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Amid growing concerns over an increasingly threatening China, Many Americans wonder how our government left them so catastrophically vulnerable to a pharmaceutical embargo imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or how they remained so defenseless in the face of the world’s largest theft of personal information and intellectual property. ‘history. They wonder how it is possible that the world’s greatest military and our homeland security officials could leave our power grid so defenseless against an electromagnetic pulse, a method of attack that could fry most of the nation’s electrical circuits, erase almost all data on every hard drive. lead to and cause the loss of approximately 100 million lives.
The answer lies in the failure of the US government to develop an integrated national security strategy. The integrated strategy uses a “whole of government” approach that leverages all instruments of power, including material instruments. like military force, trade and finance, as well as non-material instruments such as public diplomacy, humanitarian aid and counter-influence.
Each of them is like an instrument in an orchestra. And players of individual instruments should be aware of this and not play the trumpet when the symphony prescribes the harp. This requires each actor to be an integrated strategic thinker who coordinates with the other instruments. And composers and conductors need to know what all the instruments are.
FBI and CISA say Chinese hackers breached multiple US telecom providers in targeted attack
Unfortunately, the federal government rarely has a coherent strategy, and leaders are often unaware of which instruments of power to use and when, especially those that are not commonly used like cultural intelligence and offensive deception operations. Fortunately, there are exceptions. The National Security Council has only occasionally developed such a strategy. The Pentagon has done it, but it is limited to mobilizing weapons, equipment and personnel. Virtually all other ministries neglect and underestimate the integrated strategy.
If the United States wants to fight China without war, it needs much better coordination of government agencies. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, file)
In the 1980s, the U.S. military faced a crisis of bureaucratic balkanization that weakened America. In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Act ended this situation by requiring the branches of the armed forces to integrate strategically, overcoming interservice rivalry and lack of effective coordination. Similar legislation is needed today to ensure civilian agencies coordinate with each other and with the Pentagon. Only then will all federal agencies work in synchronization, making them greater than the sum of their parts, allowing the United States to defend the nation and project its power more effectively across the world.
It’s been more than two decades since President George W. Bush declared that we were engaged in a “war of ideas” against radical Islamism. But there is no significant sphere of consequences in which America has successfully won the war of ideas against violent jihadists, in part because America has never fully engaged in ideological warfare as a form of prevention of radicalization.
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Authoritarian Russia remains undaunted in its global ambitions. And the CCP is using its enormous economic, propaganda and political warfare capabilities to gain ever greater global influence. All of these factors have made Americans – and our global interests – less secure. This is largely due to the failure of government agencies to invest the time and resources necessary to develop “idea warriors” and practitioners of other neglected arts capable of keeping the nation safe.
Some so-called experts argue that once we have exhausted economic sanctions to punish our adversaries, there is no choice but to use force. But that’s not true. There are many unused non-kinetic instruments of conflict. U.S. officials should consider using them before deciding to use force to defend our vital interests. This is what we did to contribute to the fall of the Soviet empire without war.
The answer lies in the failure of the US government to develop an integrated national security strategy. The integrated strategy uses a “whole of government” approach that leverages all instruments of power, including tangible instruments such as military force, trade and finance, and intangible instruments such as public diplomacy, humanitarian aid and counter-influence.
That’s why the new Trump administration should enact a civilian version of the Goldwater-Nichols Act to ensure better coordination across government and make needed investments in neglected entities like the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which controls Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and several other freedom radio stations, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and the CIA’s covert information operations. We have many instruments at our disposal, from international broadcasting to political warfare to psychological strategy, if only we used them.
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When asked how the United States should respond to China’s massive information warfare and strategic influence campaign against U.S. interests, a recent Indo-Pacific Command commander responded: ” We don’t do that.”
He was right. We don’t – but we should.