By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

For decades the strategy of the U.S. military was the ability to fight two wars simultaneously, but right now America would be hard pressed to be able to fight just one and as hard as this may be, the United States may even lose the next war if any conflict was fought today.

The American people will be stunned, if a conflict arose today America may not win, but even lose if the nation was drawn into a confrontation with any of the world’s protagonists such as Iran, China, Russia or any other threat which had materialized.

Far too long the military has endured endless sustained conflicts, underfunded key areas, dealt with shifting unclear national security policies, has to deal with antiquated procurement and acquisition program execution, and finally a serious lack of strategic understanding of the various threats confronting the U.S.

The final aspect that has the U.S. unprepared for any future conflict is the Biden administration’s continued focus on having the military focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies over warfighting capabilities.

One only has to remember the famous statement by President George Washington while he addressed Congress, “The surest way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.”

Unfortunately America is not ready!

A detailed report titled “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength” put forth by the Heritage Foundation stated that “As currently postured, the U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests. It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were. This is the logical consequence of years of sustained use, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged.”

This decline crosses both Democratic and Republican administrations but it’s now becoming worse under the Biden administration where the strategy from both political and military leaders focuses on woke policies instead of war fighting.

America’s national security leadership forgot the military axiom of the famous Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, stated, “It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one’s readiness to meet; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one’s self invincible.”

The question for the United States is America ready for the next conflict and do our enemies fear us? Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States has faced no near peer competitor, but recently the U.S. is facing a resurrected Russia and an expansionist China that seeks to upend the global world order established by America after World War II.

Prior to the report being issued by the Heritage Foundation, in October 2020, the U.S. military conducted a wargame utilizing a scenario involving the conflict with China over Taiwan from which the vaunted American military suffered a brutal defeat. This was replicated in other exercises over the past few years which the U.S. lost or just barely hung on to a victory.

Even during wargames that were held last year, which are classified had Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Hyten deciding to scrap joint warfighting concepts which had guided U.S. military operations for decades. Why the sudden change?

The classified nature of the wargames weren’t available to be discussed by Hyten, but the General mentioned, “Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it.”

Over the past twenty years of conflict our adversaries have studied how the U.S. military conducts itself in combat and has utilized our tactics and techniques against us, but as the U.S. focuses on woke policies adversaries are continually studying us!

What the Chinese leadership in Beijing views is an America in decline, consumed by a woke culture that has infected every American institution including the U.S. armed forces. Instead of meeting the Chinese threat the Biden administration has the Department of Defense consumed with diversity and counter culture training then actual warfighting.

The question the nation should be asking is, is the Department of Defense prepared for war? Before this question is answered one only needs to understand the mission of the Department of Defense which states; “It’s responsible is for providing the military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our country.”

If history is any guide, President Washington speaking to a Joint Session of both the House and Senate stated, “The surest way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.”

Is the Department of Defense fulfilling this core mission, a recent report “Is The U.S. Navy Ready for War?” conducted by retired Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, commissioned by Republicans Sen. Tom Cotton, Reps. Mike Gallagher, Dan Crenshaw and Jim Banks, finds the Navy as an institution is adrift, concerned more with diversity training then preparing its service for actual warfighting.

The report highlights the fact that senior naval commanders were more concerned with staying off the front page of the news, operating under a zero defect command structure, where one mistake would end your career. If this system was in place during World War II, four of our most cherished commanders who led the U.S. to victory, Admiral Nimez, Halsey, King, and Leahy would never have made it to the rank of captain, let alone been selected as admirals.

Early this year, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip S. Davidson testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee on U.S. Indo-Pacific command posture and stated, “The greatest danger for the United States in this competition is the erosion of conventional deterrence. A combat-credible, conventional deterrent posture is necessary to prevent conflict, protect U.S. interests, and to assure our allies and partners. Absent a convincing deterrent, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will be emboldened to take action to undermine the rules based international order and the values represented in our vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. The combination of the PRC’s military modernization program and willingness to intimidate its neighbors through the use, or threatened use of force, undermines peace, security, and prosperity in the region.”

In his continued testimony, Admiral Davidson stated, “The PRC represents our greatest strategic threat. Its rapidly advancing capabilities and increasingly competitive posture underscore its drive to become a regionally dominant, globally influential power. Beijing is growing increasingly confident, and PRC leaders have demonstrated a willingness to accept friction to pursue a more expansive set of political, economic, and security interests. This growing assertiveness is particularly acute concerning sovereignty disputes, as Beijing seeks to steadily and incrementally shift the regional status quo to their advantage.”

In his last days in office, President Eisenhower gave his famous farewell address urging the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” In the proceeding decades the U.S. has consistently failed to address the antiquated procurement and acquisition of the Pentagon budgetary system.

Historians often reference the iconic term Eisenhower referencing the “military industrial complex,” but one has to look back at the original draft to find what Eisenhower originally wanted to include was the “congressional military industrial complex,” but he deemed that phrase too inflammatory and it was stricken from the official text.

Eisenhower was speaking from past experience while serving as president, far too often military leaders who always seek the latest weapons program without contemplating future threats to the United States.  Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in a report, “Ending America’s Grand Strategic Failures” that “The U.S. has made progress in one area: making increases in the defense budget, but far too many of these increases have gone to funding the readiness and the shopping lists of the U.S. military services. There have been few original ideas and changes that have actually benefited national security.”

Even military historian at the Hoover Institute Victor Davis Hanson echoed this sentiment, “Our Pentagon suffers from a huge overhead in clumsy and wasteful procurements, unsustainable retirement pensions and benefits, and often poor weapon investment choices. Too many of its top brass and retired officer corps have become politicized. Many of our four-stars seem more attuned to leveraging politically correct promotions and post-retirement corporate board memberships than focusing on military readiness and deterrence.”

The nation’s political leadership of both parties use the Pentagon as a job creation program for their states or districts, Democrats often want a leaner Defense department and want weapons systems reduced except when it targets their state or district. Republicans want greater defense spending without any forethought on how that money is spent and on what weapon’s program.

Then you have many members of Congress, Senate and their staff upon leaving government service obtain positions with many of the major defense contractors, this includes retired generals. Case in point is current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin upon retiring from the military in 2016, joined the boards of major U.S. companies including Raytheon Technologies, a major defense contractor.

He follows the same trajectory as other former senior military commanders, who obtained lucrative defense assignments with many leading defense contractors.

Cordesman also mentioned that “The cost of U.S. defense has escalated far beyond $700 billion a year without any clear sense of direction, and it has done so at a time when even the highest estimates of Chinese spending do not go beyond $250 billion and estimates of Russian spending rarely go beyond $62 billion. There are no areas where increases in spending have been publicly tied to net assessments of the threat or to the comparative effectiveness of each side’s military spending.”

National security experts have stated that the current FY2021 budget is based on sound strategy, but in reality it caters to the specific wish list of the various military branches without regard to regions, or combatant command in key areas, or of support to joint warfare.

To date there has been no future strategic defense strategy, and nothing of future strategy, with the only changes being recommended coming from the combatant commands instead of the nation’s military leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the heavy bureaucratic Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The time has come to institute a 21st century reform that encompasses all federal spending and that includes overhauling the antiquated acquisition and procurement of the Department of Defense.

National defense and political leaders need to revert back to the mission statement of the Department of Defense which states; “It’s responsible for providing the military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our country.”

Any national defense budget must meet one requirement, how does this provide the military forces needed to deter war and protect the security of our country? The Department of Defense spends just over $700 billion, but is the U.S. spending wisely or are there programs that could be eliminated, are there duplication between services that can be consolidated; do we need everything currently allocated?

Admiral Davidson gave his recommendations on what is needed to prevent a conflict in Asia, but are the nation’s military and political leaders listening?

If the nation’s defense resources are wasted on parochial spending that lacks strategic thought on how the U.S. military fights the next conflict, if we fail to prepare for the next war, we will lose!