Through the Tiger’s Eyes: Enabling the Second American Century

Eyeless Tiger

The 1982 American sports drama film, Rocky III is analogous for what happened to the U.S. in a post-Cold War era with an emerging China. Rocky III begins with a recall to the final moments of the previous movie, Rocky II, where the protagonist, Rocky, defeats Apollo Creed for the Boxing Heavyweight Championship. It then transitions to Rocky defeating inferior fighters, while the antagonist, Clubber Lang, is in the crowd analyzing Rocky’s performance. Clubber Lang is shown training and defeating his opponents with vicious efficiency as he moves and improves his rankings. Rocky, oblivious to the challenger, focuses his attention to luxury items, endorsements, and the guest appearances on the Muppet Show. Clubber Lang defeats Rocky early in the movie, which requires Rocky to learn a new way to fight from Apollo Creed to regain his championship. Using this analogy, the U.S. is Rocky, and it must refocus to maintain core capabilities while innovating how it competes to retain its world standing.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States became a unipolar hyperpower. Without a strategic peer competitor to unify national strategy and drive innovation, Pax Americana was assumed to be “the end of history” to the short-sighted. This led to fostered complacency, lethargy, and frankly arrogance. While the U.S. rested on past achievements, China observed and exploited opportunities to gain every strategic advantage while simultaneously presenting themselves as benevolent actors to the rest of the world. China’s relationship with the U.S. shifted from a junior partner to one that is now overtly competing and conducting unrestricted warfare (or executing civil-mil fusion ISO their 3-warfare strategies) within areas like the diplomatic, cyber, economic, and legal arenas against the U.S. This paper outlines how the Department of Defense (DOD) invests in the competitive space to improve the economy and deter direct conflict.

Deterrence and Insulation

The war in Ukraine is a stark reminder that economic deterrence is not assured. George Washington, in his first State of the Union, said, “to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” History has shown that the US’s inability to keep a state of military readiness came at considerable cost. These painful lessons eventually led to consistent levels of readiness that featured a historic military capable of protecting national interests. The supercarrier is an example of firm national hard power, to civilian and military audiences alike. Yet, the real value of deterrence resides with the effects that the air wing can deliver. While the aircraft carrier and aircraft are “the arm to deliver the punch”, the weapons are the power behind the knock-out punch. Knowing that the U.S. can deliver this punch has forced several international de-escalations, such as the 1996 Taiwan Straight Crisis. The power of a carrier strike group provided an off-ramp with China, though this may no longer be the case. According to former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “A healthy defense industrial base was needed because the U.S. would quickly run out of weapons in a war with a military on par with China”. While the current administration is taking positive actions to improve the defense industrial base, it is critical to ensure that the Armed Services are properly resourced to overcome challenges aligned with our strategic interests. Further, research and manufacturing should be flexible so that once jobs are created in the factory, the workers can shift to support other options to maintain jobs. The industrial expansion will provide employment opportunities to maintain a skilled labor force. Strategic planning could mitigate risks like the Littoral Combat Ship, where job preservation interests were more important than military capability. The Joint Warfighting Concept is the Pentagon’s whole-of-force effort to update the U.S. way of war for the 21st Century battlefield. 

Calls to revitalize the industrial workforce have been met with considerable criticism. There are fair concerns about price increases, however, the country also needs to consider its ability to withstand international sanctions and dubious withholding of critical resources and materials. Corporations are driven by shareholders, who remain driven by quarterly profit reporting. Yet this can come at the cost of strategic capability. For example, if China and the U.S. go to war, aside from military concerns, the inflationary response to a complete trade embargo is massive. The U.S. still sources 97% of its antibiotics from China and relies on China for 95% of key components for generic drugs. The U.S. currently lacks the ability to produce these basic medicinal components domestically. Even non-Chinese drugs are vulnerable, as other countries like India source the majority of their pharmaceutical components from China as well.

The ability to provide medical care for its warfighters and general population is an example of non-combat capabilities that contribute to strategic readiness. The debacle of personal protective equipment (also heavily sourced from China) for medical service providers during the COVID-19 pandemic should have been a larger driver for internal investment. Therefore the U.S. needs to take serious action in ensuring that in competition and conflict, the military and civilian population can adequately operate. The U.S. must be able to provide support to the military while ensuring safety at home. The ability to deter others and prevail if deterrence fails while insulating ourselves from adversary attempts to deter is a foundational pillar to stability.

Enemies Fighting for Votes

Kuijpers reviewed ten countries between 1990 and 2014 and found that political incumbents initially benefited from an increase in military casualties and then were politically punished as time went on. When considering the 1980 election, President Carter was unable to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis and responded with policies that severely damaged the U.S. economy. When comparing the 2000 vs 2004 presidential election, evidence shows that U.S. states with casualties in Iraq had a significant impact in depressing votes for President Bush. The researchers infer that without the casualties, Bush would have enjoyed a much more decisive victory. 

The U.S. and its allies and partners must be able to determine their destiny without the chaos of external interference. The inability to adequately deter adversaries can lead to instability that drastically alters the trajectory of a county’s destiny through influenced elections. Consider Osama bin Laden, whose intent was to turn U.S. citizens against their government to force his objectives into U.S. policy. Bin Laden understood that he needed to weaponize U.S. voters to apply pressure to the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon. He intended to use operations along with intensive messaging through U.S. media outlets to defeat the U.S. Bin Laden said “The US still thinks and brags that it has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut … and Somalia.” , demonstrating his perception that the U.S’s lack of political will caused deterrence to fail. The inability for the U.S. and its allies to provide meaningful deterrence costs 20 years of blood and treasure, along with the untold losses of shifted priorities from investing in the U.S. to building up Iraq and Afghanistan. How much costlier would a failed deterrence prove when dealing with a peer-competitor?

Investing in Deterrence

The U.S. has not operated against a peer competitor for over a generation. Competition spending for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense, as a percent of Gross Domestic Product, shows that the U.S. spending averaged 5.8% from 1980-1984 and 6.3% from 1985 to 1989. While there is an argument for less defense spending, from a historical perspective, how much larger is the cost of national reconstruction after a devastating WWIII, if it’s even possible? Defense spending and NATO were a preventative investment, so that larger investments to rebuild countries analogous to post-World War 2 could be avoided. With the advent of long-range weapons, the importance of the information environment, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the strategic emergence of the cyber domain, the quality of defense through geography is reduced. The DOD, along with other agencies and partners must have the ability to deter aggression through their ability to deliver effects on an adversary while preventing the adversary from delivering effects to the U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz said “It is the function of the Navy to carry the war to the enemy so that it will not be fought on the U.S. soil.” Today’s reality requires other departments, agencies, and partners to provide this function.

To be clear, investing in the military pays dividends to society and the government through advancements in technology and quality-of-life. This is evident in examples like Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), microwave ovens, jet engines, canned food, digital cameras, aerosol bug spray, weather radar, EpiPens, blood transfusion, blood banks, computers, and even the internet itself were all from military innovation. The microwave was released in 1947, by the end of the 1960s over one million microwave ovens were sold every year. How much money has the microwave generated in sales tax since 1947? How much has your life been simplified by quick reheating of lunch? How much money has GPS, canned food, or the internet generated for the economy in terms of jobs and taxes? How many lives have been saved from blood transfusion and blood banks? The importance of investing in military research exists in its ability to secure national objectives across the instruments of national power.

Way Forward

Returning to the Rocky 3 analogy, Rocky’s ability to fight did not deter or impose doubt on Clubber Lang. The U.S. must include a healthy defense industrial base as part of a larger deterrence strategy. To do this, the U.S. must ensure that it maintains long-term core capabilities in manufacturing reshoring and domestic resource development. While collaborations for production with allies and partners have benefits, the U.S. must ensure that these relationships are not exploitable. There are unquestionably hard decisions to enable these conditions, however, these measures will provide the U.S. the flexibility to act if deterrence fails. The U.S. needs to prioritize personnel, platforms, and ammunition to promote a constant state of readiness. 

The DOD must partner with industry and other agencies to determine how pursuits of innovation and research within the DOD can contribute to civilian applications. Such collaboration will clarify to politicians and the general population how DOD investments will have a direct benefit to the entire economy and improve quality-of-life for every citizen. Returning to the analogy, like Rocky improving his training after his loss, Congress must invest accordingly to prevent peer adversarial competition from escalating to the U.S’s Clubber winning. Ensuring core capability and political stability is not achieved by being content with the national equivalency of being a guest on the Muppet Show when the adversary is training to deliver a knock-out. The U.S. must keep the “Eye of the Tiger” focused on threats. 

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