Mark Tooley: Our next speaker, wonderfully, is Matthew Kroenig, a regular at this conference, distinguished professor at Georgetown University, also with the Atlantic Council, and author of several important books on international statecraft. He is an expert on nuclear weapons strategy. I believe he’s going to speak to you about the moral imperative of American power. So, Matthew, thank you so much for joining us again.  

Matthew Kroenig: Well, thank you very much for that introduction, Mark, and thanks to all of you for being here today. As was mentioned, my name is Matt Kroenig, and I’m a Christian and a national security expert. But I really, over my career, hadn’t thought a lot about how those two things came together.  

I’m really thankful to Mark Tooley and to the Christianity and National Security conference for the opportunity to reflect on how they complement each other. I do think they complement each other. In short, I think simply that there is good and evil in the world and that U.S. foreign policy, while not perfect, has been a force for good in the world over the past 80 years.  

In fact, I’m writing a new book right now called Force for Good: How American Power Makes the World Safer, Richer, and Freer. That’s what I think I’m going to talk about today: U.S. grand strategy over the past 80 years, and also where we are right now. 

I do think we’re at one of the most dangerous moments in our history—maybe the most dangerous moment ever. We have this axis of autocracies, kind of an “axis of evil”: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea working together; a major war in Europe; a major war in the Middle East; and China engaging in daily military aggression against U.S. allies that could result in a major war in the Indo-Pacific. 

Unlike in, say, the 1930s or 1940s, when we faced a risk of global war, today our adversaries are nuclear-armed, making it even more dangerous.  

So, U.S. grand strategy over the past 80 years: the United States is sometimes said to be leading the rules-based international system. If you follow foreign policy, this is probably a term you’ve heard.

Now, it’s not perfect, and many make fun of it, but I think there is an element of truth to it. One of the things that’s different about the post-World War II system from all previous periods of history is just the degree of international institutions, organizations, treaties, agreements—in short, rules—that didn’t exist before.

The United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, NATO, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the USMCA trade agreement—this is what people are referring to as the rules-based system.  

I really think this system has several important components. One is American power and American military power. I think often, when people talk about a rules-based international system over the past 80 years, they forget that part. They focus on the rules and forget about the power that’s required to enforce the rules.  

The United States, after fighting two major wars in the 20th century, created strong alliances in Europe and Asia. Instead of fighting wars and then coming home, as it had done before, the United States decided to stay.  

Our European allies didn’t want us to leave. Sometimes, this U.S.-led period of global history has been referred to as an “empire by invitation.” Unlike old empires in the past, where major powers would conquer their neighbors against their will, U.S. allies have demanded the United States to stay and to help them.  

We created NATO in Europe. To a large degree, the U.S. force posture in Europe is a reflection of where U.S. forces were at the end of World War II. Again, instead of coming home, we stayed with large forces in Germany throughout the Cold War and up to the present.

Similarly, in Asia, we defeated the Japanese and stayed. The United States has a large presence in Japan—Japan is a formal ally. We fought the Korean War and stayed—Korea is a formal ally. There is a large force presence in Korea. Also, Australia and the Philippines are formal allies in Asia. In the Middle East—and people don’t often know this—the United States has no formal allies. Journalists and others will often refer to Israel as an ally or Saudi Arabia as an ally, but unlike NATO or the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty, there are no formal alliances in the Middle East.  

However, the U.S. has strong security partnerships with Israel, the Gulf States, Jordan, and others. The United States has prioritized those three regions because they have the greatest concentration of wealth, power, and danger. The U.S. pays less attention to other regions, like Africa and Latin America, and has decided to prioritize these regions.

Europe is still our number one trade and investment partner. Asia is rising economically, with a number of our top trading partners in that region. The Middle East has historically been important to keep energy resources flowing to the global economy.  

It’s not that the United States wants to control the oil, as some conspiracy theorists will say, but we want to make sure the energy resources make it to global markets to fuel a modern economy.  

By doing that, we’ve maintained peace and stability in those regions. The U.S. nuclear deterrent has been an important part of this as well. U.S. nuclear weapons are special. Other countries, like North Korea or India, use their nuclear weapons to protect themselves. The United States uses its nuclear weapons to defend the entire free world.  

We extend our nuclear umbrella to more than 30 formal treaty allies. Together, the United States and its allies make up almost 60% of global GDP—about 60% of global GDP is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. That’s the security dimension. 

ALso the United States when rogue states, terrorist states, or others are violating the rules of international security, the United States has used force to stop that and bring it back into line, including nuclear proliferation.

There’s also the economic piece. During the interwar years—the period between World War I and World War II—the world turned protectionist. High tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.  

After World War II, the United States and its allies got together at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, a resort you can still visit, and essentially designed the post-World War II economy. They looked back and said that protectionism didn’t work. What we need is a globalized economic system. We need to promote free markets, economic liberalization, and so that’s what they set about doing. They created the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later became the World Trade Organization, with the goal of promoting free trade and open markets globally.  

The United States also used conditionality. If countries wanted, say, a loan from the IMF, the United States and economists down the street, as part of the Washington Consensus, would say, “Okay, we’ll give you this loan, but we want to make sure that it’s not wasted. We want to see you reform your economy, move more toward free markets. That’s what works, not heavy statist policies.”  

Finally, there was a values dimension of U.S. leadership over the past 80 years: working, imperfectly and sometimes hypocritically, but working to promote freedom, human rights, and democracy.

Sometimes this was through occupation and rebuilding after war. In Germany and Japan, the United States helped to draft new, democratic constitutions for these countries. Part of it was through reciprocity—being a member of NATO requires a country to be a democracy. After the end of the Cold War, for example, we saw a number of former communist countries rushing to adopt free markets and free politics so they could join NATO and the EU.  

Then, also by example, especially at the end of the Cold War, many countries in what we today call the Global South and elsewhere thought, “Well, you know, the U.S. model works. We see the communist system doesn’t work, so we want to follow the model that works, like the United States, and be a free-market democracy.” 

I think this was essentially the grand strategy the United States followed over the past 80 years: build a rules-based international system. The second piece is inviting other countries to join, and I think any country can join this system if they want to.  

I mentioned the communist bloc countries who just a few years before were America’s enemies. They had Russian forces on them and nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. Just a few years later, the United States said, “You want to join the club? Welcome. Become a democracy, adopt free markets, and you can be part of the club.”  

Sometimes people will say, “Well, why does the United States hate Iran so much? Why do the United States and Iran have such a bitter rivalry?” I think the answer is simple: it’s Iran’s behavior. They’re building a nuclear and ballistic missile program. They’re the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. They engage in horrendous human rights practices.

I have no doubt that if tomorrow the Iranians said, “You know what? We’re changing our stripes. We’re going to hold elections, we’re going to stop our nuclear program, we’re going to stop supporting terrorism, we’re going to stop hanging homosexuals,” the United States would say, “Great! Welcome to the club. We’re happy to have you.” That’s the second pillar.  

The third pillar is that throughout the past 80 years, there have been countries who’ve wanted to challenge this system and tear it down. So, the third pillar has been defending the system against the challengers. During the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, it was largely terrorists and rogue states. Today, we have this new “axis of evil” that I’ll talk more about: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.  

I think that’s been the U.S.’s simple three-step plan for running the world for the past 80 years. Some people will say, “Well, the United States can’t do grand strategy. We can only plan ahead two years with an election cycle. Countries like China, dictatorships, they can have five-year plans, 10-year plans, plans for 2049.” 

I think that’s not true. The United States has essentially had a consistent grand strategy for the past 80 years: this idea of building, adapting, and defending a rules-based international system.  

Has the system worked? Let’s look at the security sphere. Zero great-power wars in 80 years. In Europe, there were wars for 2,500 years; peace now for 80 years. From the 1600s until 1945, 1 to 2% of the human population could expect to die in armed conflict. Now, that number is less than one-tenth of a percent. The world is much safer today, over the past 80 years, than it’s ever been.  

Second, the world is wealthier than it’s ever been. I think sometimes we focus on the bad news, inequality, and other things, but the world is much wealthier. The standard of living in the United States and around the world is five times higher today than in 1945. In 1945, the poverty rate around the world was about 60%. Today, it’s about 10%. Maybe still too high, but a lot of people have been lifted out of poverty over the past 80 years.

Finally, democracy and human rights. In 1945, there were only about a dozen democracies in the world. Now, there are 96 countries considered democracies, according to Freedom House. The world is safer, richer, and freer today than it’s ever been in world history. I think this is a direct result of this U.S.-led system.

Now, some people think, “Well, isn’t this just kind of human progress? Things would have moved in this direction anyway. We’re more enlightened.”  

I think the answer is clearly no. If Nazi Germany had won World War II or if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War, they would have put in place very different systems more consistent with their norms and values—probably more of a traditional imperial system.  

I think there’s no way we get the security, the prosperity, and the freedom we’ve enjoyed over the past 80 years without U.S. leadership.  

Where are we today? What are the challenges we’re currently facing? What does this mean for U.S. strategy? 

You do have a debate now about fundamentals across the country and within the parties. “Is the United States overextended? Why do we care about what’s happening overseas? Why don’t we just come home?” Others say, “No, we need to stick with this strategy. U.S. leadership supporting our allies has worked.”  

Let me talk about the threat. We do have a major war in Europe, of course: Russia’s war against Ukraine. We have a major war in the Middle East, and Iran is the country supporting Hamas, supporting Hezbollah, supporting the Houthis—the bankroller of the terrorists in the region.

We have China, as I said, engaging in daily military coercion against Taiwan and ramming vessels of the Philippines, a formal U.S. treaty ally.  

It is possible that a major war could break out in Asia. We know that Xi has asked his military to give him the ability to invade Taiwan by 2027. This doesn’t mean he’s going to do it by 2027, but he wants to have the option of doing it. He has said pretty explicitly that he’s going to take Taiwan by 2049. He said he’d rather do it peacefully—it’s nice to win without fighting if you can—but that he will use military force if he has to.

So, we are on a potential collision course with China over Taiwan. And then, of course, there is North Korea—only the third U.S. adversary, after China and Russia, with the ability to launch nuclear weapons against the United States. It has ICBMs and, according to public estimates, about 60 nuclear weapons.

These are serious challenges on their own, but what makes it even worse is that these countries are increasingly working together. China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership. There was a pretty eerie moment in one of their meetings. As they were leaving—I forget which dictator started it—one of them looked at the other and said, “We’re driving changes in the international system that haven’t been seen in 100 years.” The other dictator said, “I agree.”  

That’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to tear down this U.S.-led system and create a new system more conducive to their autocratic preferences.

There’s also a lot of other cooperation among them. We have North Korean forces now in Russia, getting ready to attack Ukraine. The Iranians are providing drones to the Russians, and the Russians are providing targeting information to the Houthis so they can hold international shipping at risk. This axis of autocracies is working together.

Philip Zelikow, an eminent historian at the University of Virginia and an adviser to Condoleezza Rice when she was Secretary of State, recently wrote an essay that has been getting a lot of attention. He looks at past axes of autocracies, including Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan on the eve of World War II. He points out, correctly, that this new axis of autocracies is working together more closely than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan were on the eve of World War II.

We saw that they caused a lot of damage. Zelikow estimates that the risk of World War III in the coming years is 20 to 30%. That’s just one smart guy’s opinion. Maybe he’s wrong. But if he’s right, there’s still a 70% chance we’re okay. But geez—a 20 to 30% chance of World War III in the coming years is pretty daunting.

So, how should the United States and its allies deal with this challenge? There are a lot of different pieces to it, but I’ll hit what I think are some of the high points.

Essentially, I think what we need, just on the defense side, is an ability to deter—ideally deter, and, if necessary, defeat—all of those adversaries at the same time. If you have the ability to defeat them, it makes the deterrence part easier because they’re not going to want to fight a war they’re going to lose.

I was fortunate to be appointed by the U.S. Congress to a Strategic Posture Commission to review U.S. strategic forces policy. It was a commission of six Democrats and six Republicans, and we came to a unanimous conclusion, which is rare these days in Washington.  

We were followed by a separate National Defense Strategy Commission, and the same thing happened—they came to a unanimous conclusion. Both of our commissions recommended the same thing: that the key for U.S. defense strategy is for the United States and its allies to be able to deter and, if necessary, defeat all these adversaries at the same time.

Some people say, “Oh, let’s just focus on China. Others can deal with Iran and Europe.” We don’t think that makes sense for a variety of reasons, including because these threats are interconnected. You can’t just deal with one and forget about the others.  

How do we do this? First, I think the United States needs to drastically increase defense spending. My first recommendation would be for the next president—whether it’s Harris or Trump—to make the case to the American people. I think the American people don’t fully get this, but they’re smart, and if you make the case to them, they will.  

The next president should give a prime-time address within the first few days in office, saying, “Listen, we’re in a very dangerous situation—major war in Europe, major war in the Middle East, and we could be facing World War III. Here’s my strategy to address it. Support me. Give me the resources I need so I can keep you all safe.”  

Some people say, “Oh, well, the American people won’t support increases in defense spending. Congress won’t support it.” Maybe that’s right for now, but that’s the purpose of leadership. The president has the bully pulpit and should go to the American people and say, “We are in a dangerous world with this axis of evil. Help me address it.”  

So, one, we need to increase defense spending. We’re at historic lows as a percentage of GDP. The United States spends about 3.5% of GDP on defense right now. During the Cold War, the average was 7%. The United States could double defense spending and still only be back to about where it was during the Cold War.

In some ways, the situation we’re dealing with now is more dangerous than the Cold War. During the Cold War, we had essentially one evil, nuclear-armed dictatorship to deal with. Now, we have three or four. Iran is close to having nuclear weapons—one to two weeks away, according to Secretary of State Blinken.

A massive increase in defense spending is needed. Roger Wicker, on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for increasing defense spending to 5%. I think that would make sense. 

Second, the allies do need to do more. This has become controversial and somewhat partisan. The Biden Administration says we’re good to the allies. The Trump Administration was tough on allies, saying allies need to pay more. Trump was actually right about this—we can’t do it on our own.  

If we have strong allies in Europe and strong allies in the Indo-Pacific, that can really help. And the allies aren’t doing enough. At the Wales Summit in 2014, all NATO allies promised to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. Right now, 21 of the 32 allies are spending at least 2%, so good for those 21. But that means there are 10 that are still free-riding, including our nice neighbors to the north. The Canadians are not meeting their spending target, which is dangerous.

In addition, 2% is probably not enough. In fact, believe it or not, NATO just adopted its first serious military plans since the end of the Cold War last year.

Essentially, after the end of the Cold War, the thought was that Russia was not really a threat anymore. We didn’t have to worry about defending Europe. It’s hard to believe now, but if you go back to the 2010 National Security Strategies of the Obama Administration, they listed Russia and China as only possible partners for cooperation. They never once mentioned them as possible threats. They said, “We’re going to cooperate with them on arms control, climate change, and counterterrorism.” They never once said they were a threat.

Now we see that Russia is a threat, with the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That scared the European allies.

NATO adopted its first family of military plans tied to capability targets—what does every ally need to provide? I’ve talked to senior NATO officials who say that, according to their own internal calculations, the allies are going to have to spend closer to 3.6% of GDP on defense to provide the capabilities that General Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander, will need to defend Europe. Here’s a place where Trump was right: the allies do need to spend more.  

Third, and finally, Mark mentioned that I’m an expert on nuclear deterrence, and I think we need to focus more on nuclear deterrence. That was a major part of U.S. strategy during the Cold War, but I think we forgot about it in the post-Cold War period.  

The United States had an explicit strategy of reducing reliance on nuclear weapons and drastically cutting the nuclear arsenal. We had 31,000 nuclear weapons in 1967, at the height of the Cold War. Now, we have about 1,500, according to the New START Treaty with Russia.

Nuclear deterrence works—that’s what we saw during the Cold War. People worry that the conventional balance of power is shifting in China’s favor, especially in Taiwan. I point out that this is not historically unique. Throughout the entire Cold War, the Soviet Union had the conventional military advantage in Europe. It had bigger armies, more tanks, etc., and the United States offset that with nuclear deterrence. We said, “If you move on Berlin, this could go nuclear right away. Don’t even think about it.”  

I think a similar strategy could work today. We need to remind Putin that we’re a nuclear power too. Watching the war in Ukraine, the current administration in the United States expresses a lot of fear of escalation. But we should be reminding Putin that we’re a nuclear power too. He should be worried about escalation. If he attacks a NATO ally, we might decide to use nuclear weapons. He shouldn’t even think about it.  

A similar strategy could work in Asia. The United States has always had a nuclear first-use policy, meaning we might use nuclear weapons first as part of our deterrent strategy.  

Doing that well, though, is going to require a strategic forces buildup. This is one of the things our commission recommended. We released our report on October 13th of last year—unfortunately, bad timing, right after October 7th, when nobody was paying attention.  

We essentially called for the first nuclear weapons buildup since the end of the Cold War and for the United States, like it did during the Cold War, to develop and deploy non-strategic or so-called tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and Asia to strengthen nuclear deterrence.  

We also called for a homeland missile defense for the United States to defend against threats from China and Russia. You’ve probably seen Israel’s impressive Iron Dome system. The United States doesn’t have its own Iron Dome, but I think we need one. This is something President Trump has called for—an Iron Dome for the United States if he’s elected.  

A final piece: I think we just need to learn how to do deterrence again. Let me give a historical example. I direct the Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council, named after former General and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. He was National Security Adviser to President Ford and President H.W. Bush and was Deputy National Security Adviser in the Nixon Administration when Henry Kissinger was National Security Adviser.  

In 1973, Egypt and Israel were at war. The Soviet Union was thinking about intervening on behalf of the Egyptians against the Israelis. The United States didn’t want that to happen. What did Nixon, Kissinger, and Scowcroft do?  

First, they put nuclear weapons on high alert. They got nuclear bombers on the strip, ready to go, flushed nuclear submarines to sea, and made sure the Soviet Union could see this. It was kind of the equivalent of a bar fight—you cock your fist. The United States cocked its nuclear forces.  

Henry Kissinger gave a public address saying, “What is the Soviet Union doing? If they intervene in the Middle East, this could lead to catastrophic consequences.” Brent Scowcroft, behind the scenes, told the Russians, “This is going to result in nuclear war. What are you guys doing?” The Soviet Union decided not to intervene.

Fast forward to February 2022: Putin was massing forces on the border with Ukraine. How did the American president respond? He said, “Well, we’re not going to get involved militarily. U.S. forces are off the table. Maybe a minor incursion would be okay, but if it were something more, we’d have to think about it.”

Imagine instead—though it’s almost impossible to imagine, because we’ve forgotten these muscle movements—if President Biden had put nuclear weapons on high alert. If Tony Blinken had said, “Russia would never go into Ukraine. This could lead to nuclear war. Are they crazy?” I think we could have deterred the entire thing.  

Learning deterrence again is important. In short, it’s a dangerous period, but I think if we learn some of the lessons from how the United States has led the international system over the past 80 years, we can succeed. I believe we can deter these adversaries and, with any luck, provide another 80 years of peace, prosperity, and freedom for the United States and for the international system.

Maybe I’ll stop my remarks there and look forward to your questions and comments.  

Q&A

Question: Hi, I’m Greg Moore at Patrick Henry College. I was a fellow last year and spent a whole year studying nuclear weapons. A question that has come up in my mind, and I’d like to ask you, is: Is it time, in your thinking, for Japan and South Korea to join the nuclear club to help us deter North Korea and China?  

Answer: Yes, and this is a question that has come up over the years: would it actually be in the U.S. interest for our allies to be nuclear-armed and help us deter adversaries?  

I think the answer is no, in short, and the United States has essentially decided over the past 80 years that the answer is no. The world is more dangerous if there are more countries armed with nuclear weapons, even if they are our friends. U.S. nonproliferation policy has been pretty consistent on this over the past 80 years, stopping both our friends and our enemies from developing nuclear weapons.

For example, Taiwan had a secret nuclear program in the 1970s. The United States came down on them pretty hard and forced them to shut it down. South Korea had a secret nuclear program in the 1970s as well. Same thing—we came down on them pretty hard. The United States goes to great lengths to assure allies. Part of the reason we extend our nuclear umbrella to our allies is a kind of quid pro quo: we say, “Don’t build your own nuclear weapons. You can rely on our nuclear weapons.”

For the most part, that has worked. There have been several allies—Britain, France, and Israel—who didn’t fully trust the umbrella and wanted to develop their own independent arsenals. The United States tried to stop them. It tried to maintain its monopoly but failed. Similarly, with Israel, the Kennedy administration tried to stop them from building nuclear weapons but failed.

Some people assume the U.S. likes it that its allies have nuclear weapons, or even helps them, but the reverse is true. The United States tried to stop even its allies from building nuclear weapons.

Part of our strategy today is to reassure our allies. In fact, if you look at U.S. defense strategy, we say deterring adversaries is a major goal, but the second major goal is assuring our allies that they’re secure and that the U.S. nuclear umbrella will protect them.

One country of significant concern right now is South Korea. They are right across the border from North Korea, a country they’ve fought a war with in the past. North Korea, as I’ve said, is nuclear-armed. The South Koreans are wondering, “Wait a second, if we get into a major war with North Korea again—maybe one that Kim Jong-un starts—is the United States really going to risk a nuclear attack on Washington or San Francisco to protect us? Is that really credible? Maybe we need to build our own nuclear weapons.”

Right now, public opinion polling in Korea shows that more than 50% of the Korean population says yes, Korea should build its own nuclear weapons. Like most public opinion polling, the framing really matters. If you ask, “Do you still believe that if you know the U.S. is going to be mad at you, that China is going to be mad at you?” the numbers come down.

I do worry about some of our allies, but I think there is more the United States can do to assure them, including returning to some of the things we did during the Cold War.

During the Cold War, the United States forward-deployed its own nuclear weapons on the territory of South Korea. That had both a deterrence and an assurance effect. The North Koreans knew that if they attacked and were overrunning positions with tactical nuclear weapons, the war could go nuclear right away. That increased the credibility of the deterrent and deterred them from attacking.

It also assured the South Koreans. They knew America’s nuclear weapons were there, protecting them. After the end of the Cold War, we took all of our nuclear weapons out of Asia.  

One of the things our posture commission calls for is for the United States to redeploy nuclear weapons in Asia. I think if we do that, we can assure South Korea and Japan and deter North Korea and China. That’s what I would recommend—not letting the allies go nuclear.

One other point on this: I talked about the rules-based system. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is sometimes considered the most successful treaty in history. It’s nearly universal.  

In the 1960s, President Kennedy gave a speech saying that within—I forget the exact numbers—10 to 15 years, there would be 25 nuclear powers. Here we are, 60 years later, and there are only nine nuclear powers. The spread of nuclear weapons has been much slower than many people predicted. I think that is in large part due to the NPT.

That’s another danger. If the United States starts saying, “Well, you know, we care about these rules—except for our allies. It doesn’t matter if they build nuclear weapons, but the bad guys can’t,” that would undermine the NPT. I do think the NPT has been helpful in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to the bad guys too.

Question: Hi, my name is JJ. I’m from Taylor University. I have a question about social cohesion and the ability to fight a three-front war or defend against one. It seems like nuclear deterrence is important, but it has to be paired with some sort of actual, on-the-ground military force. If there’s not enough social cohesion—even if you have a president who is vying for something like that—is that something that’s even feasible in our climate today? If that’s not the case, should we be pouring a bunch of resources into nuclear weapons if we can’t back it up with forces on the ground?  

Answer: Good question. You know, I focus on foreign policy—I’m not an expert on social cohesion. Maybe some of you are. But I’ll share a few thoughts.  

One, I think one thing that has united the American people over the years is foreign threats. During the Cold War, of course, there were divisions within the United States on many issues—contentious race relations in the 60s and other things. But there was a strong bipartisan and national consensus that the Soviet Union was a challenge and that we needed to fight communism.  

I’d say the same thing after 9/11. The country came together around the war on terror. I do think that, given the challenges we face, if we have the right leadership—if the next president makes the case to the American people—we have a lot of differences, and we need to address those. But there’s at least one thing we should be united on: we don’t want the U.S.-led system to be overturned by this axis of evil. We need to come together to address that. That’s one point.  

Two, I think conventional capabilities are an important part of it. That’s part of the reason I called for 5% of GDP defense spending. Nuclear weapons are actually pretty cheap. About 5% of the U.S. defense budget is for nuclear weapons—95% is spent on other stuff.  

I do think conventional capabilities are important. The Allies need to do more. When I say the Allies need to do more, that’s largely in terms of conventional capabilities. We don’t want Germany building a bunch of nuclear weapons, but we do want them building tanks, rifles, and aircraft.  

As for the question about what the capabilities should be that the United States invests in, everybody is watching the war in Ukraine pretty closely. Many military experts think we are going through a kind of drone revolution. It’s pretty impressive how the Ukrainians are killing Russian tanks and sinking large parts of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even though they don’t really have a navy of their own, using these unmanned vehicles.  

There is an effort underway right now—the Department of Defense has announced what it’s calling its Replicator Initiative—to build thousands of drones within two years. Admiral Paparo, the new commander of Indo-Pacific Command, whom I got to meet just before he took command in April, has launched what he’s calling a “Hellscape Initiative.” Essentially, the idea is that if China tries to invade Taiwan, we would present the Chinese military with a hellscape of unmanned surface vehicles on the water, undersea unmanned vehicles, and aerial unmanned vehicles. These would take out the Chinese ships attempting to invade Taiwan.  

They’d have to get a lot of people over on ships, and it essentially becomes a numbers problem: how many ships do they have, and how many anti-ship missiles, drones, and other systems do we need to sink those ships? So, yes, conventional capabilities are an important part of the problem.

That said, nuclear weapons still matter. If the adversary thinks, “Okay, if I’m losing the conventional fight, I’ll just escalate to nuclear weapons and the Americans will back down,” then that might give them an incentive to attack. If they know that we have a strong nuclear deterrent as well, I think that will maintain the peace. As St. Matthew said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  

Question: Hi, I’m McGregor Langston with Regent University. I have two particular questions. First of all, the U.S.-Japan alliance has now moved to a level of security integration where we’re giving them the Aegis missile defense system. We’re even having their destroyers sub in for our destroyers in our carrier strike groups. We’re teaching them how to do their own carrier operations with F-35s. We’re creating a joint command and matching it with the joint command they just created.  

So, we’re going to a level of security integration that I don’t think we’ve quite seen before—not even with NATO. Do you think this could constitute a paradigm shift in how we coordinate with our most important allies and how we try to secure some of the hotter regions in the world?  

Answer: The short answer is yes. The longer answer is for many years, especially in Asia, I think the model of our alliances has been that the United States will come in and defend our allies. I think we’re realizing, given the challenges we face, that that doesn’t really work. We rather need to be supporting their self-defense. We do need the Allies to do more.  

NATO and our alliances in Europe and Asia are very different. NATO is a multilateral alliance—we’re allied with these 32 other countries, but they’re also allied with each other. There’s a headquarters, joint military planning, etc.

In Asia, it’s a kind of hub-and-spoke system. We have an alliance with Japan, an alliance with Korea, an alliance with Australia, but they’re not aligned with each other. Some have called for a kind of “Asian NATO.” I think that’s unrealistic anytime soon, but I do think we want closer collaboration with individual allies like Japan.  

We also need more efforts to stitch together our alliances in Asia with our alliances in NATO. Over the past several years, NATO started something it calls the NATO IP4—the Indo-Pacific 4. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Korea have been attending all the NATO summits. The Biden Administration launched the AUKUS plan for Britain, the United States, and Australia to work together on advanced submarines and other technologies.  

There’s also this new Quad framework of India, Japan, Australia, and the United States working together. In terms of global strategy, this is the direction we’re already heading, and it does make sense. During the Cold War, breaking the world into separate regions made sense—we’d have our European alliances and our Asian alliances.  

But increasingly, the challenges we face are global, and the alliances we need must also be global. Stitching together European, Asian, and North American democratic allies makes a lot of sense.  

Looks like Mark in the back has a question too, but please go ahead.  

Question: Just one follow-up question: if war was to go hot, do you think it’s possible to use tactical nukes without escalating to ICBMs and larger nuclear strikes?  

Answer: Yes, this was a question people wrestled with during the Cold War. In fact, Henry Kissinger made his reputation as a young man writing a book on limited nuclear war. It was a New York Times bestseller. It’s hard to imagine today—a young Harvard professor writing a book about nuclear strategy that becomes a bestseller—but it was a different time, 1957.  

This has always been part of U.S. strategy. If the Russians invaded Berlin, the U.S. would threaten limited nuclear war as a first response. We had a lot of non-strategic tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield to make that credible.

The question people ask is, “Okay, so Russia invades. Let’s say we use 10 nuclear weapons. Russia uses 20. We use 40. They use 60. Doesn’t it just escalate to a major nuclear war anyway?” Fortunately, we don’t have any empirical data, so we don’t know.

My answer would be that you have to at least try, because the alternatives are suicide or surrender. If you just say, “Well, it’s going to go large-scale anyway, so let’s launch massive nuclear strikes against Russia,” they have a survivable arsenal and can retaliate. That’s the suicide option.  

The surrender option would be, “We don’t want this to go nuclear, so let’s just let Russia invade Berlin, and we can’t stop it.” That’s not a good option either.

I think having flexible options in the middle makes a lot of sense. By having them, you deter escalation in the first place. If Putin thinks, “Okay, if I invade Estonia today, or if I use nuclear weapons in Estonia today, the Americans aren’t going to back down. I’ll just get into a limited nuclear war in Europe with the United States,” that’s not very attractive to Putin either, and so that’s why it’s an effective deterrent. 

But the logic would be to deter it in the first place, and, God forbid, if deterrence failed, at some point Putin would say, “Okay, well, it’s not worth fighting a full-scale nuclear war over Estonia. I’m going to look for an offramp.”  

Question: Hi, I’m Ethan from Cairn University. I was wondering, for our nation in the coming decades, would you see any benefit for us kind of adopting an isolationist stance where, you know, we’re still going to have a modest defense budget and a good presence in the world, but we could transition some of those funds to domestic issues? For example, we see Ukraine—we’re pouring trillions of dollars into it, and there’s not really an end in sight.  

Answer: I’ll say a few things. One, the direct answer to your question is: I don’t think so. I think it’s a globalized world, whether we like it or not. We can’t retreat behind “Fortress America.” It’s not realistic. I think we saw that even in the 1900s. We wanted to stay out of Europe’s wars and ended up getting dragged into two world wars anyway.  

So, I think the lesson we learned after World War II is that it’s much cheaper and easier to just stay there and deter the war in the first place than it would be to come home, let Putin or Xi or somebody else dominate the regions, and then have to fight our way back in World War III later. Cheaper and easier to stay there and deter it. That would be my answer.  

Also, economically, if you look at U.S. GDP, it’s a globalized economy. A lot of jobs in the United States and the markets that create those jobs are coming from international trade. Cutting ourselves off that way would make us much poorer.  

The security and the prosperity are intertwined. If there’s a major war in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, that would disrupt our trade and investment flows in a way that would hurt us in our pocketbooks.  

I guess the final thing I’d say is that we already see Russia, China, and others messing around in the United States—China setting up police stations, Russia interfering with elections on social media. I think if they were strong enough to dominate their own regions, their ability to intervene in the Western Hemisphere, and even in the United States, would be greater. So, I think we also protect our democracy at home by having a more forward-leaning posture.  

So that was the first main point and now there’s a second. On Ukraine, I share your frustration with the Ukraine strategy. To be honest, I don’t think we have a strategy right now.  

Early on, right after the invasion, the Atlantic Council, where I work, published a recommended strategy for the United States and its allies. I was one of the authors, along with Steve Hadley, former U.S. National Security Adviser and a member of my church, Christ Church in Georgetown.  

Essentially, we recommended a strategy for victory: to give Ukraine everything it needed, with no restrictions, to win the war and take back all of its territory. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that.  

It was a slow drip of weapons—maybe we’ll provide tanks, no, not yet, okay, let’s do it. We’re not going to provide aircraft—okay, now we will. We’re not going to provide ATACMS—okay, now we will.  

It was a slow drip of weapons, and even today we place restrictions on what the Ukrainians can do. This has allowed time for the Russians to dig in. I think we’ve also seen that new technology, like drones, is giving the defense the advantage. At this point, I don’t see how Ukraine can succeed in taking back all of its territory.  

So, what is the current strategy? The current administration says, “We’re going to support Ukraine as long as it takes.” But as long as it takes to do what? To take back all of its territory? I don’t think anybody thinks that’s possible.

Earlier this year, in The Wall Street Journal, Steve Hadley and I published a piece arguing for a new Ukraine strategy. Essentially, we recommended trying to wind the war down along its current lines, making sure Ukraine can defend itself, providing security guarantees, and ensuring that Russia doesn’t re-attack.

Then, essentially, pursue a kind of West Germany model—bring Western Ukraine into the West and work over time, diplomatically and in other ways, to try to reclaim the rest of Ukraine. I think that makes more sense and is consistent with what President Trump has said about his effort to end the war quickly. Zelensky has also been talking about a strategy for victory, and reports of that are pretty similar to what we’ve recommended: essentially winding down along the current lines, providing guarantees for Western Ukraine, and worrying about the rest later.  

Thank you.