Phase Zero of the Coming War

For over a decade the policy community in Washington has spoken of a new era of “strategic competition” between great powers.  This narrative has been replete with normative assertions about defending the “rules-based international order,” as though a values-based rhetoric could overshadow our growing hard power deficit.  Perhaps that is one reason why our policy elites and our key national security documents have studiously avoided using the “w” word, as in “war.”  However, the reality is that the United States and its allies are not engaged in strategic competition; rather we are already in Phase Zero of a protracted conflict with Russia and China, with the adversaries shaping the terrain in real time and space, as well as through cyber and influence operations.  We face this challenge amid significant resource constraints and with a diminished defense industrial base.  Today the United States has a military too small for the task of fighting a two-theater war, and our defense spending is about half of what we spent on average during the Cold War. 

We are deficient when it comes to national resilience, and are vulnerable to malicious actors exploiting our critical infrastructure through cyber.  Russia has made significant strides in some aspects of military technology, especially in hypersonics and nuclear submarine propulsion.   About a decade ago China overtook the United States with the largest navy in the world; it is currently building the equivalent of the entire British Royal Navy every two years.[i]  For its part, Russia has put its entire economy on a war footing, reconstituting its armor at rates that allow it to field over a thousand tanks a year, both refurbished and new production.   At the same time, China and Russia produce their weapon systems and munitions at a fraction of the cost of that of the U.S. defense industry.  The U.S. approach to weapons procurement, which has prioritized ever-more exquisite and capable systems that the Services can buy only in limited numbers, has left us with no choice but – as was the case when we helped defend Israel from its recent attack by Iran – to shoot millions of dollars in ordnance at drones that cost a few thousand dollars to produce.

The United States needs a generational investment in defense, an effort that will require the next administration to articulate a clear vision of victory – not in normative terms and values, but one that speaks directly to geopolitics, our economic welfare, and the security of our homeland.  We need a strategy that returns national security priorities to our economic policy-making, speaks directly to the imperative of re-shoring our critical manufacturing and supply chains, and most all is grounded in the clear articulation of the hierarchy of our national interests.  Those critical of increased defense spending argue that the American public will not support more military spending, but the truth is that as of today nobody has made a clear case to the public about how dangerous the international system has become, and what is at stake.  We need our leaders to address plainly the reality that Russia constitutes a chronic threat to transatlantic security, and that China poses an existential threat to the United States and its allies, in Europe and Asia alike, for it seeks to build a system of global governance resting on its economic and military power.  Until we have these issues put front and center before the American public, no “pivot to Asia” or “China first” or any other similar strategic sleight of hand will give us a path forward that can preserve and defend the United States’ vital national security interests, keep our homeland safe and maintain our access to resources worldwide. 

Andrew A. Michta is Senior Fellow and Director of the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Views expressed here are his own. 

[i] China's navy is now growing at terrifying speed (telegraph.co.uk)