The Biden administration has just released its National Security Strategy, as mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. The NSS theoretically serves as the grand strategy document for the United States, linking the ends of policy and the means available to achieve them in light of limited resources.
In theory, the NSS shapes the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Strategic Guidance, documents developed and released by the secretary of defense as the basis of defense planning. It also affects the National Military Strategy, which is prepared by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and outlines how the military will implement its portion of the NSS.
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In practice, the process of developing a unified strategy that coordinates all aspects of government is hard to implement effectively. The sequencing is rarely linear. The budget cycle intervenes, forcing the Defense Department and the independent services to make critical decisions without an agreed-upon strategy. And real-world events can disrupt the process, requiring a modification of the discourse, as was the case in 2001 following 9/11.
On Strategy
“Strategy” is best understood as the interaction of three factors, all within the context of risk assessment: Ends, the goals or objectives set by national policy that the strategic actor seeks to achieve; Means, the resources available to the strategic actor; and Ways, the strategic actor’s plan of action for utilizing the means available. In essence, a good strategy articulates a clear set of achievable goals, identifies concrete threats to those goals, and then, given available resources, recommends the employment of the necessary instruments to meet and overcome those threats while minimizing their consequences.
Typically, “strategy” now refers not only to the direct application of military force in wartime but also to the use of all aspects of national power during peacetime to deter war and, if deterrence fails, win the resulting conflict. In its broadest sense, strategy is grand strategy.
As Edward Mead Earle wrote in his introduction to Makers of Modern Strategy: “Strategy is the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of a nation — or a coalition of nations — including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed. The highest type of strategy — sometimes called grand strategy — is that which so integrates the policies and armaments of the nation that resort to war is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory.”
Grand strategy is intimately linked to national policy in that it is designed to bring to bear all the elements of national power, military, economic, and diplomatic, in order to secure the ends of U.S. national policy — its interests and objectives. Although strategy can be described as the conceptual link between ends and means, it cannot be reduced to a mere mechanical exercise. Instead, it is a process, described by the late Colin Gray as “a constant adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world where chance, uncertainty, and ambiguity dominate.”
Strategy, properly understood, is a complex phenomenon comprising a number of elements, including geography, history, political and military institutions, and economic factors. Accordingly, strategy can be said to constitute a continual dialogue between policy on the one hand and these various factors on the other, in the context of the overall international security environment.
Real strategy must also take account of such factors as technology, the availability of resources, and geopolitical realities. The strategy of a state is not self-correcting. If conditions change, policymakers must be able to discern these changes and modify the nation’s goals accordingly. The U.S. has faced substantial geopolitical changes of great magnitude since the end of the Cold War: the decline and then reassertion of Russian power, the expansion of terrorist organizations, the rise of China, disorder in the Greater Middle East, and the new geopolitics of energy. U.S. grand strategy must adapt to such geopolitical changes.
Previous National Security Strategies
There have been two major criticisms of previous NSSs. First, that they have been long on aspirations and short on a discussion of the means to fulfill these aspirations. And second, that they have constituted, in the words of my Foreign Policy Research Institute colleague Nikolas Gvosdev, an “exercise in satisficing,” that is, accepting the first minimally satisfactory option for all parties rather than the optimal one, “between different bureaucratic and policy interests of the various departments of government and the political factions that make up [a president’s] administration.”
In my estimation, the best NSSs have addressed this first charge. Those would include the first one, which was issued during the Reagan administration, the one issued by George W. Bush after 9/11, the first one issued by Bill Clinton, and the one by Donald Trump. What these had in common were internal consistency and discussions of how we were going to achieve our objectives, rather than merely a wish list of aspirations.
As for the satisficing charge, I saw this firsthand when I served on the Joint Staff, J5 Strategy (DOD’s executive agency for the first Clinton NSS). I joked to my colleagues that every department had apparently submitted a term paper with a wish list of what it wanted included in the document. Fortunately, the National Security Council staff accepted 95% of the Joint Staff’s recommendations, which effectively eliminated most non-security-related topics in the document.
Competing National Security Strategies: Trump vs. Biden
President Joe Biden’s NSS does hit the mark on some issues, such as recognizing the threats that China and, to a lesser extent, Russia pose to the U.S. Nonetheless, it features the deficiencies of the worst previous iterations, especially those issued by Obama: It contains an aspirational wish list from all government departments and the “national security community,” which tends to favor a foreign policy approach based on “liberal internationalism,” is internally inconsistent and contradictory, and, most importantly, is “a-strategic,” that is, dismissive of geopolitics and the role of power in the international arena.
Biden’s NSS identifies two principal strategic challenges: competition between democracies and autocracies (i.e., China and Russia) and cooperation to address “shared challenges,” including climate change, arms control, food insecurity, global health threats, environmental problems, inequality among nations, and energy transition. Yet it prioritizes climate change and the “threat” of domestic terrorists over geopolitics.
While the document accuses China of having both the intent and ability to “reshape the international order,” it does not call for “containing” or “constraining” China. Instead, “we [will] compete vigorously” but also “manage the competition responsibly,” will “build mutual transparency” and “engage Beijing on more formal arms control efforts,” and “will always be willing to work with [China] where our interests align,” adding that disagreements should not “stop us from moving forward” and working together “for the good of our people and for the good of the world” on areas such as the “climate, pandemic threats, nonproliferation, countering illicit and illegal narcotics, the global food crisis, and macroeconomic issues.”
The NSS said we will not “withhold progress on existential transnational issues like the climate crisis because of bilateral differences.” There is no suggestion that we should link any cooperation with China to its international behavior, as we did with the Soviet Union during the Nixon administration. “The United States … has made it clear that we will not support the linkage of issues in a way that conditions cooperation on shared challenges,” especially “the climate crisis,” which is “the existential challenge of our time.”
The Biden NSS also stresses the alleged “domestic extremist threat” from U.S. citizens “motivated by racial or ethnic prejudice, as well as anti-government or anti-authority sentiment.” Such language echoes the election rhetoric of the administration, such as in Biden’s recent, intemperate speech in Philadelphia demonizing the millions of people who voted for Trump, making it quite clear that Biden’s NSS is intended more for a domestic audience than for an international one. To the extent that it addresses the latter, it embraces the “liberal internationalist” perspective favored by much of the U.S. “national security community.”
In contrast, Trump’s NSS reflected Trump’s preferred foreign policy perspective, one based on “realism” as opposed to liberal internationalism. It was drafted and coordinated by Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and his deputy, Nadia Schadlow — splendid strategic thinkers in their own right who sought to produce a document that was true to the president’s perspective rather than the denizens of the national security community.
Trump’s NSS was based on four “pillars” — 1) protect the people, the homeland, and the American way of life, 2) promote American prosperity, 3) preserve peace through strength, and 4) advance American influence. Many of the most important features of the document stand in contrast to those that make Biden’s NSS so flawed.
First, consider its call for a healthy nationalism. The nationalism of his NSS was not the nationalism caricatured by Trump’s critics. It was not ethnic nor racial nationalism but civic nationalism, better described as patriotism. Throughout his presidency, Trump’s central belief was that the purpose of American power was to advance the interests of citizens.
Second, and relatedly, it took a “state-centric” view of international politics, one that approaches international institutions and “global governance” with great skepticism. It is in the interest of the U.S. to advance U.S. political, military, and economic strength, not to impose America’s will on others but to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” This perspective reflects the view of George Washington University professor Henry Nau, who has argued, “The goal [of U.S. foreign policy] is a ‘republican world’ in which free nations live side by side, responsible for their own defenses and economies, and cut deals with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to the extent their interests overlap.”
By extension, Trump’s NSS rejected the contention that the U.S. should cede sovereignty to international institutions in order to be embraced by the mythical “international community.” Although it is in the interest of the U.S. to cooperate with others within this international system, such cooperation depends on reciprocity. This has been especially important in the areas of trade and alliances. In principle, free trade is good for countries in the international system. Trump contended that for too long, the U.S. had pursued trade agreements that were not in our interests. The principle of reciprocity was necessary to redress this imbalance.
Third, Trump’s NSS recognized the role of armed diplomacy. Policymakers have long treated force and diplomacy as an either-or proposition. But understood properly, force and diplomacy are two sides of the same coin. The threat of force increases the leverage of diplomats. The Trump administration’s approach to Iran and North Korea was a case in point, standing in contrast to the Biden administration’s approach to Iran and Russia.
Fourth, consider its prioritization of economic growth and leveraging the new geopolitics of energy. The Trump administration moved expeditiously to lift regulations that hampered U.S. domestic productivity across the board but especially in the area of energy production. While domestic oil and gas production has increased as a result of the revolution associated with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and directional drilling, it did so despite the priorities of the Obama administration, which wished to decrease reliance on hydrocarbons. Trump made it clear he wishes to exploit America’s energy potential to take advantage of the new geopolitics of energy.
Finally, among its most important features was its defense of liberal principles. Although the U.S. is safer and more prosperous in a world populated by other democratic republics, prudence dictates that the U.S. attempt to spread its principles only when it can do so in a cost-effective manner. Trump’s NSS was roundly criticized by advocates of “cooperative security.” The problem with cooperative security is that it requires states in the international system to subordinate their interests to a fictional “international community” and act in accordance with a system that operates independently of national interest. Cooperative security also wrongly assumes that international participation is sufficient to sustain the liberal world order. It is not. It must be supported by a dominant power and influence.
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U.S. policymakers have made a fetish of international organizations. Such organizations are means, not ends. In fact, the end or purpose of American power should be to secure the republic, protect its liberty, and facilitate the prosperity of its people. The U.S. is not “entitled” to wield its power for some “global good,” independent of national interests. Trump’s election in 2016 was due in part to the perception that U.S. power was not being used to advance the interests of citizens but in the service of others, i.e., the “international community,” international institutions, and the like.
A sound U.S. grand strategy would seek to assure the freedom, security, and prosperity of the U.S. A sound grand strategy would aim to enhance American power, influence, and credibility as the means for achieving those ends. Biden’s a-strategic National Security Strategy fails on both counts.
Mackubin Owens is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a national security fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, Austin.
