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The US is facing its biggest war threat in almost a century and is woefully unprepared, according to the leaders of a congressionally chartered commission.
Immediate threats not felt since the Cold War from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, must be tackled with additional spending and weaponry reviews, said members of the bipartisan commission, which was tasked with examining the country’s defense strategy.
Arguing that things have gone from bad to worse since a review six years ago, former Congresswoman Jane Harman told reporters at a Defense Writers’ Group on Tuesday: “When we got together for this report…[we] began to realize that the situation was even worse than it was in 2018 and that we were at the risk of having our authoritarian adversaries outpace us and that we really run the risk of…a global conflict because of the incredibly dangerous international situation that we face.”
The commission recommended “rebuilding the defense industrial base,” noting that China has 10 shipyards making vessels for its Navy while the US has “kind of 1 1/2.” And as Ukraine and Russia use millions of drones in their conflict, a new initiative in the US would build only tens of thousands, the commission said.
“We have been optimizing a system for acquiring extremely expensive, vulnerable platforms that we can’t afford to lose right when we’re on the cusp of a huge revolution in warfare,” said Ambassador Eric Edelman, vice chair of the commission. “The Pentagon builds to the speed of bureaucracy. That’s not an industrial base or a business model that’s going to sustain us.”
The leaders pointed to the need for a partnership between “the Pentagon and the greater tech community” to increase innovation and urged investment in a workforce that’s capable of carrying out large-scale projects.
“We have to look at our educational system to produce the kind of workforce we need to be able to sustain the effort that’s going to be required,” said Edelman. “This sort of human investment will take time, possibly the most precious resource.”
He added: “It is expensive to defend the United States of America, but what we’re talking about in this report is restoring our ability to deter conflict, and failure to deter conflict is always more expensive than spending the money that’s necessary to deter and defend.”
CNN’s Michael Smerconish commented on the announcement over the weekend, saying: “We are no longer the colossus that can bend the world to our will — we are facing dangerous circumstances on many fronts including China, Russia, North Korea, and the Middle East.”
The announcement has taken on renewed significance as military tensions countinue to steadily escalate in the Middle East after 100 people were killed and over 400 were wounded in an Israeli pager strike that targeted southern Lebanon in September, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Fears that the US is being dragged into an inter-regional war between Israel and Iran loom, as the US clings to ties with allied Israel.
