Thomas G. Mahnken
Under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, U.S. defense strategy has been premised on the optimistic notion that the United States will never need to fight more than one war at a time. During the Obama administration, in the face of fiscal austerity, the Defense Department abandoned its long-standing policy of being prepared to fight and win two major wars to focus on acquiring the means to fight and win just one. That move accelerated the trend toward a smaller U.S. military. It also narrowed the options available to U.S. policymakers, given that committing the United States to war in one place would preclude military action elsewhere.
This switch was misguided then, but it is especially out of step today. The United States is currently involved in two wars—Ukraine’s in Europe and Israel’s in the Middle East—while facing the prospect of a third over Taiwan or South Korea in East Asia. All three theaters are vital to U.S. interests, and they are all intertwined. Past efforts to deprioritize Europe and disengage from the Middle East have weakened U.S. security. The U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East, for instance, has created a vacuum that Tehran has filled eagerly. A failure to respond to aggression in one theater can be interpreted as a sign of American weakness. Allies across the world, for example, lost faith in Washington after the Obama administration failed to enforce its “redline” against chemical weapons use by Syria. And the United States’ adversaries are cooperating with one another: Iran sells oil to China, China sends money to North Korea, and North Korea sends weapons to Russia. The United States and its partners face an authoritarian axis that spans the Eurasian landmass.
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