The U.S. is confronting global security challenges on a scale it has not seen since the rise of the Soviet Union to super-power status, following WWII. Radical Islam is morphing into a global terrorist movement, revisionist powers Iran, Russia and China are seeking regional domination and advanced countries, and yes, eventually terrorist organizations, are developing cyber capabilities that can cripple a modern country’s financial, banking, transportation and utility systems.
What makes this such a dangerous situation is that unlike previous security challenges, the U.S. and Europe are failing miserably to meet these threats, so much so that our adversaries are emboldened and our friends no longer trust us. Anyone who travels the world knows that respect for America has diminished dramatically.
While these challenges are indeed growing, the U.S. military is in decline, sequestration is decapitating the readiness of the armed forces and denying much needed investment in required capabilities. Despite the U.S. technological advantage, a pre-World War II size Army and a 1950’s and 1960’s era Navy and Air Force is not only irresponsible, it is reckless. The Republican-led Congress, along with a Democratic President, are underwriting the decline of the U.S. military.
1. Radical Islam
As much as Nazism and Communism—both geopolitical and ideologically-driven movements—were the major security challenges of the 20th century, radical Islam as we know it today is the major security challenge of the 21st century.
Radical Islam, a religious ideology with ambitious geopolitical objectives willing to end civilization as we know it, is a multi-generational challenge. Nazism was defeated by overwhelming brute force and Communism was defeated by better ideas. Radical Islam will take a combination of force and better ideas to ultimately add it to the trash heap of unrealized ideological movements.
Twenty-two years after the first World Trade Center bombing, fourteen years after 9/11, we still do not have a comprehensive strategy to defeat radical Islam. Indeed we don’t define it, try to understand it, nor explain it.
2. Iran
In 1980, the newly-formed Islamic State of Iran declared the U.S. as a strategic enemy. Its goal is to drive the U.S. out of the region, achieve regional hegemony and destroy the state of Israel. It uses proxies to fight wars and proxies to carry out terrorist attacks on its behalf. Beginning in the early 1980’s, Iran began jihad against the U.S. by bombing the Marine barracks, the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Embassy Annex in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, the Air Force barracks, Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and attacking the U.S. military in Iraq using Shia militias trained in Iran with advanced IEDs developed by Iranian engineers. To date, the result is that U.S. troops have departed Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq while Iran has direct influence and some control over Beirut, Lebanon, Gaza, Damascus, Syria, Baghdad, Iraq and now Sana’a, Yemen.
The Iranian strategy of using proxies to conduct jihad and to launch conventional military attacks is a winning strategy that no American president has ever countered.
Iran also has been on a 20-year journey to acquire nuclear weapons, simply because they know it guarantees preservation of the regime and makes them, along with their partners, the dominant power in the region thereby capable of expanding their control and influence. Iran—even if it does not cheat, but we know it will—is on a clear path to a nuclear weapon. Throw in its ballistic missile delivery system, and Iran is not only a threat to the region but to Europe and eventually, the U.S.
3. Russia
In Europe, Russia’s recent behavior suggests that its 2008 military campaign against Georgia was not an aberration but rather an initial effort to overturn the prevailing regional order. By seizing the Crimea, supporting trumped up rebel forces in eastern Ukraine and engaging in military deployments that directly threaten its Baltic neighbors, Moscow has made it clear that it does not accept the political map of post-Cold War Europe. We need to realistically conclude that Moscow is also willing to challenge the very existence of NATO. Russia conducts major military exercises involving war in the Baltics against the U.S. and NATO, to include exercising the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Given the Arctic thaw and the availability of navigable waterways, Russia is moving rapidly to stake its claim because it’s estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves are in the Arctic. Who controls the navigable routes is likely to dominate those plentiful reserves. Vladimir Putin is a master of psychological warfare—a former KGB Colonel who continuously intimidates, out bluffs and outmaneuvers the American president and his European counterparts. Why? Because he can. Because he knows their rhetoric is hollow and their actions are paralyzed by the fear of adverse consequences.
4. China
China is seeking to reclaim what it perceives as its rightful role—the dominant power in the Pacific—at the expense of U.S. interests and decades of partnerships with allies in the region. China’s continuing economic growth has fueled a major conventional military buildup that is beginning to shift the local balance of power in its favor. China is moving from a defensive military strategy to an offensive, power projection strategy to drive its quest for regional domination and to protect its increasing global interests. The United States’ so-called “pivot to the East” is completely hollow, with no strategy, no substantive allied diplomatic effort and no significant increase in military capabilities.
5. Cyber Threat
The cyber threat is real and growing. While the U.S. possesses the world’s best offensive cyber capability, other advanced nations are catching up, and the U.S. cyber defense—other than military networks—is exposed and seriously vulnerable. The very foundation of U.S. civil society is at risk: the ability to conduct financial transactions, to withdraw money, travel on a plane or train, to use electricity or to access potable water. Certainly what keeps our adversaries from executing such a catastrophic attack is that the U.S. can do the same and more. But this would not stop a terrorist organization that could possibly purchase this capability—this is the nightmare scenario. Furthermore, the U.S. defense industry—and the private sector in general—is losing intellectual property, valuable intelligence and money due to the cyber aggressiveness of China, Russia and Iran.
In conclusion, the U.S. global security challenges are quite serious with no specific plans or strategy to fix it. It will take new leadership who understands the issues and is totally committed to addressing these challenges while educating the American people, partnering with Congress and harnessing the ideas and resources to turn around the number one challenge facing the United States: its security.
NSC-68 was the capstone document published in 1950 that largely shaped U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War and which involved a decision to increase the pressure of containment against global communist expansion to a high priority. It rejected the alternative policies of detente or aggressive rollback but it did lead to two wars—Korea and Vietnam—and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
The key policy statement in NSC-68 is: “The absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable. This fact imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership.” The key question facing any leader aspiring to be President of the United States is this: what role do you believe the U.S. should play in meeting our global security challenges?
