The Defense Reformation

A hundred and forty-five million people work in America; 125 million work for private enterprise. Government can’t fix all these things itself. When they act like government is the only solution, I remind them of the Post Office, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Motor Vehicles. The only thing the government does really well is the United States

We need to develop a tougher, more dedicated, and indeed a more stubborn attachment to prosperity and freedom. When you see what this means in practice, you may wince at some of the implications, and you may be put off by the moral absolutism it will require. Yet these goals—strictly rather than loosely pursued—are of historic importance for our ci

In theory, the armed forces could reform one or more of the five core issues described earlier incrementally rather than adopting wholesale change.

A military-industrial strategy for the U.S. and its allies to match China will need to involve three elements:

1. Tariffs and other trade barriers against China , in order to prevent sudden floods of Chinese exports from forcibly deindustrializing other countries.




2. Industrial policy , to maintain and extend manufacturing capacity in democratic nations.

The hour may be growing late. Just before retiring at the end of 2022, Admiral Charles Richard, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, declared that “this Ukrainian crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup.” Citing the decline in America’s military capability relative to China’s in the western Pacific, he added: “The big one is coming.