EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION – I had the pleasure of delivering the opening address at the recent Cipher Brief HONORS Dinner where we recognized some of the very best in the national security community.
I began by asking what we mean today when we say ‘national security’, because what we perceive as our greatest threats has changed over time.
For American colonists, the aim was security in the new land. In the first decades after the founding of our republic, national security was centered on protecting our sovereignty from foreign threats. During the Civil War, our objective was preserving the Union.
During the World Wars and Cold War, our principal aim was to ensure that a hostile power or a combination of hostile powers did not dominate the Eurasian landmass. The Cold War also brought with it a requirement to deter a nuclear attack on our homeland or against our allies.
After 9/11, our principal aim was to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack. More recently, we have focused on the threat posed by a rising China and a revanchist Russia, which many have described, correctly in my view, as a New Cold War.
A second question Americans have to ask is what is it we’re securing? Is it our Constitutional Republic, or is it only our territory, our people and our international interests? What if the greatest threat comes from within?
In this regard, it is worth recalling Abraham Lincoln’s warning in his 1838 speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln was alarmed that mob violence was increasingly being used for political ends, and as a student of Republican Rome, Lincoln understood the threat this could pose to our fragile democracy and the rule of law.
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He wrote: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever to reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
That was indeed how the dominant power of its day, the Roman Republic, fell and succumbed to rule by emperors.
As I wrote in my recently published memoirs, national security begins at home.
Our national security ultimately depends on whether those charged with protecting our Republic will keep faith with the oath they took to support and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It depends on our national unity, will, and resilience, and our confidence in our governmental institutions.
It depends on our values, and it depends on America being good, as well as being great.
And it depends on whether we are creating power and not depleting it. Good strategy creates power – political power, economic and financial power, technological power, diplomatic, military, and intelligence power, information power, and cultural power. Bad strategy depletes it.
So, what about foreign threats to our national security?
Internationally, American policy and actions are the biggest determinant of our national security. Are we in danger of becoming, as Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, recently put it in Foreign Affairs, a rogue or renegade superpower? An America where we impose protectionist tariffs above those of the global economy-killing Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930? An America where we treat our friends no better than we treat our enemies? An America where we threaten to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal?
Or, will we course correct and follow a more traditional path?
Trade wars can unravel alliances and push rivals toward confrontation.
It is always better to have allies. They are important not just militarily, but for intelligence purposes and economic purposes as well.
Like Japan before Pearl Harbor, China sees the U.S. as economically hostile but militarily vulnerable. As our Indo-Pacific Command Commander, Admiral Sam Paparo, recently testified, Chinese military actions in and around Taiwan look more like rehearsals for war than training exercises. And our rapidly escalating trade war may be moving Xi’s timetable for war up considerably.
The risk of a global war – with China, Russia, and perhaps with North Korea and Iran as well – is higher than it’s been in decades.
China and Russia’s territorial claims don’t end with Taiwan and Ukraine. Beijing lays claim to most of the South and East China Seas and large parts of India. Chinese military officials have also floated the idea of liberating Guam and even Hawaii, calling them relics of Western imperialism.
And, of course, there are Chinese threats that extend well beyond Hawaii – in cyber, in space, and in the large expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal that is well underway.
Putin has not lost any of his ambition to bring all of Ukraine under his control, and he believes that time is on his side.
Peace through strength is a good strategy, but it only works if it’s American strength that brings about the peace and not Russian.
Putin seeks to restore a “Russian World” – Russkiy Mir – extending from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. He is intensifying his covert campaign to destabilize Europe through subversion, sabotage, and assassination, and he won’t stop meddling in elections as long as he thinks he can get away with it. He is not our friend.
Some argue that the United States should sacrifice Taiwan and Ukraine and agree to a world divided into great power spheres of influence: China in Asia, Russia in Europe, and the United States in the Western Hemisphere. But history shows that great powers only halt their aggression when stopped by force or geography.
There is no reason to believe that Xi and Putin will be exceptions to this rule.
A sphere of influence world would be governed by Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue where “the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”
It is not a world we should want.
A divided world, moreover, would not just be more violent and repressive, it would also be poor. Outsize wealth has never been created by fortress economies. It comes from open international commerce that enables trade, specialization, and compound growth.
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Finally, to add to our national security challenges, there’s the ongoing revolution in technology – in AI, robotics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and perhaps nuclear fusion. The country that wins this “tech arms race” will almost certainly be the dominant power in the international system for decades to come. We want it to be America.
The U.S. has a substantial advantage in these revolutionary technologies at the moment, but our continued lead and ultimate victory are by no means assured. A policy of economic populism will only hurt our chances of winning this competition.
So, what’s the bottom line of all this?
The bottom line is that there is far more uncertainty about our national security than there has been in decades – uncertainty about the robustness of our form of government, uncertainty about whether the world is heading toward great power conflict, and uncertainty about whether we’ll be able to create the power and national will we’ll need to win the New Cold War.
So, as Tolstoy asked, “What Then Must We Do?”
As I said earlier, national security begins at home.
Fidelity to the Constitution, by our leaders, our national security practitioners, and our fellow citizens, will determine what kind of America we will live in.
Resilience will be key in leading the way forward – a resilience that can restore our unity; a resilience that creates power instead of depleting it; and a resilience that once again makes common cause with like-minded peoples around the world opposing the forces of darkness.
Our Founders, our preservers of the Union, and our greatest generation are all watching.
We cannot let them down.
I don’t know about you but I’m not tired of winning yet.
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