Washington Must Raise Defense Budget To Counter Beijing, Moscow

After a long wait, the Biden administration may finally release the new US National Security Strategy (NSS) this fall.

Photo Insert: A substantial increase in US defense spending is needed to counter challenges posed by adversarial regimes.

Originally scheduled for publication late last year, the document was withheld as Russian war preparations on Ukraine’s borders intensified. The invasion and its fallout then presented Washington with a new strategic situation, requiring the document to be rewritten.

Its absence has left many wondering about the administration’s strategic objectives, priorities, and plans to achieve them, Gabriel Scheinmann wrote for Foreign Policy.

The Biden administration laid out its initial impulses on national security in its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, published shortly after the new team moved into the White House in early 2021.

That document prescribed a heavy dose of cooperation with other powers—including the United States’ adversaries. Beijing and Moscow were presented as partners on such issues as climate change, nonproliferation, arms control, public health, and economic stability, Scheinmann, the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS), stressed.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s unleashing of the biggest European war since 1945—as well as his Chinese counterpart’s declaration of “no limits” support—laid the administration’s ideas and intentions to waste. It is critical, therefore, that the new NSS adapts to the new reality and sets Washington on a different course to prevail in the increasingly direct geopolitical competition with Moscow and Beijing.

A successful approach to the challenges posed by these adversarial regimes must involve a global strategy to counter threats, not merely manage crises as they pop up. This includes, most importantly, a substantial increase in US defense spending.

A huge allocation for defense and offense in conflict zones must be crafted inasmuch as the Russian misadventure in Ukraine showed that President Vladimir is obsessed with tsarist ambition to carve out a Eurasian empire and wars are the necessary consequence of such ambition.

Since China continues to salivate about the conquest of Taiwan, backing the island to the hilt requires arming it with the best weapons to deter Chinese aggression.

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