Please answer one simple question. Which of the following does the United States currently possess? (A) An adequate intelligence service. (B) An adequate diplomatic corps. (C) An adequate military. (D) None of the above.
If you answered none of the above, you understand the problem. For the first time in a generation the United States faces a serious great power competitor. To put the preceding question more starkly, are we adequately prepared to anticipate, deter and, if necessary, win a war with China?
We have 18 intelligence agencies and departments all coordinated by the director of national intelligence (DNI). They collect a wide range of human, signals, open source and geospatial intelligence. They have combined annual budgets of over $75 billion. Yet we continue to be surprised when the Russians invade Ukraine, and the Taliban take Kabul. Just a week before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the Middle East was calmer than it had been in two decades.. Something is wrong.
The intelligence community suffers from an excess of bureaucrats sitting between those who produce information and those who use it. These intelligence managers appreciate that speaking truth to power is not always career enhancing. Far too often their reporting is crafted to endorse existing policies and avoid unwelcome news. From Vietnam to Iraq we have paid a high price for political leaders being told only what they wanted to hear. Even when there is no deliberate intelligence manipulation, group think around the “Washington consensus” can lead to a lack of objectivity.
Ergo, the most important qualities for our next director of national intelligence are experience, integrity and a willingness to tolerate dissent. Having deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard has first-hand experience with the cost of protecting America. In Congress, she has served on the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Homeland Security committees. She demonstrated enormous integrity by leaving a political party where she had been a rising star. Gabbard concluded that the Democrats were no longer the party free speech and “the little guy.” Instead, they had become an “elite cabal of woke warmongers” who threatened our civil liberties. Whether or not you agree with those conclusions, it took a questioning mind to reach them and courage to express them. It took a willingness to challenge the status quo and rise above partisanship. That is what America’s security requires of our next DNI.
The State Department was described as a “crippled institution” by the Senate‘s Hart-Rudman Commission 25 years ago. That sad description has not changed, but the world around us has. The brief, unipolar moment when the United States faced no rivals and some concluded that diplomacy no longer mattered is emphatically over. Today’s world order is based once again on a balance of power among several near-peer competitors. In this new environment our next secretary of state will need not only strategic vision and intellectual agility, but a proven ability to cooperate with allies and to negotiate with adversaries.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has a clear understanding of the strategic threat China poses to our security and economic interests. The Chinese government has sanctioned him twice for criticizing its policies. He is a thoughtful and flexible statesman who, when the facts change, does not cling blindly to previously held positions. Rubio supported military aid to Ukraine immediately after Russia’s invasion. By 2024, he had concluded that further escalation presented unwarranted costs and risks, and he voted against an additional $95 billion in aid for Ukraine.
Rubio is a highly experienced negotiator. As the majority whip in Florida’s House of Representatives he relied more on persuasion than coercion. As majority leader in the Florida House, he defended Republican positions with noteworthy oratory prowess. As speaker of the Florida House he sought to cooperate with Democrats whenever possible. Since entering the United States Senate in 2010, he has served on the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees, as well as the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the State Department.
In the Senate, he has continued to seek bipartisan solutions to both foreign policy and domestic problems. Rubio has cooperated with Democratic colleagues to sponsor bills and draft opinion pieces. Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy ranked him as the 10th most bipartisan member of the Senate. This is precisely the sort of experience and negotiating skill we need in America’s top diplomat.
Unfortunately, negotiating from a position of military weakness will be difficult. The United States is no longer the unchallenged global hegemon. We face serious security risks in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. A growing and well-foundedperception of American weakness abroad has eroded our capacity for deterrence. China has more ships in the Pacific than the U.S. Navy. Russia has more nuclear warheads than the United States, as well as delivery systems that are unstoppable. An array of NATO “wonder weapons” has not saved Ukraine.
Clearly, America’s military is not what is used to be. At the height of the Cold War, the United States spent nearly 10 percent of its GDP on defense. Today we spend barely 3 percent. The General Accounting Office has described the Pentagon‘s procurement programs as “alarmingly slow.” Many segments of the defense industry are controlled by companies with near monopoly positions which leads to skyrocketing costs. Last year, despite lowering physical and mental requirements, the Army, Navy, and Air Force all failed to meet their recruiting targets. Many senior officers now seem more concerned with political correctness than combat readiness.
Unlike many secretaries of defense, Pete Hegseth is a combat veteran. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan where he won both a Bronze Star and the Combat Infantry Badge. He has seen what inadequate preparedness costs in terms of both military success and American lives. That experience tends to make one realistic. In fact, much of the criticism leveled against Hegseth has been precisely because he is a realist.
Hegseth recognizes the security risks created by in using the military as an arena for social experiments. Long before it became popular to do so, Hegseth had the courage to question political correctness in the military as well as rules of engagement that place American troops at unnecessary risk. He wants a color-blind military where motivation comes from patriotism, not grievance, and where promotions are based on performance, not quotas. Our national security and the lives of our troops require nothing less.
Many Americans have come to regard physical security, economic prosperity and political freedom as normal, indeed as humanity’s natural state. They are mistaken. The vast majority of people who ever lived would have been happy with just one of these gifts. Even today, only a very small minority of the world’s population enjoy security, prosperity or freedom. Americans have a great deal to be grateful for and a great deal to defend.
Yet, as Winston Churchill wrote, “The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world.” Someday, perhaps much sooner than we expect, war clouds will gather over Washington. Then we will need an effective intelligence service to detect them, an effective diplomatic corps to disperse them and, if need be, an effective military to deal with the danger. To be prepared we need leaders with ability, experience and integrity; leaders like Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth.
David H. Rundell is a former chief of mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the author of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former political advisor to the U.S. Central Command and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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