Former Secretary of Defense and former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates recently observed in the pages of Foreign Affairs that, “The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own. Not since the Korean War has the United States had to contend with powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia. And no one alive can remember a time when an adversary had as much economic, scientific, technological, and military power as China does today.” Worse yet, he accurately noted that there was a great deal of similarity between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin with regard to their imperialist agenda and in their conviction that the United States was in decline. Even more significant is that both Xi and Putin have “…already made major miscalculations at home and abroad and seem likely to make even bigger ones in the future,” and these could result in “catastrophic consequences for themselves—and for the United States.”

According to Gates, “The problem…is that at the very moment that events demand a strong and coherent response from the United States, the country cannot provide one. Its fractured political leadership—Republican and Democratic, in the White House and in Congress—has failed to convince enough Americans that developments in China and Russia matter. Political leaders have failed to explain how the threats posed by these countries are interconnected. They have failed to articulate a long-term strategy to ensure that the United States, and democratic values more broadly, will prevail.”

Secretary Gates is hardly an alarmist. Indeed, he has historically played down the Russian threat, and he is ironically at least partially responsible for the situation he so well describes. Gates served as Secretary of Defense in both the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations. During the Bush Administration he attacked “…Next-War-itis—the propensity of much of the defense establishment to be in favor of what might be needed in a future conflict.” This is very much the mentality that resulted in the current crisis situation that Gates accurately assesses. The U.S. military power and the industrial base that supports it has been reduced to the point that the United States has difficulty in supplying a single medium-sized war in Ukraine. Unless the United States takes action, the shortage of munitions problem could continue to deteriorate.

Congressman Mike Gallaher (R.-Wis) has recently pointed out that in a conflict with China the United States would run out of long-range precision missiles and bombs in less than a week. The situation is probably a little better with regard to Russia because of its expenditure of weapons in its war against Ukraine and the poor performance of its long-range strike missiles. In a simultaneous conflict with Russia and China, a threat that the United States Strategic Commission detailed, the situation would be even more dire. In light of the fact that a high percentage of U.S. fighters and bombers are pre-stealth, a large number of long-range precision strike missiles is critically important.

The United States is even short of short-range precision munitions. In the war against ISIS, “…the Air Force was using up Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) so quickly that they were being loaded onto combat aircraft in the Middle East a scant 24 hours after being crated up and shipped from Boeing’s St. Louis factory.” In FY2021, bomb production was about cut in half. Reportedly, by mid-2023, “America’s arsenal is running dangerously low.” The empty arsenal problem also applies to much of NATO. This is the result of decades of inadequate defense spending.

The situation the United States faces regarding the Russian and Chinese nuclear threat is likely even worse than what Secretary Gates has outlined. Some of Gates’ assumptions such as Russian compliance with the New START Treaty are clearly more than a best-case scenario in light of the reports indicating Russian treaty violations and the lack of New START Treaty on-site inspections for almost four years. Secretary Gates’ assessment that the combined Russian and Chinese nuclear threat could “be nearly double the size of its [the United States] own” is likely to be a substantial underestimation of what the Chinese and the Russians may actually have. Indeed, in 2020, noted Russian journalist Pavel Felgenhauer wrote that, “Indeed, taking into account non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons, which no one has ever verifiably counted, Russia may have more (maybe twice as many overall) than all the other official or unofficial nuclear powers taken together.”

When he was Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates certainly supported the nuclear Triad and took action to remedy the catastrophic decline in Air Force nuclear weapons proficiency. This included the firing of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff over issues involving Air Force nuclear weapons security. Still, Secretary Gates did a poor job of defending Defense Department interests during the New START Treaty negotiations. This included the dramatic decline in the substance of the limitations and verification regime in the New START Treaty compared to the original START Treaty. Moreover, his 2010 Nuclear Posture Review was based upon unrealistic optimistic assumptions concerning the threats the United States faces and the nature of the world. The U.S. nuclear modernization program during Gates’ tenure as Secretary of Defense did not include either a new ICBM or a new bomber. Indeed, in 2009, Secretary Gates cancelled the Next Generation Bomber program claiming that its capabilities were too expensive and unnecessary. He also ended production of the F-22 at a fraction of the number that the Air Force said was required. During Gates’ tenure as Secretary of Defense (and both before and after) Army procurement focused upon low-intensity conflict. This began under George W. Bush with the conversion of many Army heavy brigades to “medium” Striker brigades which are inadequate to fight heavy enemy units equipped with tanks. Indeed, the Striker proved vulnerable even in the low-intensity Iraq conflict. For more than two decades there was no modernization of Army heavy tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. In 2023, Army strength was lower than at any other time since 1940.

Secretary Gates notes that, “Xi has directed the Chinese military to be ready by 2027 to successfully invade Taiwan.” In 2023, reportedly, “Chinese President Xi Jinping bluntly told President Joe Biden during their recent summit in San Francisco that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided, according to three current and former U.S. officials.” Gates certainly takes the threat seriously; however, he is too optimistic about the current situation. According to Gates, “The U.S. military has been healthily funded in recent years, and modernization programs are underway in all three legs of the nuclear triad—intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers, and submarines.” His claim about the “healthy funding” of the U.S. military in the last several years is not credible. In light of the multiple threats, current defense funding is clearly inadequate. The Biden Administration attempted to cut defense spending compared to that planned by the Trump Administration before the world changed as a result of the Russian December 2021 ultimatum to NATO which sought to get NATO to acquiesce to Russian domination of the states of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The two are very closely connected.

The Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, which cut some nuclear weapons programs, did not fully take into account the new security situation that was created by the blatant Russian aggression unleashed by President Putin in his 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s intent to restore Soviet imperial dominance. The Biden Administration’s proposed FY2023 defense budget involved Army troop cuts, substantial cuts in aircraft production, erosion of Air Force readiness and ship construction. The first two Biden Administration proposed defense budgets contained a very large reduction in the already inadequate production level of U.S. precision conventional munitions. Inadequate precision conventional weapons procurement is continued in the Biden administration’s proposed FY2024 budget. The funding situation with regard to the rest of NATO is considerably worse. This is a significant part of the security problem faced by the United States.

The purchasing power of the U.S. defense budget has been negatively affected by the Biden Administration’s inflationary policies. For the last four years the Army budget has grown less than inflation. This is very important because the focus of the Army on low-intensity conflict for the last two decades has reduced its combat capability in high-intensity conflict. While the Congress after the Russian invasion of Ukraine blocked most but not all of the Biden Administration’s cuts, the programmatic effort is still less than what was planned by the Trump Administration before the current threat had been made obvious by Putin’s aggression not to mention Chinese preparation for a war in the Far East in the near future.

According to Secretary Gates, “The Pentagon is buying new combat aircraft (F-35s, modernized F-15s, and a new, sixth-generation fighter.” This assessment is much too optimistic. The 72 F-35 and F-15EX fighters that the Biden Administration proposes the Air Force buy in its FY2024 budget proposal is barely enough to prevent further aging of an already very old force. Moreover,  the size of the fighter force will continue to fall. In its first budget proposal, the Biden Administration proposed cutting F-35 production to only 33 aircraft a year, almost a 50% cut in the Trump Administration’s projected level. (The Trump program had slightly reduced the average age of U.S. fighters to 29.1 years in 2021.) The Biden Administration’s FY2024 budget proposal calls for a F-35 production until the late 2020s at a rate of only 48 aircraft per year. This is of particular concern in light of the Chinese deployment of large numbers of the J-20 stealth fighter. Additionally, the Chinese are developing upgrades for it. The sixth generation fighter (NGAD) that Gates mentioned is almost a decade away. For the air dominance mission, the upgraded F-15 is a questionable program. While a great historic fighter, the F-15 is pre-stealth and has lost much of the dominance it had during the Cold War. According to a recent Heritage Foundation study, “Air Force readiness and capacity levels are at all-time lows.” (Emphasis in the original).

Current Navy procurement of the F-35 is so limited that it will take a decade to provide nine operational carriers with a single small squadron of F-35s. Most of the aircraft will continue to be 4.5 generation F-18s. The Marine Corp will be flying very old F-18s until 2030. The Navy dropped out of the JASSM long-range cruise missile program from 2004 to 2021; hence, its inventory is still quite small. The main focus of the Marine Corps aircraft program is not long-range strike but rather close air support.

Among the conclusions reached by the bipartisan United States Strategic Commission concerning United States conventional military requirements are the following critical points:

• “…. U.S. and allied conventional military advantages in Asia are decreasing at the same time the potential for two simultaneous theater conflicts is increasing.”
• “The speed and scale of success of U.S. forces in meeting that aggression in one theater may greatly influence the chances of conflict, or success in conflict, in the other theater.”
• “…Russian conventional forces, while inferior to fully mobilized NATO forces, will continue to have a space/time advantage against NATO states on Russia’s periphery, potentially enabling them to occupy such states’ territory in a fait accompli before NATO forces can fully mobilize in their defense, thus presenting an existential threat to territorial sovereignty of Allies and partners.”
• “…Russia’s use of large-scale conventional military force against Ukraine demonstrates a propensity to take risk and tolerate significant loss. The outcome of the war in Ukraine could influence future calculations – and indeed miscalculations – about the risks and benefits of aggression.”
• “The Commission heard significant concerns from regional Combatant Commanders regarding the capabilities and positioning of their conventional forces. In short, shifting to a necessary two-war construct requires increases in the size, type, and posture of U.S. and allied conventional forces. In the absence of such increases, the United States will likely have to increase its reliance on its nuclear deterrent.”
• “The United States [needs to] prioritize funding and accelerate long-range non-nuclear precision strike programs to meet the operational need and in greater quantities than currently planned.”
• “The United States urgently [needs to] deploy a more resilient space architecture and adopt a strategy that includes both offensive and defensive elements to ensure U.S. access to and operations in space.”
• “By the 2030s China’s conventional military build-up could turn the conventional military balance in Asia against the U.S. and its Allies.”
• “The United States and its Allies [need to] take steps to ensure they are at the cutting edge of emerging technologies – such as big data analytics, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) – to avoid strategic surprise and potentially enhance the U.S. strategic posture.”
• “[The United States needs to make] Strategic investments in research, development, test and engineering of advanced sensor architectures, interceptors, cruise and hypersonic missile defenses, and area or point defenses are urgently needed.”
• “The United States [needs to] develop and field homeland IAMD [Integrated Air and Missile Defense] that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat.”
• “U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) needs improved warning and defensive capabilities to protect critical U.S. infrastructure from conventional or nuclear attack from air- and sea-launched cruise missiles—systems that ground-based interceptors (GBIs) are not designed to counter.”

The Biden Administration has repeatedly stated it has taken no action to enhance U.S. nuclear deterrence during the current Ukraine crisis. This is in stark contrast with Vladimir Putin who in December 2023 said that, “…Given the changing nature of military threats and the emergence of new military and political risks, the role of the nuclear triad, which ensures the balance of power, the strategic balance of power in the world, has significantly increased.” As a result, the United States is in a serious crisis with a non-crisis nuclear deterrent posture. The U.S nuclear deterrent will continue to age and decline in effectiveness until the 2030s, and even then improvements will be very gradual. If Xi invades Taiwan in 2027, even by Biden Administration estimates, China would have increased its “operational” nuclear warheads about 40% to 700. The 700 warhead estimate will likely understate the growth of Chinese nuclear warhead numbers.

According to former Assistant Secretary of Defense and senior National Security Council official Frank Miller, there is no sense of urgency in the U.S. strategic nuclear modernization program. While China is massively expanding its nuclear forces and Russia says it has modernized 95 percent of its strategic nuclear force, the comparable United States number is zero since 1998. By 2027, the existing U.S. nuclear modernization program will not have deployed a single new nuclear delivery vehicle. Thus, during this period, the U.S. nuclear deterrent will continue to age. As the Heritage Foundation has observed, “Age degrades reliability by increasing the potential for systems to break down or fail to respond correctly.” Except for a small number of B-21 bombers, all of the U.S. strategic modernization program will not even start until after 2030. Furthermore, the new Sentinel ICBMs, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and the B-21 bombers are already behind schedule. The only improvement between now and 2027 will be the introduction of the B61 Mod 12 and 13 bombs which are nothing more than nuclear Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) versions of 1960 vintage bombs. They will give the B-2 bombers a very tiny standoff capability compared to the previous gravity bombs. The Air Force does not regard the JDAM as adequate against advanced air defenses and is developing a conventional “…successor to the JDAM that would have longer range, reduced signature, and greater maneuvering capability to avoid terminal air defenses…” The United States Strategic Posture Commission report concluded, “Russian modernization and expansion of its air and missile defense capabilities beyond the Moscow region will pose a growing threat not only to the efficacy of U.S. nuclear forces but to conventional forces as well.”

As Secretary Gates indicates, a national consensus that dealing with the current threat is certainly important. In December 2023, President Putin even declared that his war against Ukraine would ensure Russia’s “global sovereignty.” What is at stake is much broader than the future of Ukraine. As Russia expert Vladimir Socor has pointed out, “Most Western governments, nevertheless, remain unwilling to recognize that Russia is also at war with them in Ukraine. With Ukraine as the central arena, Russia conducts a wider, hybrid war against the West in multiple theaters to revise the international system.” Putin now denies any intent to attack NATO. Yet the Putin regime said the same thing for months prior to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even denies that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an “invasion.”

However, another trillion-dollar U.S. defeat like President Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco will not prevent a NATO conflict with Russia. Noted China expert Gordon G. Chang has quite reasonably linked the message sent by President Biden’s “precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021” to “A series of catastrophes [that] continue to this day.” These include the stronger Russia-China alliance, their support of insurgencies in Africa, the Russian war against Ukraine and the current crisis in the Middle East. Played out in Europe, the consequences would be much more serious. The Biden Administration’s no-win approach to conflict is: 1) determining our assistance policy toward Ukraine, 2) lengthening the war, 3) increasing the cost of assistance by the United States and the NATO nations, and 4) making the conflict more deadly. Chang notes that, “With China and Russia fully supporting disruptive elements, it is no wonder that the world has passed from a period of general calm to one of constant turbulence.” He compared these developments with the period leading up to the Second World War.

The Biden Administration’s weak policy toward nuclear deterrence is one of the biggest problems the United States faces in dealing with the combined Russian and Chinse nuclear threat. In June 2023, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, “…the United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them. We’ve been there. We’ve learned that lesson.” There appears to be a rejection of the nuclear deterrence policy every U.S. administration has pursued for decades (i.e., a rejection of “second to none.”)

The Biden Administration is maintaining the fantasy that our national security can be advanced by a new nuclear arms control agreements with Russia. Its latest arms control proposal was rejected almost immediately by the Putin regime. As the recent report of the United States Strategic Posture Commission recognized: 1) “…there is no prospect of a meaningful arms control Treaty being negotiated with Russia in the foreseeable future…”; 2) “Over the past 20 years, Russia has either violated or has failed to comply with nearly every major arms control treaty or agreement to which the United States is or was a party.”; and 3) “…given Russia’s history of noncompliance and illegal treaty suspensions, and China’s continued intransigence on arms control dialogue, the United States cannot develop its strategic posture based on the assumption that arms control agreements are imminent or will always be in force.”

The Biden Administration’s efforts to prevent the destruction of Hamas (in the name of humanitarian concern about civilian casualties) is a strong indicator of the approach it would take in responding to a Russian attack on NATO. In a war against Russia or China or worse both, collateral damage cannot be the primary concern or the United States and the West will lose. Russia has the potential to win a war against NATO if NATO fights the same type of war it is forcing Ukraine to fight against Russia by prohibiting attacks on Russian territory with the weapons being provided. Russian nuclear escalation has to be deterred by firepower.

The Biden Administration’s no-win approach will likely result in a high casualty war of attrition. As Socor has pointed out, “Inadequate and inconsistent supplies of arms and munitions predetermined the stalling of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.” Under the Biden Administration’s likely approach, NATO also loses the advantage of the Soviet-style Russian command system. The centralized decision-making in Moscow is poorly suited to deal effectively with a fluid battlefield because it lacks tactical flexibility. Moreover, Russia could still win if it escalates to nuclear weapons in light of the West’s unilateral elimination of most of its tactical nuclear weapons. The Biden Administration’s fear of nuclear war is matched only by its aversion to the idea that nuclear escalation must be deterred by nuclear firepower.

Dr. Mark B. Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy. Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service, Dr. Schneider served as Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Director for Strategic Arms Control Policy and Representative of the Secretary of Defense to the Nuclear Arms Control Implementation Commission. He also served in the senior Foreign Service as a Member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.