Restraint: A post-COVID-19 U.S. national security strategy
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of its national power. This has implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Health and economic fallout from COVID-19 makes setting realistic defense priorities more urgent
The response to the coronavirus global pandemic has severely weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of national power. This reality has vast implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Two economic factors suggest narrowing U.S. foreign policy objectives: (1) U.S. GDP and tax revenue will shrink in 2020, with no certainty about when they might recover. (2) Record deficits and debt endanger future economic growth.
Political reasons for foreign policy restraint augment those economic factors: The public increasingly perceives non-security risks are paramount, and priority will go to domestic spending that aids recovery and increases domestic institutional resilience.
Federal discretionary spending will bear a greater burden because mandatory spending programs are politically harder to cut. Since defense accounts for nearly half of discretionary spending, DoD will likely face sustained cuts.
The U.S. enjoys a favorable geostrategic position with abundant protection from rivals, so it can cut defense spending without compromising security. Indeed, ending peripheral commitments in favor of core security interests strengthens the U.S.
Ending policies bringing failure, overstretch, and drained coffers always made sense—coronavirus makes the case more urgent.
U.S. federal budget authority by category (FY 2019)
Abandon peripheral missions abroad and focus on core U.S. security and prosperity
As the pandemic demonstrates, non-military threats can be far more detrimental to Americans’ well-being than the non-state actors, rogue states, and authoritarian regimes that dominate military planning and drive DoD spending.
The decades-long pursuit of overly ambitious foreign policy goals disconnected from U.S. security contributed to the neglect of U.S. domestic institutions exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Recovering requires investment at home: education, health care, infrastructure, research and development, and policies that promote innovation and job creation.
For the past 20 years, the U.S. spent roughly $1 trillion annually on defense-related objectives (DoD, veteran’s care, homeland security, nuclear weapons, diplomacy) while domestic infrastructure in critical industries went under-resourced.
Rebalancing defense priorities to focus more on economic prosperity and public health will enhance U.S. power in the long term.
Middle East: Reduce overinvestment and military presence, which has backfired and weakened the U.S.
Core Middle East interests are (1) preventing significant disruptions to global oil supply and (2) defending against anti-U.S. terror threats. The former requires minimal U.S. effort; the latter requires intelligence, cooperation, and limited strikes, not occupations.
The Middle East accounts for just 4 percent of global GDP, yet for decades, the U.S. has attempted to reshape the region through military force, disrupting the regional balance of power, exacerbating political instability, and allowing terrorist groups to flourish.
Today, the U.S. has 62,000 troops in the region, many of them vulnerable to attacks by local militias. The U.S. is also fighting wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, largely based on exaggerated fears of Iran, a middling power contained by its local rivals.
The U.S. will be able to fund part of its coronavirus recovery by ending its participation in conflicts in the Middle East and nearby areas, such as Afghanistan and Somalia. This would free up tens of billions of dollars annually for higher priorities.
Additional savings can be had by focusing the Pentagon on its core warfighting missions and right-sizing force structure—reducing ground forces in particular, which have been swollen by these commitments.
The U.S., Europe, and Asia account for 81 percent of global GDP
Europe: Shift security burdens to wealthy allies
The U.S. has strong economic and diplomatic interests in Europe, but the continent faces limited direct military threats. Despite the fall of the USSR, the U.S. maintains a heavy military footprint in Europe in the name of securing wealthy, relatively safe allies.
This arrangement served U.S. interests when a big U.S. military presence in Europe balanced the USSR’s military might while enabling allies to recover economically and unify.
As allies grew rich and the USSR collapsed, a sensible balancing policy became a subsidy that let wealthy allies “cheap ride” on U.S. taxpayers, driving excess DoD spending while subsidizing lavish social welfare programs for European nations.
Russia is a declining power (with a large nuclear arsenal). The EU dominates Russia in important metrics of national power: 3½:1 population, 11:1 GDP, and 5:1 military spending. European economies are also more dynamic than Russia’s.
Instead of jawboning allies for shirking their obligations, U.S. policy should shift the security burden onto them by (1) ending the European Defense Initiative and (2) implementing a responsible draw down of U.S. ground and nuclear forces on the continent.
This would not only free up finite U.S. resources for higher priorities at home or in Asia, but also encourage European allies to revitalize their militaries: increasing spending, prioritizing modernization, or increasing military cooperation with each other.
Asia: Fortify Asian allies with A2/AD capabilities to deter Chinese aggression at less risk
U.S. policy toward China—the only conceivable strategic competitor—balances several key interests: deterring Chinese territorial expansion against Asian allies, avoiding war, and ensuring a fair and beneficial trading relationship.
Efforts to balance against China should therefore be based on core U.S. interests and carefully designed and planned to reduce cost, minimize escalation risks, and protect trade.
U.S. goals in Asia are inherently defensive (to preserve the territorial status quo) and are best served by a military approach of “defensive defense”: an operational concept that limits U.S. costs by encouraging allies to develop their defensive capabilities.
By improving anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities—a network of sensors and missiles—U.S. allies can deter Chinese attacks more effectively and cheaply than via investment in aircraft and surface ships that mimic U.S. capabilities.
Allied defensive capability is less threatening to China than U.S. offensive capability. Reducing the perceived threat of direct attacks, A2/AD is less prone to spark costly, counterproductive arms racing.
Pressing allies to adopt this approach will allow the U.S. to jettison escalatory plans to defend them by attacking the Chinese mainland, lowering tensions and risks of a broader war with China and allowing for cost saving on U.S. forces in Asia.
U.S. force structure: Constrained DoD budgets means more tradeoffs and rebalancing among the services
With the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, large oceans separating it from rivals, and weak neighbors, the U.S. has a unique advantage over every other nation—security is abundant and cheap.
The U.S. accounts for 40 percent of global military spending—treaty allies account for 22 percent; Russia and China account for 17 percent. The 2020 DoD budget ($757 billion) exceeds Cold War highs in real terms, reflecting a false sense of insecurity.
Reduced DoD budgets can force debate and prioritization among programs and services—between what contributes to U.S. security and what is peripheral or even counterproductive—that large spending authorizations prevent.
Geography makes the U.S. a natural naval power and trading nation. Distance from other major states means the U.S. is perceived as less threatening—unlike China, which borders other Eurasia powers.
The Navy is the key service for projecting U.S. power globally and defending commerce if necessary while avoiding costly occupations. The Navy should command a larger portion of DoD’s reduced budget.
With no nation building and a large reservist pool, the U.S. can reduce Army, Marines, and special operations forces end strength.
Mission-driven reductions to force structure generate savings on personnel and procurement, enabling savings on operational costs, administrative overhead, basing, and other support functions.
U.S. military spending compared to allies and competitors
No major or regional powers are unscathed by the pandemic—strategic thinking will determine who comes out stronger
The pandemic has hit all major powers hard, including U.S. adversaries; the economic pain is well distributed.
China announced its GDP contracted at 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, the first decline since 1976. The CCP relies on steady economic growth for legitimacy, and in a nation with almost no social safety net, job losses could breed discontent.
While earning some goodwill, China’s efforts to help afflicted nations are an attempt to mitigate the reputational damage from its early obfuscation of the outbreak, which led to the global pandemic. Businesses are also taking steps to limit their China exposure.
Record low oil prices could see Russia’s GDP fall by as much as 15 percent this year, resulting in more pressure to limit its military spending and interventions in places such as Ukraine and Syria.
Iran has been crippled by the virus. Infection has killed several of its senior leaders, and the collapse in oil prices has damaged its already shrinking economy, making this middling power even weaker.
Strong fundamentals undergird U.S. power: favorable geography; a technologically advanced society with a skilled, innovative workforce; and abundant natural resources. Post-COVID rebuilding will require focusing on these strengths to restart the economy.
The U.S. grew to become the global superpower by virtue of its productive economy; advanced technology, including nuclear weapons; and skillful diplomacy.
The pursuit of liberal hegemony—militarized democracy spreading fueled by threat exaggeration and hubris—has resulted in strategic failure, military overstretch, and a hollowing out of U.S. internal strength.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the extent to which U.S. power has been squandered. To recover its strength, U.S. should focus on the core elements of national power while avoiding excessive military projects and the overspending that entails.
The budgetary demands to recover from this pandemic will be enormous, but the fundamental sources of U.S. security are robust—and insensitive to mild deviations in military activities and spending.
Coronavirus is a terrible tragedy but nonetheless an opportunity to shed illusions and rebuild the real pillars of national strength for the long haul.
As long as U.S. focuses on its prosperity—rather than peripheral distractions—it will grow stronger at home and retain the ability to marshal the resources necessary for competition with any adversary.
This article has been republished with permission from Defense Priorities.
Benjamin H. Friedman is Policy Director at Defense Priorities and an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, a graduate of Dartmouth College, and a PhD candidate in political science at the MIT. He previously worked as a Defense Analyst at the Cato Institute and a Researcher at the Center for Defense Information. He's edited three books on defense policy and strategy and has published academic essays in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Orbis, Foreign Affairs, and World Affairs. He has written op-eds for many outlets, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Politico, The Atlantic, Newsweek, TIME, The Boston Globe, Boston Review, and the Boston Herald.
The RAND corporation’s Samuel Charap and Johns Hopkins University professor Sergey Radchenko published a detailed timeline and analysis of the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators just after the Russian invasion in February 2022 that could have brought the war to an end just weeks after it had begun.
Much of the piece confirms or elucidates parts of the narrative that had previously been reported. In the spring of 2022, the two sides appeared relatively close to a deal, one that, according to the authors, would “have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.”
But due to a combination of changing battlefield dynamics that convinced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he could win the war militarily, Western allies’ hesitance to engage diplomatically with Russia and simultaneous ramping up of military support for Ukraine, and the discovery that Russian forces had committed atrocities in Bucha, the talks eventually fell apart.
On some of these points, the authors contend that earlier accounts have been overstated. The idea that the U.S. and the UK “forced” Zelensky to back out of peace talks is “baseless,” say Charap and Radchenko, though they acknowledge that “the lack of Western enthusiasm does seem to have dampened his interest in diplomacy.”
On the suggestion that the discovery of war crimes convinced the Ukrainian president to abandon negotiations, the authors note discussions “continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”
But taken together, these factors, along with certain details of the agreement that were never finalized, were enough to imperil the negotiations.
In the two years since Ukrainian and Russian interlocutors last convened, the realities on the ground have changed. By April 2022, Vladimir Putin had likely realized that he would fail to achieve his most maximalist war aims. Now, with Western aid stalled and the war tilting in Moscow’s favor, Ukraine is in a less favorable negotiating position than it was and Russia may be less inclined to enter talks.
But, as George Beebe and Anatol Lieven detail in a recent Quincy Institute paper, all sides still have a reason to pursue a diplomatic solution, one that could both end the war and provide for a new European security architecture once the fighting ceases.
As Charap and Radchenko note in their Foreign Affairs piece, one of the reasons the original talks broke down was because the two sides were more focused on the broader endgame rather than on shorter-term solutions.
“A final reason the talks failed is that the negotiators put the cart of a postwar security order before the horse of ending the war,” they write. “The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades.”
The two years of war have only increased distrust between Russia, Ukraine, and Kyiv’s Western backers, and diplomacy appears to be more difficult today than it was in 2022. But, say Charap and Radchenko, Zelensky and Putin surprised us once before with the concessions they may have been willing to make, and perhaps they will do so again.
The consequences of that failed first effort at diplomacy are clear, as Thomas Graham, former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff, argued this week.
“The great tragedy of the Russian-Ukrainian war is that it will ultimately prove to have been futile. The likely outcome — territorial adjustments in Moscow’s favor, security guarantees for Ukraine and Russia — could have been peaceably negotiated beforehand had leaders had a firmer grasp of the real balance of power or greater political courage,” he wrote in the Hill. “The cost of failed diplomacy is already hundreds of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of property destroyed.”
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— After months of waiting, the House may hold a vote to give Ukraine another tranche of aid over the weekend. On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) introduced four separate bills, including one that will provide approximately $60 billion in aid for Kyiv. The House Speaker is already facing backlash from members of his own party, but the legislation is likely to have enough bipartisan support to pass if it is brought to the floor for a vote.
— There are reportedly increasing points of tension between Washington and Kyiv as Ukraine awaits more aid and its war effort falters. Zelensky was frustrated that Washington has not offered his country the same missile defense help as it provided to Israel during Iran’s strikes over the weekend. “European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X. “Terror must be defeated completely and everywhere, not more in some places and less in others.”
Moreover, Kyiv has expressed frustration over Washington’s recommendations that Ukraine not strike Russian oil refineries, according toThe Washington Post. Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly privately made the suggestion to Zelensky in February at the Munich Security Conference.
“The request, according to officials familiar with the matter, irritated Zelensky and his top aides, who view Kyiv’s string of drone strikes on Russian energy facilities as a rare bright spot in a grinding war with a bigger and better-equipped foe. Zelensky brushed off the recommendation, uncertain whether it reflected the consensus position of the Biden administration, these people said.” according to the Post. “Instead of acquiescing to the U.S. requests, however, Ukraine doubled down on the strategy, striking a range of Russian facilities, including an April 2 attack on Russia’s third-largest refinery 800 miles from the front.”
— Russia and Ukraine nearly struck a deal late last month to renew the agreement that allowed for the safety of shipping in the Black Sea before Kyiv suddenly pulled out, according to Reuters.
“A deal was reached in March ‘to ensure the safety of merchant shipping in the Black Sea’, and though Ukraine did not want to sign it formally, Kyiv gave its assent for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to announce it on March 30, the day before critical regional elections, the sources said,” reports Reuters. The reason for Kyiv’s withdrawal is unclear. Russia and Ukraine previously struck a deal to allow for safe shipping in June 2022 but Moscow withdrew from that agreement after one year.
U.S. State Department News
In a press briefing on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel urged the House to pass the aid bill for Ukraine quickly.
“So it certainly would not be hyperbole to say that every day matters, and the House, we believe, needs to act this week to support Ukraine and Israel as they respectively defend against Putin and the Russian Federation and the Iranian regime. And so this is something that we need Congress to provide urgently,” Patel said.
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L-R: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, on Monday, January 30, 2023. DEBBIE HILL/Pool via REUTERS
State Department leadership is ignoring a recommendation from an internal panel to stop giving weapons to several Israeli military and police units due to credible allegations of serious human rights abuses, according to a major new report from ProPublica.
The alleged violations, which occurred before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, include extrajudicial killings, sexual assault of a detainee, and leaving an elderly Palestinian man to die after handcuffing and gagging him. Secretary of State Antony Blinken received the recommendation in December but has yet to take action to prevent the units involved from receiving American weapons.
The bombshell ProPublica report comes just two weeks after White House spokesperson John Kirby insisted to reporters that the Biden administration has yet to see credible allegations of Israeli human rights abuses, despite widespread concerns from human rights groups and aid organizations.
“The State Department has a process, and to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law,” Kirby said. “Unless you think we don't take this seriously, I can assure you that we do.”
“The State Department has looked at incidents in the past and has yet to determine that any of those incidents violate international humanitarian law,” he continued.
The report gives remarkable insight into the ways in which Israel receives unique treatment from U.S. officials in addition to its already privileged status under U.S. law. As ProPublica notes, allegations of Israeli human rights abuses are investigated by a special panel known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF).
The ILVF’s title is a reference to the Leahy Laws, which prevent units of foreign security services from receiving U.S. weapons if they are found to have committed significant violations of international law. For most states, this vetting process is straightforward and sometimes results in sanctions against specific units, with little input from top-level officials.
But not for Israel. Unlike with other states, Israeli officials are consulted by the ILVF during the vetting process. If the panel finds credible evidence of abuses, then their recommendation is passed onto a group of higher-level officials in Middle East and arms transfer policies. It’s there that the allegations are usually blocked, according to Josh Paul, a former State Department weapons transfer official who resigned in protest last year.
“It's at that point, typically, that the process grinds to a halt, whether it is from the leadership of a bureau involved in the process or sort of a higher level guidance that, ‘Hey, this isn't gonna go anywhere. Let's move on to the next thing,’” Paul told RS last year.
Remarkably, the recommendations revealed by ProPublica made it past this step, meaning that powerful State Department officials endorsed the sanctions before they reached Blinken’s desk. This suggests a greater level of internal anger over alleged Israeli abuses — and a greater willingness among top officials to flout U.S. law — than has previously been reported.
The State Department told ProPublica that the allegations require a “careful and full review,” adding that “the department undergoes a fact-specific investigation applying the same standards and procedures regardless of the country in question.”
The recommendations come as a growing number of Western states have cut off arms sales to Israel due to its actions in Gaza, where a months-long Israeli campaign against Hamas has left more than 34,000 Palestinians dead and many more on the brink of famine. Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain have all cut off arms sales, and British government lawyers have reportedly recommended to their leadership that it should do the same.
U.S. lawmakers are also scrutinizing sales to Israel following its actions in Gaza. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) — the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — has placed an informal hold on a long-term deal that would send F-15 fighter jets to Israel.
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US Army Special Forces soldiers assigned to 10th Special Forces Group move out on skis into the Swedish Arctic on 23 February 2022. (NATO)
As NATO commemorated its 75th anniversary this month, the direction of the alliance’s posture toward the Arctic region has been called into question.
The recent accession of Sweden means that seven of eight of the world’s Arctic nations fall under NATO’s security umbrella, with Russia being the outlier. While some analysts see the addition of Sweden and Finland as an opportunity for NATO to “increase its footprint” and “deter Russia,” the last thing the alliance needs is to scour for another avenue for confrontation with Russia.
Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership undoubtedly affects the alliance’s influence in the Arctic. In March, over 20,000 NATO soldiers from 13 nations, including Finland, Sweden, and the United States, participated in the latest leg of the ongoing Nordic Response 2024 exercise in Norway. Additionally, over 50 frigates, submarines, and other vessels, as well as over 100 aircraft, were involved in the exercise. Ultimately, Nordic Response 2024 will involve over 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO allies.
Defensive exercises are a necessary feature of NATO’s newly increased Arctic presence, but the Russian threat in the Arctic should not be inflated.
The Arctic served as a frontline in the confrontation between NATO and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Over several decades, Russia has revitalized Soviet-era Arctic bases, which outnumber NATO’s by about a third. In recent years, Russia has launched significant investment projects and built up its military presence in the Arctic as it develops a crucial northern maritime route linking Asia and Europe. The United States only has one operational heavy icebreaker — compared to the 40 that Russia currently maintains.
Irrespective of hawks sounding the alarm about Russia’s supposed “militarization” and “dominance” of the Arctic, Russia retains a relative incapacity to threaten a conventional military land incursion into European Arctic territory. Moscow’s military efforts in the Arctic have been mainly defensive in nature as it has established multi-layered anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities around the Kola Peninsula, a fundamental Russian interest.
Such developments pose little threat to the United States and its NATO allies, especially as Russia is bogged down in Ukraine.
Moreover, given that Russia’s Arctic coastline is ten times longer than America’s, the “icebreaker gap” is to be expected. Russia’s fleet of icebreakers is primarily dedicated to escorting commercial shipping through dangerous polar seas. Otherwise, it performs the same missions as the U.S. Coast Guard: “search and rescue, anti-smuggling, oil spill response, and resupply of remote coastal communities and polar research stations.”
Regarding force projection capabilities, the American-dominated NATO nuclear submarine fleet outmatches the opposing Northern Fleet of the Russian navy.
On top of NATO’s military capabilities, the alliance’s most influential member, the United States, has placed little military importance on the Arctic. Russia’s inability to pose severe threats in the Arctic has led to the region appearing at the bottom of the list in the 2022 Biden-Harris National Security Strategy (NSS) overview of regional policies. In addition, the document lacks any language regarding deterring threats to Arctic allies and partners.
Rather than seeing the addition of Finland and Sweden as an opportunity to increase the militarization of the Arctic, NATO should work toward utilizing working groups like the Arctic Council to forge multilateral arrangements to reduce tensions, avoid crises, and mitigate the risks of conflict through an accident or miscalculation.
In February, Russia suspended annual payments to the Arctic Council until "real work resumes with the participation of all member countries.” Yet, while Russia removed several listed multilateral formats from its official Arctic strategy, it kept the point of “the Arctic Council as the key regional platform coordinating international activities in the region.” Thus, Russia doesn’t appear poised to form an alternative platform.
Tensions are high, and Arctic Council cooperation with Moscow effectively ceased after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Despite this, the Council should refrain from pushing out the largest Arctic player and severing an essential communication channel. Deepening isolation has pushed Russia to look east for partners in the Arctic, namely China. Further ostracization will only incentivize Russia to coordinate more with Beijing in the region.
Russia and NATO share an interest in maintaining peace in the Arctic region. A war in such terrain would be extremely costly and difficult for both sides. Furthermore, the Arctic Council has facilitated the improvement of marine safety in the Bering Strait, where the U.S. and Russia share a maritime border. Communication channels and shared objectives must also be kept open to keep the peace there.
Amid a worsening situation in Ukraine, escalation in the Arctic region would do no favors for the United States or its NATO allies. Russia’s considerable influence in the Arctic is not going to change in the near future. Therefore, taking advantage of existing channels will enable the West to signal to Russia that NATO does not intend to engage in offensive operations but is fully prepared to defend its interests.