SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – A recent report issued by the Congressionally-mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy paints a bleak picture of future U.S. national security at best. Among its bi-partisan findings: the U.S. is facing “the most challenging global environment with the most severe ramifications since the end of the Cold War.” And according to members of the committee, “The trends are getting worse, not better.”
The Cipher Brief sat down with retired General Jack Keane (Ret.), who served as a committee member and is a former Acting Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army to talk about the report and about what he sees as America’s wake up call.
General Keane (Ret.) is a Cipher Brief Expert.
Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full conversation in the State Secrets Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Cipher Brief: What was the purpose of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy Report? What were you setting out to do?
Gen. Keane: Congress, for a number of years, has been asking the Department of Defense to report to them in terms of what strategy they're developing and the implementation of that strategy. This started out as an assessment of the Quadrennial Defense Review a number of years ago, which I participated in on behalf of the Congress. Then, during the Trump administration, they changed it to a Commission on the National Defense Strategy. I was on that one, appointed by the late Senator John McCain. What the Congress has always wanted to do is get a detailed look at the Department of Defense's thoughts, policies and processes to establish a strategy and the implementation of it. The commission then reports back to the Congress in testimony and with a report and also sends a report to the President of the United States and to the Secretary of Defense. It normally takes about 18 months to two years to get through all of this.
During that time, you're in top secret, compartmentalized briefings most of the time with all the principals and officials in our government, not just in the Department of Defense, but in other departments and intelligence agencies as well. You go around the world and talk to the leaders, government officials, and U.S. allies in terms of what has taken place. It's pretty comprehensive.
We got it done faster than expected this time because we clearly wanted to render a report while campaigns were still going on for the national office, so that the campaign teams can read them and make any adjustments that they want to make in terms of policy going forward. So that's what this is about.
The Cipher Brief: And this is a bi-partisan commission?
Gen. Keane: Correct. The Republicans appoint four people, the Democrats appoint four people, and we render a unanimous bipartisan report, which is what we did four years ago as well. But to achieve that, usually you have a lot of common interest in terms of what has taken place and where we arrived together on this, I think speaks more about the seriousness and danger we're facing than anything else.
The Cipher Brief: This latest report highlights that the U.S. last fought a global conflict in World War Two, which ended 80 years ago. It also says that the U.S. was last prepared to fight a global war during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. One of the very serious findings here is that the U.S. is not prepared to fight a global war today, despite facing the most serious risk since World War Two of a near term major war. This sounds pretty bad.
Gen. Keane: It is pretty bad. Most of us believe that we haven't seen anything like this in our lifetime. And it's really attributed to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea coming together, cooperating, collaborating and actually coordinating. And they are becoming increasingly assertive and aggressive. They have come to the conclusion that the United States leadership is weak and that the United States is in decline. And as a result of that, they are attempting to take advantage of our vulnerabilities and they see it as a huge opportunity to reset the strategic framework that exists in the world where the United States has led this framework post World War II with like -minded democracies. They see an opportunity to depose the United States from that leadership role and establish their own strategic framework that obviously would be in their interest.
If you look at China and the Indo -Pacific region, for decades, we have had a decided advantage economically and militarily in that region. China caught up economically a number of years ago, but also caught up militarily and now, has actually surpassed us. The reality today is when you get within a thousand miles of the Chinese mainland, the military advantage moves decisively to China. And we have concluded through war games analysis, something that the previous National Defense Strategy Commission concluded, that if we got in a war with China today, next week, a year from now, or two years from now, we would be challenged to win and indeed we could lose.
As a result of us being involved in that kind of a war, it is very likely that our adversaries, particularly Russia and Iran supported by North Korea, would likely start another conflict.
Historically, the United States strategy has been to be resourced for one war and deter all others. Post-Cold War, we were resourced for two wars and a contingency. So, it's obvious that we would be challenged.
To give you an example, in a recent war game, we started to run out of much needed missiles within two weeks of a conflict with China because of the deplorable condition of our defense industrial base. And you may ask the question, ‘Well, how did this happen and what are we going to do about it?’
In my view, the answer is that we need to change this administration’s political social objectives to be able to reset the table to deal with the seriousness of the threat. I think it's quite irresponsible of them not to expose the American people to the seriousness of this. One of the purposes of our report is to get as much attention on this as possible so the American people can be informed about it. It’s a serious problem.
The Cipher Brief: The U.S. changes leadership every four to eight years. China doesn't do that. Russia doesn't do that. Iran doesn't do that. North Korea doesn't do that. What can be done internally, to make sure that there's more consistency in national and global security that transitions from one administration to another? Especially in a time when politics are so divisive and these same adversaries are fueling that divisiveness via misinformation and disinformation campaigns?
Gen. Keane: The secret sauce really is the American people. The American people, once informed and educated, are not going to let their political leaders put them at undue risk and risk their very livelihood and the livelihood of their children and their grandchildren. There is history that supports that. But the reality is they have not been exposed to it.
Let me give you a vivid example: the President’s State of the Union address in January. Four days after the State of the Union address, the intelligence services provided testimony to the Congress of the United States on a scheduled basis, which they do every year. And they laid out a concise version of what I just said that these four nations represent the most serious and dangerous threat to the United States that they have seen in decades. That is a summation of hours of testimony that they provided.
Was any of that in the State of the Union Address? No. The intelligence services work for the National Command Authority, they work for the President, they work for the Vice President, they work for the national security apparatus that they are a part of and none of that information was provided to the American people in the State of the Union address. That is why I have strong feelings that we have got to get the word out to the American people about the risk because it’s far too great. We can fix this thing. We were outgunned and outmanned by the Soviet Union during the Cold War until we woke up post-Vietnam. We're ending the 9 -11 wars, and we’ve got to wake up.
We happen to have some very creative and innovative leaders who look at what’s needed to deal with the Soviet Union, which was primarily a land-based force supported by air power. They creatively came up with new systems and war games and they put together a structure. And even though in the war game we were outgunned, they had more divisions, they had more tanks, they had more artillery, et cetera. We put together a formidable capability that would impose costs and then we exercised it - right in front of them - every two years.
The Soviet generals never made a recommendation to their leadership to take Western Europe, even though they wanted it. The reality is because there was sufficient capability there and there was no doubt that we would use it.
Deterrence is made up of two parts. One, real capability that your adversary recognizes will do damage to them. Two, the willingness to use it. And we demonstrated our willingness to use it because we exercised right in front of them. I believe our adversaries today look at us and see a military that has eroded because of the 9/11 war and has not been able to catch up in terms of its conventional capability to the degree that it should. And they also question our will. And that is why this is such a dangerous situation.
The Cipher Brief: The commission also said that it finds that DOD's business practices, byzantine research and development and procurement systems, along with a reliance on decades-old military hardware and a culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance. If you had to assign a level of confidence that the U.S. can make the necessary changes called for in the report in the necessary timeframe, what level of confidence would you render?
Gen. Keane: I'm not as confident that we can do it as quickly as we should be able to do it. The Department of Defense clearly needs to make some major changes. We have an ossified bureaucracy there. We have known for years that there are problems with the business practices of the Defense Department. It goes back 25, 30 years. We're the world's only military superpower. And we were preoccupied with the 9/11 war, and that sort of camouflaged the reality that our adversaries were seeing opportunity for themselves. So, those business practices that have been lacking for some time now, are accentuated because the risk is so great.
When you talk to top officials at the Department of Defense, they have a sense of what needs to be done. They know that they need to move to the non-defense commercial sector, where most of the innovation and technology development is taking place. There was a time where most of the innovation and technology development was done by the defense industry, but the commercial industry has long since passed the defense industry in terms of innovation and technology development. And the Defense Department has got to figure out how to bring in that commercial industry. But the processes and business practices inside the department are truly risk averse. It's all about low cost, staying on schedule, long schedule, and built into that schedule, is all sorts of risk aversion.
Meanwhile, when you bring in industry leaders from the commercial non-defense sector and they look at what you're doing, they scratch their heads and they’re probably asking themselves, ‘How did you guys ever win a war doing this?’ We have to fundamentally change, and that change has to come from the top. It’s not going to come from the bottom. We also need to get the munitions and the weapons in terms of the scale of volumes of weapons where we need them. I'm talking about legacy systems that we have now; the missiles that we need in our arsenal now, the ammunition that we need in our arsenal. The war in Ukraine and to a certain degree, the war in the Middle East and Gaza has accentuated how bare our arsenals are. And if we're challenged to provide those kinds of resources to an ally to use in a limited war, can you imagine the challenge we're facing if we're fighting multiple wars?
So, there's a lot of work to be done here. I think we will beat these authoritarian regimes in the long run, but I'm worried about the near term. The reason we'll beat them is because of our capitalistic democracy. We're innovative. We're the technology leaders of the world. Half of the capital in the world today is in the United States, and it’s not just generated by us, but it’s generated by other people in the world who invest in us. They’re investing in us because we're the innovators, we're the technologists.
The Cipher Brief: Let’s go down the dark path for a moment. What happens if the U.S. is unsuccessful in adjusting its practices to face this new collective adversary? If we're still trying to fight a post-Cold War conflict with how we're equipped today, what's the worst case scenario?
Gen. Keane: If you think about the last three or four years, we have had three strategic geographic areas defined by the last two administrations, Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region. And we have war in two of those regions. That's new. And in the third region, the Indo-Pacific region, China is threatening war. And that alone should be alarming.
Let's just take the Indo -Pacific region. If we go to war with China over the South China Sea, over Taiwan, and we lose or we abdicate and choose not to get involved and they're able to take Taiwan, we will no longer be a Pacific power of consequence. It will impact us globally in terms of our influence in the global South and South America and Africa, and obviously also in Europe. That's the reality of it. And as a result of that, every one of our allies in the Indo-Pacific region will have to make a deal with China because now they're the big guy on the block and they own the block and they have to make a deal with them. And we would be reduced dramatically into something that would be difficult for us to recognize since post -World War II, where we have influenced the world, not just because of our military power, but our economic engine, and our values and what we have stood for and how important that is to help people live a decent life and lead that life and grow and develop their children free of repression and authoritarianism. The authoritarian regimes would be encouraged as a result of a PRC or China victory over the United States. The world will look very different through the prism of a much-reduced U.S. influence in the world.
Our European allies see Russia’s aggression and they know full well that Russia intends to expand beyond Ukraine. People in those countries want to know what’s going on with the United States. They think we’ve become a weak power and that adversaries are taking advantage of us. They don’t think we want to confront adversaries in the way we’ve done in the past. They’re not talking about democrats or republicans here, they’re just concerned about the United States, period. They’re losing confidence in us, and I understand it. That’s the dark side.
Eventually, that affects our prosperity and our economic influence. It eventually comes home to roost with the American people in terms of the quality of our life experience. That’s why people who can’t understand why the U.S. would help Ukraine defeat Russia now and stop Russia from expanding, need to understand this. For people who think Russia is not going to expand, it’s indisputable based on classified briefings that have been leaked. Russia’s intent is to truly bring Eastern Europe back under its control. And Ukraine is a starting point for that. And a necessary one given the size of the country and the fact that they’d be able to move their military capabilities to the western border of Ukraine which would threaten Poland, Romania and the Balkans. They clearly are already there in terms of proximity to the Baltic states given the closeness of those countries and the lack of military capabilities that those countries have.
The Cipher Brief: The pace of U.S. support for Ukraine has been criticized for a number of years now since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, and the criticism was around the speed at which the U.S. and other European countries were providing that support. How likely is it that more U.S. support on the ground, regardless of who it's led by, will actually turn the tide in Ukraine?
Gen. Keane: The key to turning the tide in Ukraine's favor relies on a couple of things. One is that Russia has made some marginal gains on the ground, despite the fact that Putin has mobilized 300,000 more troops and has provided them with an adequate amount of military equipment, financed largely by China, which is buying Russian oil and providing every component you can think of, short of the end state weapon itself, for weapons. All the things you need to build weapons and make munitions, they're helping them with. Russia made some marginal gains on the ground this past year, but nothing near what they thought they would do. Why? Because of poorly trained, poorly-equipped, staggering casualties. Air power has had some impact on energy infrastructure in a way that it hasn't in the past and also on the civilian population, largely due because they don't have the interceptors. They used to shoot down 80 to 90 percent of everything that was fired at their cities and now it's less than 40 percent. And that was due primarily to the delay in the U.S. Congress and the political debate happening there.
On the Ukrainian side, they've obviously gone into a defensive position because they don't have the capability to do much more than that on the ground, but they've been holding their own. Remarkably, not having a Navy at all, they've been able to defeat Russia's Black Sea Navy and push it literally out of the Black Sea. And as a result of that, the export of grain - that is their major industry - is flowing out to the world writ large. And they've done that through their own imagination, innovation, using air drones, undersea drones and surface drones. To be able to defeat a Navy while not having a Navy yourself is probably unprecedented in history. So those are positive things. What the Ukrainians need now is sustained support from the United States and the Europeans.
The United States is still not there from a policy perspective. But what they really want is move to a negotiation as quickly as possible. It’s a similar strategy to the pressure they're putting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Middle East as well. And they've wanted this almost from the outset, not publicly, but privately. And that is why they don't give them all the weapons systems that they need when they need them. Europeans gave up on that theory that this administration still holds, and they pushed us to provide tanks. They pushed us to provide long-range missile systems, and they pushed us to send F-16s.
The Cipher Brief: And a big part of the delay as you mentioned, was because of the political climate in Congress.
Gen. Keane: Yes. There's an element in the Republican party, certainly, that doesn't want to fund Ukraine. They don't see it as a major problem. They think that we should pivot and put our resources toward China. If they do just a little bit of educating themselves about the relationship between China and Russia and see that China is doing everything it can to help Russia win the war in Ukraine, they need to be asking themselves why, because if Russia wins, China wins. And then, the pressure is off China in terms of what they can get away with in the Indo -Pacific region. They know the United States will be bogged down in Europe and will also give them a free hand in the Indo -Pacific region. They see this for what it really is. It's unfortunate that some leaders cannot see that and they're pretending that we shouldn't get involved. They’re saying this is a European problem. We found out during World War II how bankrupt that attitude was. You've got to see it for what it really is.
The Cipher Brief: What is your message to the American people now?
Gen. Keane: I have great confidence in them. They do have influence over our political leaders at the local state and most importantly, at the national level. I think the thing that we have to do is get them educated and informed. My message to them is that I'm not trying to scare you, but I believe you should be treated as adults and we have been here before. We have faced horror before in terms of our national security. We're facing a real challenge now. Our very livelihood is being threatened by these four regimes. And they see weakness. We have got to step up and confront them. And we have the capability to do that.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
