The country is unaware of the dangers ahead, and of the costs to prepare for them

Jul 29th 2024

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 reality, 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 (nds), a document published two years ago.

The nds commission was chaired by Jane Harman, a former 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, it says. The country is both unaware of their extent and unprepared to meet them.

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