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.
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz shared a graphic on the X platform this week purporting to place blame on President Biden for Iran’s increasing stockpile of high enriched uranium — material that can be used in nuclear weapons — when in reality it’s Dubowitz, his organization and their allies in the Trump administration that are largely responsible.
“Facts are stubborn things,” Dubowitz said before showing the graphic. “Iran’s nuclear expansion has occurred under the Biden administration’s failed Iran policy of maximum concessions.”
It’s unclear what “maximum concessions” Dubowitz is referring to, but facts are indeed stubborn things and the reality is that this graphic is nowhere near close to providing the full picture of how we got to where we are today with Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, Iran’s nuclear expansion actually began before Biden took office after President Trump withdrew from the Iran deal (or JCPOA, as the nuclear agreement is known) in 2018. While Iran’s program has grown since Biden took office in the absence of any re-agreed upon limits, it would still largely be frozen where it was in 2015 had Trump remained in the deal.
So let’s look at the stubborn facts: Under the terms of the 2015 deal, Iran limited its uranium enrichment purification to 3.6% — or the amount needed for civilian energy purposes — and capped its stockpile of low enriched uranium to no more than 300 kg. In July 2019, or approximately one year after Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran began to increase its stockpile of low enriched uranium above that 300 kg limit and announced that it was enriching to 4.5%, or slightly closer to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons. Dubowitz’s graph does not provide this information.
In other words, “Iran’s nuclear expansion” as Dubowitz put it, began during the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign that Dubowitz and FDD played a major role in crafting. FDD also played an outsizedrole in pushing Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA.
So Dubowitz ignores this fact entirely and instead misleadingly focuses on Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20% and 60% purity, or near weapons-grade. But here again, what Dubowitz’s graph doesn’t show is that Iran began enriching uranium to 20% before Biden came into office, a move the U.S. intelligence community has attributed to the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist in November, 2020. After that, the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment states, Iran “accelerated the expansion of its nuclear program [and] stated that it is no longer constrained by any JCPOA limits.”
Another stubborn fact that Dubowitz omits is that by November 2020, Iran had increased its stockpile of low enriched uranium by 12 times the limit allowed by the JCPOA and shortened its break out time — or the time that Iran would need to produce the materials for one nuclear weapon — from one year under the JCPOA terms to between three to four months.
There are a myriad other ways in which Iran expanded its nuclear program after Trump withdrew and before Biden took office, including using more advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium and other measures which you can read about here.
The bottom line is that this is another one of Dubowitz’s brazen attempts to absolve himself and his organization from the responsibility for the failures of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and the subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign that failed to bring Tehran to its knees and eliminate its nuclear program (and perhaps even foment regime change).
Political outsider Bassirou Diomaye Faye will officially be declared the next president of Senegal Friday after cruising to victory in this week’s elections just 10 days after being released from prison.
Faye won 54% of the vote, allowing him to avoid a second round matchup with former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, the Dakar Court of Appeals announced Wednesday. Ba has conceded defeat and congratulated Faye, as has current President Macky Sall.
Experts say the peaceful transition of power is a welcome indication of stability in Senegal and a positive sign for West Africa as a whole amid a string of coups that have rocked the region’s relations with Western countries.
Senegal’s democracy, analysts say, came under threat last month after Sall made a controversial decision to postpone elections, citing corruption allegations against the Constitutional Council that decides which candidates are eligible to run in the elections, a fact he said would question the integrity of the results.
The decision drew public outrage, as well as concern from the United States, a historically close diplomatic partner with Senegal. The U.S. State Department said last month that it was “deeply concerned” about the postponement in a statement urging Senegal’s government to “move forward with its presidential election in accordance with the Constitution and electoral laws.”
It was the first time an election has been postponed in Senegal’s history, and Sall’s actions were “a jolt and a shock to the system” due to Senegal's long-held position as a stable democracy in West Africa, said Dr. Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Senegal has historically promoted democratic norms, free speech, opposition party participation, and security in the region, Siegle said. It’s a stark contrast to surrounding states in the region — military coups have destabilized the governments of neighboring Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea in recent years. Siegle said the recent election reiterates Senegal’s role as an exemplar of democratic leadership in the region.
“Senegal provides a very important counterpoint that this is how you realize change. You do it through legal means, through constitutional means, through transparent means,” Siegle said.
The election was also a significant indication of the strength of Senegal’s democratic institutions, as the judiciary promptly interpreted the constitution and rescheduled the elections in response to the postponement, said Adele Ravidà, senior election systems advisor and country director for Senegal at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. She added that, given that these events were unforeseen, the judiciary’s actions created a precedent that increased its capabilities to respond to incidents of instability.
“This was the strength of the judiciary in Senegal, the fact that even in a situation in which there is no law, that they can find a solution to the situation,” Ravidà said.
Faye’s presidency could bring about further strengthening of Senegal’s democratic institutions. Faye has campaigned on an anti-establishment platform, stating that he plans to reduce corruption in the government and strengthen checks on presidential power.
Ravidà says it is still early to say what the potential of this new government is in fulfilling these claims. Siegle said Faye’s policies may be cause for cautious optimism that democratic norms will be further bolstered.
“That's encouraging, and given the strain to some of these norms we’ve seen in the last couple of years, that’s welcome and would be much valued across Senegal,” he said.
Ravidà added that the election demonstrates the power of civil society in mobilizing to enact change.
“[The Senegalese people] are giving the chance now to this new generation of leaders to show if they can really rule the country well. But the population is mature enough to consider that if they are not doing well, in the next five years they give the opportunity to another party or a different leader.”
President Biden congratulated Faye for his victory in a statement on Wednesday. In a press conference on Monday, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said “the commitment of the Senegalese people to the democratic process is part of the foundation of our deep friendship and strong bilateral ties.”
Faye has iterated his intention to continue to maintain Senegal’s bilateral partnerships with its diplomatic partners. The U.S. currently maintains close military ties with Senegal, Siegle told RS. The countries’ militaries are partners in peacekeeping operations in the region, with the U.S. supplying aid and deploying troops to Senegal to help counter crises in the region.
Faye will be officially declared the next president of Senegal on Friday, in the event that no complaint against the electoral process is filed by Thursday night, an event Ravidà says is not anticipated. The official transfer of power will take place on April 2, the day Sall’s presidential mandate ends.
The Army and Navy ships that have left the U.S. for a massive humanitarian aid project in Gaza are still making their way across the Atlantic, with two still at ports in Florida and Virginia. It will likely take until mid-April for the vessels to reach Gaza and begin building a temporary causeway to facilitate the entry of life-saving aid into the strip.
Looking at real-time satellite imagery tracking military vessels, it looks like the USAV Gen. Frank Besson Jr., an Army support vessel that left Fort Eustis, Virginia, on March 10, has been moored and presumably refueling at a port in the Azores, Portugal, since Friday. It is at the half-way point between the U.S. and its final destination of Cyprus (nearly 5,000 nautical miles total). At an average speed of 10 knots, its journey will take nearly two more weeks, depending on weather conditions, once it gets going again.
The rest of the vessels are behind and, as of Tuesday, halfway across the Atlantic, though they can travel at slightly higher speeds than the Besson. They include the Army support vessels Loux, Matamoros, Monterrey and Wilson Wharf, which are all traveling together and were between Bermuda and the Azores Tuesday morning.
They all left U.S. ports around March 15. They are carrying modules and equipment to build the “trident” causeway — about 800 by 1200 feet — which will be anchored at the beach in Gaza to unload humanitarian aid.
The USNV Roy Benavidez, which, once in place, will help construct the floating pier and serve as a “roll on, roll off” facility two miles off the coast of Gaza, is the fastest of all the military vessels and is now ahead of the smaller Army landing craft on their way to the Azores, even though it left Newport News, Va., on March 21. When complete, aid will be ferried from Cyprus to the floating pier and then to the causeway at Gaza.
Meanwhile, two other Navy vessels that will be assisting with the floating pier, the USNSs Lopez and Bobo, are readying and still docked in Navy ports at Jacksonville and Norfolk respectively. Once on their way these particular vessels will take at least two weeks to reach Cyprus, depending on the weather and refueling at the Azores.
All told these vessels (carrying about 500 U.S. military personnel) won’t be realistically building anything until mid-April, which appears to be in line with a May completion date for the pier and the causeway. Considering that, according to experts, Gazans will be fully in the throes of famine by then, it is still hard to contemplate why the Biden administration has backed the massive JLOTS project instead of ratcheting up pressure on Israel to let in the thousands of trucks of aid that are stopped at borders and checkpoints.
The Pentagon has not returned calls regarding whether the military has hired contractor Fogbow to engage in the logistics on the beach, as the Biden administration insists there will be no boots on the ground. The Times of Israel reported a day ago that Fogbow, which is led by recently retired U.S. Special Forces, Marines and intelligence officers, has already been hired for the job and that the Israel Defense Forces will likely handle security at the aid staging areas. This, too, has yet to be confirmed.
Some are already questioning whether the U.S. military operation will be used to assist a massive refugee camp at the beach once the fighting begins in Rafah. Israel insists the millions of people now sheltering in the city will have to evacuate. The Pentagon has not yet said where the causeway and operations will take place. Stay tuned.