An Axis Star Wars Strategy Challenges U.S. Military Spending

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Jul 25

In the 1980s, kudos were given to Ronald Reagan for introducing Star Wars technology that shielded America from nuclear attack and forced an expensive Soviet response. The innovative American missile defense system forced the Soviet leaders of a beleaguered, centrally planned economy to move scarce resources to military spending and away from both domestic consumer demands and budgetary aid critical to the Communist governments of the Warsaw Pact. The economic impact of responding to America’s Star Wars initiative was devastating. By the early 1990s, the economies within the Soviet Union were in free fall. Poland, then Hungary, then East Germany broke free. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President. The Soviet Union disassembled.

Now, China, Russia, and Iran, today’s Axis powers, are using an updated version of the Star Wars strategy to challenge America. Our military response to their military aggression presents an economic challenge every bit as threatening as the crisis Soviet leaders faced forty years ago.

Recent deficit spending and sputtering foreign military commitments should not deter American leadership in its fight against the forces of tyranny. Today, the threat of conservative leaders retreating into isolationism is extraordinarily dangerous. America must remain the champion of freedom. Yet, the threats we face from China, Russian, and Iran cannot be met by America alone.

At the end of World War II, the United States economy could boast that it produced over half of the global Gross Domestic Product. America was the planet’s only superpower. When Ronald Reagan was President, the American economy was still the world’s economic giant. Today, the United States can claim only 11.22% of the global GDP. The world and our antagonists have caught up.

Still, America assumes the role of the planet’s hegemon—the global protector of peace, security, and prosperity. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute trumpets that the 2023 American military budget of $916 billion is 38% of the world’s total military expenditures. We spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined.

What we need to appreciate is that the leaders of China, Russia, and Iran are leveraging America’s role as hegemon—our posture as ‘world protector’—against us. The growing list of Axis military offensives gives us a glimpse into the playbook of the Axis Star Wars strategy.

Within the United States, the Axis offensives have generated a growing consensus for massive additional military spending. There should be little doubt that a response sufficient to subdue China’s unprecedented buildup of naval and ground forces, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Iran’s weaponizing the Hamas attack on Israel will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps more. The core of the Axis strategy is to have a disproportionate share of the cost of defending democracies shouldered by the United States. Their goal, like that of the American Star Wars strategy, is their enemy’s economic ruin.

That ruin will come from the ever-mounting burden of paying the interest on the federal government’s debt. Without the political will to raise taxes or cut social welfare spending, American political leaders continually return to deficit spending to pay for our military response.

Cementing the United States as the top military power in the world is a very expensive proposition. President Biden recently illustrated this by asking for billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Certainly, more spending requests will come.

Furthermore, we should not overlook the recent Congressional testimony proposing a 30-year $1.5 trillion upgrade of America’s nuclear arsenal. Madelyn Creedon, chairwoman of the U.S. Strategic Posture Commission, told Congress, “The U.S. is on the cusp of a fundamentally different global setting for which we did not plan, and for which we are not well prepared. We are facing if you will, two nuclear peers, and this is unprecedented.”

As a result of heightened global tensions and mounting military costs, the United States is faced with two fundamental concerns. First, are the United States and its allies willing to fund the ever-increasing cost of military deterrence? Second, and equally as important, if that deterrence is challenged, are we willing to engage? Many of us share the historic belief that the great benefit of clear military superiority is its ability to limit the occasions in which we will have to engage.

In allied countries, the reluctance towards even modest spending cuts in their social safety net might be even more pronounced than that of elected officials in America. But the United States must insist on allied countries sharing the burden of resisting tyranny. The temptation for America alone to absorb the demand for a vast increase in defense spending, and worse, to meet that demand with deficit spending must be resisted. To do so would play into the hand of the Axis and starve our nation’s future, thereby destroying our economy.

American diplomacy must meet a historic challenge. Agreements about defense spending, purchasing, and training requirements must be negotiated. President Trump shocked many when he asked our reluctant NATO allies to commit to spending 2% of their GDP on defense budgets or face the withdrawal of America. For him, the United States spending over 5% of its GDP for the defense of Europe deserved at least a minimal commitment from those who it protected. Our diplomats should also make it clear to our allies that access to the American market hangs in the balance if they fail to increase their modest military expenditures. Our allies, whether democracies or not, must increasingly show a meaningful commitment to meet the accelerated military adventures of our antagonists.