Doubts about America’s ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat opponents and honor its global commitments have proliferated. Previous congressionally mandated reports, such as the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel and the 2014 National Defense Panel, warned that this crisis was coming. The crisis has now arrived, with potentially dire effects not just for U.S. global influence, but also for the security and welfare of America itself.
The security and wellbeing of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades. America’s military superiority—the hard-power backbone of its global influence and national security—has eroded to a dangerous degree.
Today, however, our margin of superiority is profoundly diminished in key areas.
The Commission argues that America confronts a grave crisis of national security and national defense, as U.S. military advantages erode and the strategic landscape becomes steadily more threatening.
Today, changes at home and abroad are diminishing U.S. military advantages and threatening vital U.S. interests.
As regional military balances have deteriorated, America’s advantage across a range of operational challenges has diminished. Because of our recent focus on counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency, and because our enemies have developed new ways of defeating U.S. forces, America is losing its advantage in key warfighting areas such as power projection, air and missile defense, cyber and space operations, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, long-range ground-based fires, and electronic warfare.
Meanwhile, because of foreign and domestic factors, America’s longstanding military advantages have diminished. The country’s strategic margin for error has become distressingly small.
In some cases, we are behind, or falling behind, in critical technologies. U.S. competitors are making enormous investments in hypersonic delivery vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI), and other advanced technologies. With respect to hypersonics in particular, the United States finds itself trailing China and perhaps Russia as well.
The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia. The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.
If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan (see Vignette 1), Americans could face a decisive military defeat.
The United States could well lose the competitions and conflicts in which it is engaged today absent more cohesive, fully-resourced responses that reach across the various U.S. government departments and agencies, and across the many elements of American power: diplomacy, intelligence, economic statecraft, information warfare, and others.
Should war occur, American forces will face harder fights and greater losses than at any time in decades.
While the NDS properly focuses on winning high-intensity conflicts and closing near-term capability gaps vis-à-vis China and Russia, DOD leaders had difficulty articulating how the U.S. military would defeat major-power adversaries should deterrence fail.
Indeed, given the presence of five serious adversaries, three with nuclear weapons, the United States must prepare—and resource—for multiple, near-simultaneous contingencies. Today, however, DOD is neither prepared nor resourced for such a scenario.
Put bluntly, the U.S. military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights.