our way out of these constraints, as the Commission on the National Defense Strategy recently called for. Voters, especially in swing states, are already disillusioned with America’s level of involvement in conflicts abroad. Americans are not going to make the painful fiscal sacrifices needed to secure our financial future only to see trillions more squandered on flawed defense strategies.
In the face of these challenges, Concerned Veterans for America’s new report, “Realism in Practice,” offers a fresh, disciplined path forward for U.S. foreign policy, rooted in assessing our strategic situation as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
American strategic goals need to align with America’s available resources. Policymakers also need to use the right tools to achieve these goals, avoiding overreliance on an already overstretched, undermanned military. Our allies can and should take greater responsibility for their own defense. The United States needs to concentrate its military resources on regions most vital to its core interests, while relying more on diplomatic and economic engagement elsewhere.
Hellbound and Down 