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Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top photo credit:
U.S. Navy Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley arrives for a classified briefing for leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. strikes against Venezuelan boats suspected of smuggling drugs, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 4, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
U.S. Navy Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley arrives for a classified briefing for leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. strikes against Venezuelan boats suspected of smuggling drugs, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 4, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
New House, Senate attempts to preempt war with Venezuela
December 04, 2025
New bipartisan war powers resolutions presented this week in both the House and Senate seek to put the brakes on potential military action against Venezuela after U.S. President Donald Trump said a land campaign in the country would begin “very soon."
On Tuesday, Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), and Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) introduced legislation that would “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a bill with similar language, noting that “Congress has not declared war upon Venezuela or any person or organization within or operating from Venezuela, nor enacted a specific statutory authorization for use of military force within or against Venezuela.”
The war powers resolution is privileged under Senate rules, meaning it can be called for vote in 10 days, while the House lawmakers can force a vote on their version after 15 days.
U.S. forces have conducted at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since early September, killing at least 83 people as the Trump administration has deployed significant air and naval assets to the region in an attempt to pressure Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to leave power.
“There are now dual war powers resolutions on a military intervention, or war with Venezuela, which is polling at around 70% disapproval with the American public,” Marcus Stanley, director of studies at the Quincy Institute, told RS. “This may be unprecedented.”
These are only the latest attempts to assert Congressional war powers on military operations in Latin America. In early October, a Democrat-led effort barring unauthorized strikes on boats purportedly carrying illegal drugs in the Caribbean failed by a 48-51 vote, with Senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) the lone Republicans to vote alongside every Democratic except for Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who opposed.
In early November, a new effort by Senator Kaine and 15 other co-sponsors, including Senator Paul, to block the administration from attacking Venezuela without Congressional approval, narrowly failed as well by a 49-51 tally, with Senator Fetterman switching his vote in favor.
Prior to the last Senate war powers resolution vote, the administration dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other top officials to assuage concerns from lawmakers, including Republican senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Mike Rounds (R.-S.D.) all of whom had expressed concerns about the legal rationale for the administration’s attack and broader approach. Ultimately, the three senators toed the party line, although Young clarified that the current operation “is at odds with the majority of Americans who want the U.S. military less entangled in international conflicts.”
Two related war powers resolutions introduced earlier this Fall in the House by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) were never brought to a vote.
“That these new resolutions address hostilities within Venezuela, but not the boat strikes specifically, is probably the political sweet spot,” Stanley notes, given the latter have been polling favorably among Republican voters, while a wide majority of Americans opposes the U.S. taking military action in Venezuela.
The renewed attempts to reign in the administration’s aggressive approach to combat drug trafficking and pressure Venezuela’s Maduro come as more Republican lawmakers have expressed concern that a second strike to kill survivors of one of the early September boat attacks might have been illegal.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said last Friday that their respective panels would be conducting “vigorous oversight” and taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the second “kill strike,” which the White House said Hegseth authorized.
While Trump confirmed that he recently spoke with President Maduro about ways to diffuse current tensions, the president also asserted on social media that Venezuelan air space should be considered closed, which is perceived to be a precursor to direct military operations in the country. The president then backtracked, saying people shouldn’t read too much into his post. At the same time, U.S. deportation flights to the South American country have continued this week, following an administration request for landing permission in Caracas Wednesday.
Nevertheless, the resolution co-sponsors say administration officials have not publicly detailed any formal policy or legal basis for the escalatory steps, which “could be interpreted as a hostile act under international law.”
“President Trump's pledge [this week] to begin strikes on Venezuelan territory 'very soon' should be the loudest alarm bell yet for our colleagues in Congress and our entire nation,” said Schiff. “We are being dragged into a war with Venezuela without legal basis or congressional authorization, and the Senate must be prepared to stop an illegal war that would needlessly place at risk thousands of American servicemembers. Americans do not want endless war.”
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Top photo credit: Construction site in Johannesburg, South Africa, 2024. (Shutterstock/ Wirestock Creators)
US capital investments for something other than beating China
December 04, 2025
Among the many elements of the draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) currently being debated in Congress is an amendment that would reauthorize the Development Finance Corporation (DFC). What it might look like coming out of the Republican-dominated Congress should be of interest for anyone watching the current direction of foreign policy under the Trump Administration.
In contrast with America’s other major development agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which the administration has largely dismantled, President Donald Trump has expressed support for a reauthorized DFC but wants to broaden the agency’s mandate so that it focuses less on investing in traditional development projects and more on linking investment to national security priorities.
But doing so risks distracting the DFC from its original mandate of building market capacity in poorer nations, instead priming it to advance potentially hazardous security policy rooted in Great Power Competition between the U.S. and its Russian and Chinese rivals.
So what is the DFC and why does this new direction matter? The DFC is an independent American government agency that supports private sector investment in low- to middle-upper-income countries around the world in an effort to advance American statecraft. Unlike USAID, which met its mandate primarily by issuing grants, the DFC uses financial tools that can earn revenue for the American Treasury.
It does this by using advanced financial mechanisms to encourage private sector investment in places where, due to high risk and potentially low returns, private actors would be unlikely to make investments on their own. The DFC offers insurance coverage to prospective investors and even takes partial ownership of business ventures in developing countries. This way, it uses its own funding and expertise to reduce risks and help manage projects in countries with poor macroeconomics and geopolitical conditions that could make it difficult to return a profit.
The DFC has been awaiting renewal since its funding lapsed in early October, and two competing bills in Congress have been brought forth to this end. Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) introduced an amendment to the NDAA that, while massively expanding the DFC’s size, retains some of the guardrails that can help keep the DFC’s focus on purely development initiatives. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) separately introduced a House bill that more closely aligns with Trump’s desire to use the agency as a lever to help advance Trump’s foreign policy, including on a number of security issues not connected to traditional development. With the NDAA approaching passage, it appears likely that that version of a reauthorized DFC will soon become law.
The reauthorized DFC that emerges from the legislative process will be much bigger than it is at present, but the tone of discussion in recent months raises questions about the “new” DFC’s purpose and operations. A recent Quincy Institute brief we authored, entitled “Investing in the National Interest: The DFC and American Statecraft,” explores the subject in greater detail.
While there are political divisions on the required degree of oversight and the extent to which the DFC should be required to retain a focus on poorer countries, bipartisan support for a more powerful agency is grounded in a desire to use it as an instrument in great power competition.
Such motives are likely to influence the choice of sectors and geographies where the DFC operates and the partners that it chooses for projects. The need to focus the DFC on critical minerals exploration and extraction, particularly in the Global South, has become a staple in discussions about the DFC. Indeed, the agency describes itself as “investing in projects that counter China’s presence in strategic locations and bolster supply chains of critical minerals.” The perceived importance of ensuring the supply of critical minerals has only increased in the aftermath of China’s recent tit-for-tat imposition of export controls on rare earths.
However, while ensuring the resilience of key material supply chains is clearly in America’s national interest (to forestall, among other things, a repeat of the recent episode of Chinese coercion on rare earths), an overly hard-edged vision of the DFC’s mission that is framed substantially in exclusionary national security terms could contribute to a backlash that reduces U.S. influence in the Global South. A DFC role in extracting resources key to American security may be welcome in developing countries, but the developmental impact on the country and the diplomatic benefits for the U.S. are likely to be greater if paired with other investments that benefit a larger population.
One example of an approach that combines Washington’s interest in secure mineral supply chains with a broader developmental impact is the DFC’s $550 million investment in the Lobito Corridor project. The central element here is the rebuilding of a railroad line connecting mineral rich areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the Angolan coast, but it is coupled with other projects including metal-processing (which allows the local economy to capture more of the value than mere extraction) and infrastructure that enables agricultural exports.
A related risk to America’s reputation comes from the possibility of reduced transparency from the removal of guardrails on DFC activity. Among the bills under consideration, the version favored by the White House seeks to raise the threshold for congressional notification about DFC deals from $10 million to $100 million, which would reduce congressional oversight. It also allows the DFC free rein to invest in countries regardless of how wealthy they are, allowing the deployment of public American capital in countries with ample ability to raise it themselves. Together, the removal of guardrails could open the door to corruption at home and abroad. Disputes over this issue have dogged the reauthorization process thus far, but could soon be resolved through a compromise on the extent of investments in high-income countries.
A framing of the DFC’s mission that pushes too hard in the direction of excluding America’s rivals or securing one-sided gains for the U.S. could backfire by treating countries of the Global South solely as pawns in great power competition and denying both their agency and their developmental aspirations. Alternately, the DFC could just engage in a vigorous commercial competition with its rivals that delivers mutual benefits to the U.S. and its project and partner countries, while simultaneously taking global geopolitical tensions down a notch.
A DFC that focuses solely on megaprojects could also have other drawbacks. In financial terms, smaller projects are also likely to generate revenues more quickly than larger-scale ventures with long lags to completion. A more balanced portfolio can thus help generate cashflow for an agency that is expected to serve the national interest while also delivering returns to American taxpayers.
A more expansive DFC mission could be especially useful in Latin America and the Caribbean. Here, U.S. worries about national security go well beyond things like access to critical minerals or concerns about China’s presence in the region, even if these subjects seem to arouse the most anxiety in Washington. Concerns about migration and crime play a big role in the U.S. approach to the region, and the DFC could address these by pursuing small- and medium-scale development projects that increase economic opportunities for the bulk of the population.
As Congress hurries to close its unfinished business before the holidays, it will almost certainly reauthorize the DFC before the end of the year. Unfortunately, it seems more likely to do so in a way that takes a narrower view of America’s national interests when it comes to global development.
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Top image credit: Graphic rendering of the future USS Lafayette (FFG 65), the fourth of the new Constellation-class frigates, scheduled to commission in 2029. The Constellation-class guided-missile frigate represents the Navy’s next generation small surface combatant. VIA US NAVY
The US Navy just lit another $9 billion on fire
December 04, 2025
The United States Navy has a storied combat record at sea, but the service hasn’t had a successful shipbuilding program in decades. John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, announced the latest shipbuilding failure by canceling the Constellation-class program on a November 25.
The Constellation program was supposed to produce 20 frigates to serve as small surface combatant ships to support the rest of the fleet and be able to conduct independent patrols. In an effort to reduce development risks and avoid fielding delays that often accompany entirely new designs, Navy officials decided to use an already proven parent design they could modify to meet the Navy’s needs. They selected the European multi-purpose frigate design employed by the French and Italian navies.
Navy leaders made the decision to speed up the process with the Constellation program because it was supposed to fill the capability gap created by the failure of the Littoral Combat Ship program. The LCS was intended to be the Navy’s affordable small surface combatant ship of the future, but it ended up failing spectacularly. Engineers were never able to get the ship’s mission hardware to work properly. The ships also suffered a string of embarrassing mechanical breakdowns.
The decision to use a proven design for the new program was sound. Defense policymakers typically pursue clean-sheet designs because the contractors can maximize their financial gain through the research and development process. But the Constellation-class program now clearly demonstrates how the national security establishment’s natural proclivity to make simple things complicated remains firmly in place.
The Constellation-class program failed because rather than simply building the ships as designed in Europe, American naval engineers effectively tore up the blueprints and designed a new ship. The U.S. Navy has different mission requirements than its European counterparts, so the ship’s design did need some modifications. Officials sold the idea of the Constellation-class program in part by saying the American version would have 85% commonality with the European version. They then lengthened the hull by nearly 24 feet, redesigned the bow, completely redesigned the ship’s superstructure, and added approximately 500 tons of displacement. The American design today has only 15% commonality with the original.
Navy officials compounded all those problems by committing one of the major deadly acquisition sins: starting production before completing the design. The practice of concurrency, the official term for the overlap of development and production, has been described by one former Pentagon acquisition chief as “malpractice.” Building a ship, tank, or aircraft before the constituent technology has been proven through testing all but guarantees the program will go over budget and fall behind schedule, yet it happens all the time.
Cost growth in shipbuilding so far this century paints a stark picture. Each Littoral Combat Ship was expected to cost $220 million when the program began in 2002. By the time Navy officials gave up on the program, the cost of each hull had grown to over $600 million.
Even worse was the Zumwalt-class destroyer. Officials planned to build a fleet of 32 ships with an anticipated cost of $1.5 to $1.8 billion per ship. The program was cancelled after only three ships were built because the intended main weapon system proved to be cost prohibitive. The remaining ships currently lack a clear mission despite their nearly $8 billion price tag.
The Navy sunk nearly $9 billion into Constellation-class program before its cancellation.
The financial cost of failed programs is obviously significant, but so is the opportunity cost. The Navy doesn’t just invest taxpayer money into these programs, it also invests time. The Littoral Combat Ship program used up approximately 15 years of shipbuilding time. The Constellation-class program has used an additional decade. Both add up to a quarter century of now wasted shipbuilding time during which the existing ships need to have their service lives extended. It’s obviously too early to tell how long it will take officials to get yet another new ship into service. Using history as a guide, a new ship shouldn’t be expected to be in service until the middle of the 2030s at the earliest.
The on-going Littoral Combat Ship and Constellation-class saga should serve as a case study for all defense policymakers. These shipbuilding failures demonstrate the importance of getting things right from the beginning in acquisition programs. Absorbing a single failure is difficult in both time and money. Sailors will have to work harder to keep the Navy’s aging and shrinking fleet afloat to meet the nation’s security needs. Recent history has shown how overworking sailors creates dangerous situations like deadly collisions at sea.
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