REBOOTING THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
TRAE STEPHENSJUNE 6, 2022
COMMENTARYAnduril-Sentry-2
As war rages in Europe, citizens of the world’s democracies would be forgiven for wondering what went wrong.
Just about three decades ago, the Soviet Union fell, and some proclaimed an “end of history.” Former Soviet states appeared to be on the path to liberalization. The Chinese Communist Party would, with economic growth and globalization, become a responsible stakeholder of world order — or so leaders assured us.
But things took a different direction. Today, the world’s leading democracies do not have the technology they need to deter revisionist powers that, as Russia has shown, are willing to launch major wars to achieve their aims.
America’s defense industrial base, which once produced technology straight out of science fiction, all but stopped innovating. China and Russia aggressively modernized their armed forces, building weapons specifically designed to neutralize America’s. The results are sobering: Today, in U.S. Defense Department wargames that model conflicts with China, China wins.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/rebooting-the-arsenal-of-democracy/
