Keith B. Payne, “A Time for Choosing”: Urgent Action or Continuing Folly, No. 580, March 26, 2024
“A Time for Choosing”: Urgent Action or Continuing Folly
Dr. Keith B. Payne is a co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and former Senior Advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Introduction
Washington’s global system of alliances is facing extremely tough internal and external problems. These problems are neither fleeting nor prosaic; they are now structural and will require significant efforts to ameliorate. That harsh reality would matter little if alliances were unimportant to Western security. But they are the West’s key advantage over an aggressive, authoritarian bloc, including a Sino-Russian entente, North Korea and Iran, that seeks to overturn the liberal world order created and sustained by U.S. and allied power. To maintain that advantage, Washington must recognize and respond to those threats, while resisting the usual anti-defense spending/anti-military themes of the “progressive” Left and the seeming neo-isolationism of some on the political Right.
U.S. defense budgets in decline when adjusted for inflation,[1] and a trend within parts of the Republican Party to oppose continuing military aid to Ukraine, are not lost on allies who fear for their security and are ultimately dependent on a seemingly reticent United States for their security. As threat conditions become increasingly severe and obvious, some allies, particularly those who are on the frontlines vis-à-vis Russia, China, and North Korea, understandably are increasingly alarmed.
Evidence of this alarm includes open allied discussions about acquiring independent nuclear capabilities—with the corresponding potential for a cascade of nuclear proliferation. Perhaps most surprising are open German and Japanese discussions of independent nuclear deterrence capabilities.[2] In Japan, the subject is tied directly to the continuing credibility of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent and has moved from being politically taboo to an open public discussion.[3] In February 2023, a Japanese defense study chaired by former military chief of staff Ryoichi Oriki reportedly suggested that “Japan ease its three nonnuclear principles that prohibit possessing, producing or allowing entry into Japan of nuclear weapons.”[4]
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