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Indo-Asia-Pacific

The Porcupine in No Man’s Sea: Arming Taiwan for Sea Denial

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By Collin Fox

Precision munitions have been sinking warships for the better part of a century, but never before have they been so capable, so widely proliferated, or benefited so much from omniscient surveillance and precise targeting. These convergent factors have propelled modern sea combat in a violently stagnant direction that strongly favors the defensive. A transit through contested waters in the Western Pacific would draw effective fire like a casual stroll through no-man’s land on the Western Front, circa 1916. Now, as then, tactical forces must stay invisible or out of range to stay alive and combat effective, lurking to deploy their own withering fires against emergent targets.

After years of bemoaning the impact of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) on its own power projection paradigm, the United States military is belatedly adapting the same methods with its own forces, while overlooking the geopolitically unique contributions that certain allies and partners can bring to the fight. The factors that have made sea denial easier, sea control harder, and contested power projection a real challenge apply to virtually all potential belligerents – including China and Taiwan. The United States should not simply rely on its own conventional military forces to deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific, but should also start major military foreign assistance to Taiwan and so transform the island into a prickly fortress of sea denial.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen reviews a Republic of China Marine Corps battalion in Kaohsiung in July 2020. (Photo via Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China)

Omnipresent Weapons, Omniscient Surveillance

A degrading security environment and the convergence of accessible technologies have democratized precision strike. The notable trends seen during 2020’s Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also apply at sea; even lesser powers like Australia, Iran, Pakistan, Serbia, Taiwan, and Turkey are now producing their own anti-ship missiles. The great powers are going a step further, with China deploying “carrier killer” ballistic missiles and the United States converting land attack cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and air defense weapons into long-range ship-killers.

The improvements in the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting cycle are even more impactful than these growing arsenals. Satellite constellations produce optical, infrared, and radar-generated imagery of every non-polar square meter on the planet several times per day. When combined with other sources and then distilled through increasingly capable artificial intelligence algorithms, this data can pinpoint most naval surface forces. The title of a recent USNI article encapsulated the change: “From Battleship to Chess.” Hiding is ever-harder, finding is ever-easier.

The reality of tactical omniscience applies to all major surface vessels, and catalyzes long-range precision weapons to create a massive maritime no-man’s land. To be seen is to be targeted, and, more than likely, killed.

Keeping Below the Trenchline

Prevailing in this future battle hinges on keeping forces alive, supplied, connected, and tactically relevant within a thousand-mile no-man’s land. Each service’s operational concept tackles this challenge through the same basic approach of survival through networked dispersion.

Both the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advance Base Operations and the Army’s Multi-Domain Transformation concepts would disperse missile-equipped forces on islands around China, creating unsinkable and hard-to-find fire bases that could persistently hold Chinese forces at risk. The Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept would likewise bounce platforms between airfields, “diluting the amount of firepower that [enemies] can put down on any one of those targets.” The Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations concept would leverage the inherent mobility and firepower of naval vessels to similarly frustrate enemy targeting.

Each service’s distributed concept would still incur significant risk—stationing offensive fires on foreign soil demands dangerously uncertain political assent from each host nation, while the Air Force would be hard-pressed to maintain enough persistent and timely fires within a distant and contested environment. The Navy’s existing surface platforms might bring the assured access, persistence, and mass that the other services lack, but would nevertheless remain more exposed to enemy targeting and fires. Aside from service-specific risks, each of these disaggregated concepts rests on the dangerously flawed assumption of assured communications. In sum, victory is hardly assured and defeat is possible.

The net uncertainty of American overmatch erodes conventional deterrence against China, which increases the risk of miscalculation, escalation, and conflict. The United States should zoom out to reframe the strategic problem, rather just fixating on tactical and operational solutions.

Building a Better Porcupine, or Subsidized Buck-Passing

The conventional problem framing for defending Taiwan casts the deterrent value of American forces as the essential guarantor of regional stability. As the balance of power continues to shift, this binary framing—either China can be deterred by American power, or it can’t— has produced strongly divergent policy proposals. Richard Haass and David Sacks argued that an unambiguous security guarantee for Taiwan would restore deterrence and so keep the peace; Charles Glaser advocated “letting go of Taiwan” to mitigate the decreasingly justifiable risk of a major war with China. Like other proposals, both frame the problem too tightly – through the basic paradigm of American military power. 

The Lowy Institute’s insightful study takes a more nuanced and Australian perspective on the problem. It skips the false choice between doubling down and retrenchment, advocating instead that the “United States should act as armourer, but not guarantor.” The logic is sound:

“If Taiwan acquires, over roughly the next five years, large numbers of additional anti-ship missiles, more extensive ground-based air defence capabilities, smart mines, better trained and more effective reserve forces, a significantly bolstered capacity for offensive cyber warfare, a large suite of unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike systems, and counterstrike capabilities able to hit coastal targets on the mainland, it will continually increase the price China will have to pay to win a war.”

With help, Taiwan could deny China the sea and air control it requires to take the island, while also imposing significant costs on the mainland. Thousands of anti-ship missiles and sea mines would reinforce the stopping power of water, while dispersed air defense systems would help deter or attrite Chinese airpower. The United States should help Taiwan become a better porcupine by subsidizing and directing a new arsenal of democracy.

A delegation from the American Institute in Taiwan with Republic of China naval officers in Kaohsiung, August 20, 2019. (Photo via AIT)

This approach recalls the effective grand strategy that first Britain and then the United States executed as offshore balancers through the 19th and 20th centuries. Offshore balancing is not mere isolationism, retrenchment, or simple buck-passing. When a rising power threatens the regional balance, along with the offshore balancer’s interests, a savvy offshore balancer first puts money and arms on the scale to restore balance through allies, partners, and proxies. For insular great powers like the United States, this initial option of external balancing, or subsidized buck passing, represents a far better option than joining every war on the Eurasian Rimlands. Whenever this subsidized buck passing proves insufficient, though, the offshore balancer has the option, though not the obligation, to enter the conflict with military force against a weakened enemy and so restore the balance of power.

The key to both external balancing and buck-passing against a competitor is that the ally needs to stay in the fight, at least for a while. Britain’s buck-passing to France in the late 1930s did little to help Britain after France’s rapid and calamitous defeat. Offshore balancers should subsidize and strengthen their allies and partners so they can deter, defeat, or at least bleed their mutual foes, buying time and buying down the risk of rapid defeat.

Simply “letting go of Taiwan” would be an unforced error for the United States; any grand bargain that China might offer to encourage appeasement over Taiwan would have no more credibility or durability than the breached Sino-British Joint Declaration concerning Hong Kong. Letting go of Taiwan would unilaterally cede strategic terrain and advantage to China, allowing it to sidestep the potentially ruinous and deterrent costs that a subsidized defense would impose.

Gifts Come with Strings

Taiwan has not received significant military foreign assistance since the United States shifted recognition to Beijing in 1979, and so has a long history of buying American military hardware with its own funds. This cash-and-carry arrangement has allowed it to choose prestige platforms like M-1 tanks and F-16 fighters that better support anachronistic fantasies of retaking the mainland than a realistic defense of the island.

On the other hand, security assistance and security cooperation funds come with focused caveats that seek to build specific capabilities of mutual importance. These funds include Foreign Military Finance (FMF) and International Military Education and Training (IMET) grants under Department of State authorities, and Building Partner Capacity and other authorities under the Department of Defense.

Congress could include Taiwan in one or more of these appropriations while creating structured incentives aimed at both Taiwanese and Chinese policy choices. For Taiwan, FMF appropriations above a certain base level could be contingent on Taiwan’s defense reforms and funding levels, or come in the form of matching funds for specific capabilities, such as those ideal for sea denial. Provocative Chinese actions, such as air and sea incursions over the past year, could also trigger additional FMF funding. If each Chinese incursion essentially bought another anti-ship missile for Taiwan, Beijing might not be so casual about the practice.

Republic of China sailors walk by the corvette Tuo Chiang (Photo via AFP/Sam Yeh)

For context, the United States subsidizes Israel’s defense with $3.3 billion per year, which is a bit less than the annual operating costs for two Armored Brigade Combat Teams. Funding Taiwan’s security to a similar or greater level would create a fearsome A2/AD challenge for China, while also reducing plausible American costs and risks for a Taiwan contingency scenario. It would certainly provide better warfighting value than two armored brigades in a maritime theater. This level of assistance would buy greater access, influence, and amicable leverage to pursue American strategic interests in both defense and non-defense areas, such as chip supply chains.

China would certainly protest this security funding, just as it protests existing weapons sales, but these specific investments would constrain China’s escalation options. Arming Taiwan to the teeth with A2/AD weaponry could effectively and quickly deter China through denial without the escalation and entrapment risks that would come with aggressive proposals to base American forces in Taiwan.

The Limits of Power Projection

Notable critics have argued that Taiwan is simply indefensible, asserting that a “Chinese attack would be shock and awe with Chinese characteristics, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, rocket artillery, drones, and probably thousands of aircraft. There would be decapitation, disruption of Taiwan’s air force and navy in their bases, targeting of U.S. bases in Guam and Okinawa.” To be sure, China could batter Taiwan from across the 100-mile strait, but would this “shock and awe with Chinese characteristics” compel Taiwan’s rapid capitulation or even prepare the battlespace for a successful amphibious assault?

Every comparison is fraught, but China would be hard-pressed to match the intensity of fires that American forces once directed at Okinawa – an island 1/30th the size of Taiwan and 400 miles distant, but sharing its mountainous geology. Despite a full week of hellish pre-invasion bombardment from battleships and attack aircraft, the island’s entrenched Japanese defenders not only survived this “the typhoon of steel and bombs,” but then emerged to fight another three months in the longest and bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater. “Shock and awe” only goes so far – particularly when it can be reciprocated.

Technological progress since the Battle of Okinawa has also not alleviated the fundamental difficulty of taking well-defended terrain or targeting elusive defenders. Indeed, the American military’s frustration in hunting for SCUD missiles in the Iraqi desert, for military vehicles in Kosovo, and for Taliban fighters in Afghan caves simply reflects the limits of airpower – even with functional or complete air supremacy. These limits also apply to China, which would have no less difficulty in finding, fixing, discriminating, tracking, targeting, and neutralizing the thousands of mobile anti-ship, anti-air, and strike missile launchers hiding amongst many more decoys, and all scattered through the jungles, mountains, caves, and cities of Taiwan.

Buying Time, Buying Options

Heavily reinforcing Taiwan through focused security subsidies while maintaining a policy of strategic ambiguity would maintain conventional deterrence through denial against China. This approach would also greatly reduce the risk of a fait accompli, thereby giving American political leadership time to discover the best outcome for its strategic ambiguity: to rally support at home and abroad, to pressure China through a variety of means, and to enter combat at a time, place, and manner of its own choosing – or even to forego the conflict entirely.

These investments to harden Taiwan would buy time on the order of months and so enable slower, de-escalatory strategies like offshore control while also preserving more aggressive options. On the other hand, Taiwan might only be able to hold out for weeks under a plausible status quo scenario. In such a case, the United States would either risk major escalation by immediately executing a rapid but confrontational approach like JAM-GC, or watch Taiwan collapse from the sidelines.

The United States can make wise investments to pursue its own strategic interests, frustrate Chinese hegemony, and save a threatened democracy in the process. Taiwan needs focused U.S. support to substantially grow its sea denial capabilities quickly. Congress should update legislation and appropriate funds to that end.

Commander (select) Collin Fox, U.S. Navy, is a Foreign Area Officer serving as a military advisor with the Department of State. He is a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School and the Chilean Naval War College. The views presented are his alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Department of Defense, the Department of State, or the Department of the Navy.

Featured Image: Taiwanese sailors at Kaohsiung’s Zuoying naval base in 2018. (Photo via Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Strategy

Can America Give Offshore Balancing a Chance?

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By Aaron Richards

America’s Grand Strategy

Whether you are an academic, a member of the Armed Forces, or an America citizen whose main news outlet is Fox News or CNN, a common term heard in American politics is strategy. In a security environment where challenges grow by the day, we hear our leaders in government outline our national security strategy, military strategy, economic strategy, and other approaches to securing America’s interests. However, a concept that may be unfamiliar to the average American is grand strategy.

The various definitions for grand strategy center on a common theme. For the purpose of this article, grand strategy can be defined as the use of power by leaders through diplomatic, economic, military, and political means to defend their respective nation-states and interests. The United States’ grand strategy has been evolving since the 19th century. President James Monroe articulated his policy in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine, which is arguably America’s first grand strategy, “The American continents…are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” President Monroe’s call for developing a new order in the Americas paved the way for the U.S. to expand its economic and military power throughout the Western Hemisphere. 

During World War II, U.S. grand strategy under President Franklin Roosevelt focused on multilateralism with the ends being the “reestablishment of a stable international order, a prosperous global economic system, and a U.S. population free from military threat at home and abroad.” America’s superiority enabled it to succeed in its objectives in both the European and Asian theaters, leaving the U.S. as the world’s superpower following the war.

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, America’s view on the world changed drastically, given that 19 hijackers successfully executed the greatest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. As a result, President George W. Bush iterated to the world his grand strategy for the United States, which can be summarized as a strategy of preemption:

“The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction — and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. [The] United States will, if necessary, act preemptively…in an age where the enemies of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies.” 

Just as with the previous two U.S. presidents, Presidents Bush and Obama, President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office as a wartime president. Each U.S. President in the 21st century has had to justify the need for American troops in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. President Obama’s foreign policy legacy will likely be remembered with triumphs, such as the raid that led to Osama bin Laden’s death and brokering a nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1 [The United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members (the P5); China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; plus Germany]. And failures; including his reluctance to act in Syria after publicly stating President Bashar al-Assad must go and Obama’s drone policy which which has encouraged the proliferation of armed drones and the associated legal ambiguities involving their use. Given the complex geopolitical world we live in today, it may be appropriate to adopt a new approach to address today’s challenges in securing American interests. One such approach is offshore balancing.

What is Offshore Balancing?

Offshore balancing is a strategy that can allow the United States to preserve its interests at home and abroad, without weakening its relationships with allies. Offshore balancing in today’s international systems, as defined by Jon Mearsheimer (R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago) and Stephen Walt (Professor of international affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government), advocates “preserving U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and countering potential hegemons in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf” and encouraging “other countries to take the lead in checking rising powers, [the U.S.] intervening itself only when necessary.” Based on this definition, the United States is capable of protecting its position as the world’s sole superpower for the future while ensuring security at home.

It is evident that the U.S. will remain a regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere, as no state currently poses a threat. However, the same cannot be said for the U.S. in other regions of the globe.  Potential hegemons that offshore balancing would be aimed at addressing include China, Russia, and Iran. In each of the three regions mentioned above, offshore balancing requires a “balancer” to maintain America’s interests abroad ranging from securing trade routes to preserving the national security of allies.

Offshore Balancing in Action: Asia

In Asia, the United States should leverage its strategic alliances with its partners in the Asia-Pacific to balance against the rise of China. The U.S. should combine the use of soft and hard balancing strategies with its Asia-Pacific allies to demonstrate that China’s aggressive behaviors in the region will not be tolerated. The key partner the U.S will need to rely upon in balancing against China’s rise is Japan.

Japan remains wary of China’s intentions in the Asia-Pacific, especially regarding territorial disputes. In February, three Chinese Coast Guard ships entered waters near a chain of islands claimed by both China and Japan in the East China Sea. Japan controls the chain and calls them the Senkaku Islands, while China calls refers to them as the Diaoyu Islands. Washington has taken a strong approach in reassuring its commitment to Japan’s territorial claims, for instance, coordinating with Tokyo to revise their Mutual Defense Guidelines (MDG) in April 2015. Given China’s growing strategic threat in the region, the updated MDG focuses on developments in military technology, improvements in interoperability of the U.S. and Japanese militaries, bilateral cooperation on cybersecurity, the use of space for defense purposes, ballistic missile defense, and cooperation in defending Japan’s outlying islands and of sea lanes relied upon by many Asia-Pacific states.

Additionally, the U.S. will need to rely on other local powers to contain China (e.g., South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines), as a stronger Japan is unlikely to counterbalance China’s rise alone. The U.S., with the agreement and cooperation of its regional partners, could develop Anti-Access and Aerial Denial (A2/AD) zones in the region to demonstrate collective strength against China’s unwillingness to abide by international law. Such a U.S.-led effort would include multilateral cooperation to build “a greater reliance in the region on short-range, tactical airpower as well as quieter, faster attack submarines and small, fast frigate-sized warships with robust anti-ship cruise missile capabilities; an expanded inventory of long-range anti-ship missiles” deployed on ships and aircraft at sea. 

Conducting such a transition will require improvements in training with allies, information-sharing, embedded military advisers, and prepositioned supplies to build a competitive advantage against China of strategic capabilities in the region that are to be used for defensive purpose only. China seems to have no issue with continuing its aggressive behavior in the Asia-Pacific, thus the United States should be proactive in incorporating offshore balancing measures to secure the interests of America and its allies.

Offshore Balancing in Action: Europe

With the case of Europe, the United States and its European allies have stated their concerns over Russia’s action in the past few years and what may potentially be on the horizon for Moscow. Arguably the strongest multilateral security organization in the world, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is a collection of 28 states promoting democratic values and encouraging cooperation on defense and security issues to build trust and prevent conflict between allies. As part of the NATO members’ commitment to collective security, each member is expected to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) toward defense spending. Currently, only five nations meet that commitment, with the United States spending over $660 billion in 2016. While America’s support is needed to deter Russian aggression in Europe, there are approaches in which the U.S. can lessen its financial burden on providing NATO security but maintain the trust and security of its European allies.

Soldiers from Poland’s 6th Airborne Brigade and the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division during the NATO allies’ Anakonda 16 exercise near Torun, Poland. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

For instance, increasing the U.S. military footprint in Europe may not be as effective in countering Russia’s growing role in Europe. Recent strategic documents coming from the Kremlin state Russia’s goals in the region include maintaining a military advantage over NATO (which Russia sees as a threat to its security) and politically controlling neighboring spaces and countries to create buffer zones as protection from invasions and external instabilities. Thus, the U.S. should allow its European allies to bolster its own security forces and posture while Washington leverages its soft power to develop a selective engagement approach to strengthen European partnerships and counter Russian influence. The U.S. can serve as an offshore balancer to Russia in Europe by providing security assistance to NATO allies to “increase pre-positioning, develop stronger deterrence measures for the Black Sea…and exploit technologies including longer-range aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and stealthy platforms to address Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities.” 

If a scenario were to occur whereby Russia antagonizes European allies, the U.S. can deploy necessary troops or capabilities to deter further Russian aggression. In the long-term, allowing European allies to lead in their collective security allows the U.S. to support when  required and demonstrate to Russia that Europe is capable of countering Russian bellicosity.

Offshore Balancing in Action: Middle East

With the Middle East, the United States has, and will continue to have, strategic interests in the region; including the promotion of a more stable and prosperous region with increasingly effective governance, improved security, and trans-regional cooperation to counter state and non-state actors posing a threat to the U.S. and its allies. However, there needs to be a balance between America’s direct role in shaping the region and the need for a proactive, lead role from its Middle East partners who are more directly affected by the security environment of the region.

In the Middle East, an offshore balancing approach should not be viewed as abandoning our allies, but requiring regional powers to “bear the primary responsibility for dealing with crises on the ground, [America’s] military strategy is [to be] oriented toward policing the sea lanes and the skies, and direct intervention is contemplated only when the balance of power is dramatically upset.” The implementation of offshore balancing can be directed toward countering Iran’s aggressive behavior in the Gulf region.

While the United States was able to broker a nuclear accord with Iran in 2015, Washington remains concerned about Tehran’s malign activities in the Gulf. As Central Command’s (CENTCOM) commander  General Joseph Votel stated at a recent Congressional hearing, “Iran poses the greatest long-term threat to stability for this part of the world” due to Iran’s “malign influence across Iraq and Syria,” and efforts to prop up the Syrian regime and exploit Shia population centers. To counter Iran in the region to prevent the Islamic Republic from attaining regional dominance, the U.S. does not need to engage in extensive intervention, rather, it will need to rely on its strategic partners in the region.

The United States should focus on bolstering its support for those Middle East states in which Iran has been proactive in building its influence; specifically Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. In Syria, Iran continues to bolster the Assad regime, contributing to the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. A more assertive, military-centric approach to finding a solution in Syria is unlikely to prevail, but rather elongate the dire situation in which millions of Syrian civilians are fleeing or being killed.  To move toward a negotiated transition will require “a willingness to apply American resources more forcefully toward a diplomatic outcome that meets the minimum requirements of all relevant actors—including security for all civilians regardless of sect.” Washington should focus on resolving the humanitarian crisis in Syria, as it is unknown if and when a political solution will be achieved. Focusing on counterterrorism activities such as airstrikes aligns with U.S. security interests, but continuing to stock pro-Western militias (if they are discernable versus those backing Syria and Iran) may lead to long-term fighting as even those against the Assad regime have their own oppositions amongst one another. A political solution is needed in any case in Syria, a failed state for the foreseeable future, even if it requires Iran and/or Russia as the leading adjudicator.

As for Lebanon, it seems that Beirut has faded as an area of strategic value for the U.S. in recent years. Iran’s influence includes military, political, cultural, financial, and religious programs “aimed at enhancing the image and strength of Hezbollah, justifying Iranian presence and influence in Lebanon as well as its ties with Hezbollah, and turning public opinion in Lebanon against the United States, Israel and Sunni Arab countries.” Iran’s influence in Beirut continues to grow, especially since Lebanon gained a new president and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was the first top diplomat to meet with him. With the new U.S. administration, President Trump will need to engage with Lebanon more actively and increase U.S. financial and military commitments to the country.

Washington must make it clear to the Lebanese government that it opposes all forms of Iranian military aid to the Lebanese army. Instead, the U.S. government should work with its regional allies to develop a strategy to strengthen Lebanon’s state institutions to counter Iranian influence in Lebanon; whether by improving training and military-to-military cooperation to build sustainable security forces that are more competent than Hezbollah or increasing support for programs, such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative, to enhance America’s image in Lebanon’s Shiite community. If President Trump and his administration want to sustain their strategic interests in the Gulf region, our leaders will need to re-evaluate their comprehensive approach to addressing the challenges of the Middle East.

Conclusion

The examples of offshore balancing approaches provided above may or may not be applicable to today’s security environment in the next week, month, or year. The world we live in today continues to evolve and the future is uncertain to an extent. Thus, the United States can gradually shift toward acting as an offshore balancer in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf until the international setting changes requiring Washington to react more aggressively.

The United States is not always in the position to lead from the front to solve international crises, however, its involvement is probably needed given its influence across the globe. A majority of Americans prefer the U.S. to focus on domestic issues, however, implementing a reactive posture in dealing with challenges in each strategic region of the globe will result in long-term setbacks in achieving U.S. security interests abroad. Offshore balancing in practice should be not perceived as isolationism, either by Americans or our international partners. Washington must collaborate with its allies to prevent emergence of revisionist hegemons to ensure U.S. security at home and around the world. 

It is difficult to deny that we live in a multipolar world with a vast array of security challenges. As an offshore balancer, the U.S. can rely upon nuclear deterrence, air power, and naval power to ensure its interests and the security of its allies. Concrete vital interests should determine America’s commitments abroad, rather than credibility determining commitments and thus commitments determining interests. With a cohesive strategy and commitment from leadership, the United States can be a successful offshore balancer —maintaining U.S. security interests without weakening its relationship with its allies who should now act in a greater role in preserving security in the world’s more strategically important regions.

Aaron Richards currently works as a Senior Analyst within the Defense & National Security Sector of Deloitte Consulting LLP. He holds a Master of Science in Defense and Strategic Studies from Missouri State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and International Affairs from Hofstra University. Aaron was recently nominated to the George C. Marshall Fellowship Class of 2017 sponsored by The Heritage Foundation. Aaron has also written on other national security issues for the Ecologic Institute’s Arctic Summer College and Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) conference series.

Featured Image: Map of WWI by G.F. Morell. (Advocate’s Library Edinburgh)