U.S. Defense Strategy After the Pandemic
Frank Hoffman
April 20, 2021
After a year of loss and lockdowns, America’s vaccination efforts are slowly allowing the country to reopen. At long last, things are very slowly starting to feel normal. Among other things, this moment provides analysts the opportunity to consider how the pandemic has affected domestic support for America’s defense strategy, and whether the country will be able to afford it over the long term. This will be a difficult conversation, as it will necessarily require questioning longstanding assumptions in America’s strategic community.
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work kicked off the conversation in a recent article. Published before the Biden administration released its Fiscal Year 2022 presidential budget request, Work’s essay highlighted the difficult trade-offs facing Defense Department leadership if, as he anticipated correctly, defense spending remained flat over the next year.
While Work raised a number of salient points, I’m concerned that his analysis will ultimately prove too optimistic. After the devastation of the pandemic, Americans and their leaders in Washington are right to scrutinize defense spending when investments in public health would seem to have a more direct impact on their well-being. In my view, it’s entirely plausible that in the near- to medium-term, the Defense Department will have to grapple with deep spending cuts.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/04/u-s-defense-strategy-after-the-pandemic/
