Report Finds U.S. Military Woefully Unprepared For Next Major Conflict

"We are closer today to World War III than we've been since the Second World War," said former President Donald Trump at the Believers' Summit in West Palm Beach on July 26.

Trump hyperbole? No.

The former president is not alone in thinking this way. "China and Russia's 'no-limits' partnership, formed in February 2022 just days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea, each of which presents its own significant threat to U.S. interests," states the Commission on the National Defense Strategy in its 114-page report released three days after Trump spoke. "This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war."

Not only is global conflict on the horizon, the Commission's report reveals America is woefully unprepared for what is coming. Take the Department of Defense, for instance. "The Commission finds that DoD's business practices, byzantine research and development and procurement systems, reliance on decades-old military hardware, and culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance," the report states. "Such methods are not suited to today's strategic environment."

The Commission got that right. "The report is yet again a stark reminder of the U.S. government's failure to both anticipate the militaristic rise of Communist China as well as to prepare our nation to deter, let alone defeat such a threat, which the Commission rightly assesses that the U.S. military is not prepared to do," James Fanell, co-author of Embracing Communist China: America's Greatest Strategic Failure, told Gatestone. "The situation is dire."

Fanell, also a former U.S. Navy captain who served as Director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, recommends Congress take "immediate and massive action" to rebuild the armed forces, especially the Navy.

The problems in the U.S. military go well beyond a shortage of modern ships, planes, and weapons, however. Blaine Holt, a former Air Force brigadier general, tells Gatestone that "the root of the Department of the Air Force's trouble is cultural." "The Department's usual laser focus on mission has been supplanted by Marxist-inspired instruction, an eradication of meritocracy in favor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion promotion programs, with an extra emphasis placed on administration fetishes like climate change," he points out. "The Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian militaries are not burdened by such nonsense."

An overhaul of the magnitude Fanell and Holt recommend requires the support of the American people. "The U.S. public are largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare," the Commission states.

Roger that. Americans think they live in peace because President Joe Biden, for whatever reason, has not seen fit to have an honest conversation about the perilous state of the world. Only a few times during his presidency has he come close to talking about the international situation in a realistic fashion.

In October 2022 and June 2023, he suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons were real. In August of last year, at a private event for Democratic Party donors in Salt Lake City, Utah, he called China a "ticking time-bomb" and then said "that's not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things." Unfortunately, Biden has not addressed the American people in a comprehensive and meaningful way about the greatest threat they face.

The leaders of America's enemies, however, are not squeamish. Putin has to talk to the Russian people about war because he is in fact waging one in Ukraine, and China's President Xi Jinping relishes making war references at every opportunity. "Dare to fight!" is one of his favorite lines.

The Commission on the National Defense Strategy is clear on what must be done: "A bipartisan 'call to arms' is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11."

An event like that is coming. Retired Admiral James Stavridis in 2021 co-authored 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. It is unlikely, however, that bad actors will give America a decade more to prepare.

General Mike Minihan, the chief of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command, predicted in a memorandum to his command leaked in January of last year that America would be in a war with China "in 2025." Former Admiral Mike Gilday, when he was the U.S. Navy's top officer in October 2022, warned that China could go to war at any moment.

Xi has focused his regime's efforts on getting all Chinese society -- the People's Liberation Army and civilians -- ready to fight a sustained war. The Financial Times reported in February that Chinese state enterprises are forming militia units, and a factory owner once told me that the Communist Party has taken over privately owned factories to turn out items for the military.

Xi Jinping can see the United States is starting to stir; why would he wait for his foe to get ready?

It is incomprehensible that the U.S. after the Cold War would allow militant regimes to develop stronger fighting forces than its own, but that is exactly what happened.

Originally published at Gatestone Institute