We asked Dowd and Hendrix about how the United States needs to address the national security challenges it now faces:

Q: Former Sen. Dan Coats notes in the Foreword to “The New Security Blueprint” that the United States faces the most complex and dangerous set of threats to its security since the Cold War. How well is the United States, in your assessment, prepared to deal with the myriad of threats it now faces?

Alan Dowd: Not as well prepared as we could be. Both parties have allowed deterrent military strength to atrophy — or in some cases, as with the bipartisan gamble known as sequestration, actually whittled down our deterrent military strength. “No enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of our military than sequestration,” former Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis observed. Soon after the sequestration guillotine fell, the military had to deal with the voracious effects of post-pandemic inflation. The result: The Pentagon not only fields a smaller miliary with older equipment, but the Pentagon’s ability to expand and modernize capabilities is diminished because a dollar doesn’t go as far as it did. However, there is a positive caveat here: Thanks to alliance structures that simply didn’t exist at the beginning of Cold War I — and thanks to several allies stepping up — we are not as poorly prepared today as we have been at other periods of high threat. Several allies (Britain France, Poland, Japan, South Korea) and key security groupings (a stronger and bigger NATO, the U.S.-Japan-South Korea and U.S.-Japan-Australia triangles, the Australia-UK-U.S. security partnership, the U.S.-Philippines alliance, and the strategic security dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States known as the Quad) are rising to the challenge and complementing U.S. efforts in these early chapters of Cold War II.

Jerry Hendrix: On its face, we are well prepared in terms of resources. We remain the most amply supplied nation in the world in terms of natural resources, geographic placement, and even characteristics less examined like workforce demographics. I wouldn’t change places with any other nation on Earth, but the fact is that we haven’t been taking the threat seriously and we have planned accordingly. There are huge threats to us right now largely because we allowed ourselves to atrophy in our overall strategic capabilities and thus have, in many ways, invited the competitors that we now face to challenge us.

Q: Which threat causes you the most concern now?

Jerry Hendrix: The easy thing would be to say all of the above, but we can’t say that. In World War II our leaders made the wise choice of confronting the threat of Nazi Germany first before turning to Japan. Some voices today would make a similar geographic distinction and say we must face China first in the Indo-Pacific region before turning to Russia in Europe and then Iran in the Middle East, but even this construct misses the point that we presently are a free capitalistic people confronting authoritarian/centrally controlled economies. We must reform ourselves internally to politically face the threat, and then regain control of the economic levers that move the world before confronting the military threats before us. It’s a hard point, but we have lost touch with who we are and must reground ourselves in fundamental truths.

Alan Dowd: My biggest concern is the mutation and merging of the three major regional crises currently confronting the free world — Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, Iran’s Hamas-Houthi-Hezbollah proxy war on Israel, China’s military coercion of Taiwan and the Philippines —into a global war. Given the many linkages connecting these three aggressor states — and the free world’s commitments to the nations under attack and under threat — such a war is possible. Preventing the spread of these conflicts will require clarity and capability on the part of America and its free world allies. It pays to recall that the antecedent to World War II was a series of disparate regional wars and military diktats launched by aggressor states.

Q: As has been the case before in American history, a strong sentiment of isolationism has emerged in recent years among voters and some of our elected leaders. What do you say to those who argue that threats in Europe and Asia are not of primary importance to the United States?

Alan Dowd: Threats in Europe and Asia don’t stay in Europe and Asia. Confronting those threats earlier is less costly than confronting them later. Isolationists of both the far-left and far-right talk about the costs of international leadership and global engagement — and they are indeed high — but never about the costs of isolation or disengagement. They are higher: Nanking in 1937; Czechoslovakia in 1938; Poland in 1939; Pearl Harbor in 1941; Korea in 1950; post-Soviet Afghanistan, which birthed the Taliban, which provided safe haven to al-Qaeda, which maimed Manhattan; Iraq in 2011, which spawned ISIS; Afghanistan in 2021, which is birthing another generation of nightmares. “In each cycle of retreat,” as historian Henry Nau observes, America “leaves the world at its own peril.” Moreover, there are benefits to global engagement —benefits the isolationists fail to consider: U.S. engagement rolled back a dark age of fascist totalitarianism; rehabilitated Germany and Japan; rescued South Korea and West Berlin from the prison yard of communism; prevented a second 9/11 and pushed the battlefront away from our shores; and staved off a great-power war — and all its unthinkable consequences — for almost 80 years. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin observes, “Sometimes our greatest achievements are the bad things we stop from happening.”

Jerry Hendrix: In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower, then serving as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, approached Ohio Senator Robert Taft, the presumptive Republican nominee that year, to ask him if he would commit to supporting the NATO alliance. Taft, an isolationist, demurred, so Ike threw his hat into the ring. Since then both political parties have been committed to supporting our allies and partners around the world. Because many of them also make up the global trading system, they are very much a source of strength for our nation. Those today who voice isolationist sentiments are short-sighted and unwise and should be called out as such. The oceans can no longer protect us in the post-missile age.

Q: Russia invaded Ukraine more than two years ago and that war continues to grind on. What lessons should the U.S and our allies take from the war in Ukraine?

Jerry Hendrix: Confronting Russia regarding its goals of territorial aggrandizement represents a national interest of the United States that spans both parties and stretches back over a century. We must continue to support Ukraine with arms and other material support. It is their people who are fighting and dying. In this sense we are very much like Bourbon France, which supported the United States during our revolution. However, we must support Ukraine in such a manner that allows it to recover all of its territory and not live in such fear of Russian escalation, which means supplying Ukraine with not only the right types of weapons but also the right quantities of them, something we have not done yet.

Alan Dowd: First, deterring war is far less costly than waging war. The war in Ukraine offers a glimpse of what a PRC assault on Taiwan, Russian attack on NATO or Korean War II would unleash. Such a conflict would produce massive combat losses and scar the homeland — which is why America must return to the time-tested principle of deterrence. In the eight years before World War I, America devoted an average of 0.7 percent of GDP to defense. Waging war devoured an average of 16.1 percent of GDP — and 116,516 Americans. In the decade before World War II, America devoted an average of 1.1 percent of GDP to defense. Waging war devoured an average of 27 percent of GDP—and 405,399 Americans. During the Cold War, America invested an average of 7 percent of GDP on defense. That didn’t end all wars, but it did deter Moscow from starting World War III. Ominously, U.S. defense spending hovers in the 3-percent-of-GDP range today.

Second, resiliency and industrial capacity are essential. During the Cold War, America maintained defense industries capable of fielding technologies and systems — in sufficient quantities — to wage and win a global war. Because America maintained those capabilities, it deterred war. Related, America grafted resiliency into national-security strategy during the Cold War: The highway system would serve a dual purpose in a time of war. Civil-defense programs and continuity-of-government protocols were rehearsed. Mountain hideaways, ships and planes were ready to serve as command-and-control nodes. These preparations reinforced deterrence. Twenty-first-century equivalents — analog backups for digital systems, hardening against EMPs, systems to identify deepfakes, backup power generation and water purification — are lacking.

Q: Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently warned that an “alliance of authoritarian powers” – China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia – are increasingly working together to oppose Western democracies. What steps do the U.S. and its allies need to take to counter that authoritarian alliance?

Alan Dowd: He’s correct. What I call “the axis of autocrats” is trying to roll back the free world. Russia is erasing Ukraine; occupies parts of Georgia and Moldova; and props up tyrants in Europe, the Americas and Africa. China has absorbed Hong Kong; threatens to seize Taiwan; attacked India; is militarizing islands in the South China Sea; is tripling its nuclear arsenal; and is conducting a cyber-siege against the free world. North Korea is sending ammunition and troops to Moscow. Iran supplies Moscow with kamikaze-drones, launched missiles at Israel, has unleashed its Hamas-Houthi-Hezbollah hydra and harbors al-Qaeda’s leader. To prevent great-power war, the free world must rebuild its deterrent strength; leverage its resources (democracies in the Americas, Euro-Atlantic, Indo-Pacific and Middle East enfold 71 percent of global GDP; 19 of the 20 largest tech companies are headquartered in the Free World; the world’s largest lithium deposits are in California and along the Oregon-Nevada border); fortify frontline democracies; reengage the battle of ideas (“A little less détente,” President Reagan argued, “and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions”); and harmonize and organize these efforts under a global alliance of democracies. Larger than NATO, smaller than the UN, dedicated to what Franklin Roosevelt called “armed defense of democratic existence,” an Alliance of Democracies could play a role where NATO won’t (due to geographic limitations) and where the UN can’t (due to autocratic roadblocks and systemic glitches). Such a body wouldn’t be a panacea for the world’s ills, but it could defend the frontlines of freedom and promote the free world’s shared interests.

Jerry Hendrix: These nations are dependent upon the West for money and wealth. We must coordinate our efforts to isolate them economically from all contact with Western markets and wealth as well as be prepared to strike back at them in a manner that holds them accountable for their efforts and the actions of their proxies. Again, we have been too hesitant and fearful of escalation. Between the United States and Europe, we hold high-trump cards, but we must be prepared to play them. We should also pay more attention to nations in Africa and South America who are presently being courted by these powers and should attempt to draw them into our economic and political circles.

Interview conducted by Tim Swarens, Summer 2024.