America is not ready for a major war, says a bipartisan commission

General Charles “CQ” Brown, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, America’s top military officer, recently told the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of the country’s foreign-policy elite, that the nation’s armed forces were the “most lethal, most respected combat force in the world”. Steely-faced, and to jubilant whoops, he declared: “I do not play for second place.”

In truth, America’s military position is eroding. That is the message of a report published on July 29th by a bipartisan commission entrusted by Congress with scrutinising the Biden administration’s National Defence Strategy, a document published two years ago.

The commission was chaired by Jane Harman, a former Democratic congresswoman, with Eric Edelman, an undersecretary of defence in the George W. Bush administration, deputising. In 2018 the previous such commission had warned that America “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia”. This time the language is starker. The threats to America, including “the potential for near-term major war”, are the most serious since 1945, the commission says. The country is both unaware of their extent and unprepared to meet them.

The most serious problem is China. “We’re at least checkmating China now,” boasted Joe Biden, America’s president, on July 6th. In reality, China is “outpacing” America not only in the size but also in the “capability” of its military forces, as well as in defence production, and the country is probably on track to meet its target of being able to invade Taiwan by 2027, argues the commission. In space and in the cyber realm, the People’s Liberation Army is “peer- or near-peer level”.

Russia is a lesser concern but, despite its quagmire in Ukraine, still poses a serious threat. On July 19th Vipin Narang, a senior Pentagon official, confirmed reports that Russia was seeking to place a nuclear weapon in orbit, describing it as a “threat to all of humanity” and “catastrophic for the entire world”. The report says that America should boost its presence in Europe to a full armoured corps, a much larger commitment than currently exists, accompanied by enablers such as air defence and aviation, with some of today’s rotational forces, which swap in and out, potentially turned into ones that are permanently deployed.

Compounding these threats is the increasing political and military alignment between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, including the transfer of arms, technology and battlefield lessons. That presents “a real risk, if not likelihood”, in the sombre view of the commission, “that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theatre or global war”.

In 2018 the Trump administration’s National Defence Strategy did away with the previous requirement that the Pentagon be prepared to fight two major wars, including one in Europe and one in Asia, at the same time. Mr Biden’s team stuck to that reduced ambition. The result is that a war in one theatre would stretch America dangerously thin, forcing it to rely on nuclear weapons to compensate.

A conflict would also find America wanting in other respects. “Major war would affect the life of every American in ways we can only begin to imagine,” warns the commission. Cyber-attacks would pound critical infrastructure including power, water and transport. Access to minerals vital for both civilian and military industries “would be completely cut off”, the report concludes.

Casualties would far exceed any Western experience in recent memory. The latest simulations by the army show that, in battles involving corps and divisions—larger formations that the army is prioritising over brigades and battalions—casualties ran to 50,000-55,000, including 10,000-15,000 killed. The commission does not call for a return to the military draft, which America abandoned in 1973, but it hints at it, saying that the country’s all-volunteer force faces “serious questions”.

Military solutions

In response to these problems, the commission makes a number of recommendations. One is to bolster alliances. On July 28th the Biden administration made a big stride in that regard by announcing the creation of a new “warfighting” headquarters in Japan to command all land, sea and air forces in the country. Another recommendation is to reform the Pentagon, whose procurement, research and development practices the commission describes as “byzantine”.

A third is to sharply raise defence spending, which is projected to remain flat in real terms for the next five years, despite the previous commission’s recommendation for 3-5% annual real-terms growth. That particular figure is somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, the commission urges Congress to revoke existing spending caps, pass a multi-year supplemental budget to beef up the defence-industrial base and open the fiscal taps to put defence “on a glide path to support efforts commensurate with the US national effort seen during the Cold War”.

There is something here to irritate everyone. To pay for all this, the report proposes additional taxes and cuts to spending on health care and welfare. Both political parties will balk at that. Democrats shy away from more defence spending. Republicans are allergic to more taxes. The defence-policy wonks in Donald Trump’s orbit will like the idea of beefing up the armed forces, but many will recoil at the idea of putting more troops into Europe, rather than Asia.

There is little time to waste, says the commission. “The US public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs…required to adequately prepare,” it says. “They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt…They have not internalised the costs of the United States losing its position as a world superpower.”

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