There is surprisingly little difference between the War Department’s new “National Security Policy of the United States” and its predecessor from 2022 (the most recent previous edition).
There are about a dozen items addressing China in each.
Taiwan
Compare the comments on Taiwan.
From 2022: “The PRC’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan are destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait. This is part of a broader pattern of destabilizing and coercive PRC behavior that stretches across the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the Line of Actual Control [Indian border].”
From 2025: “There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy.”
The first passage explains the threat in terms of behavior ripped from today’s headlines. The threats are abstract: destabilization, threats to peace, threats to stability. The second passage is more “strategic,” explaining the threats in terms of geography and the consequences of communist menace within that geography.
The 2022 solution to the challenge is reactive: “The Department will support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense commensurate with the evolving PRC threat and consistent with our one China policy.”
The 2025 solution is prescriptive: “Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.”
“Support” is a policy, not a strategy. “Ideally” cannot be used to describe a strategy (any more than “hopefully”).
Note that the 2025 edition does not mention “our one China policy.” A Kremlinologist would find that important.
Address and advance
A couple of interesting and typical excerpts from 2022:
We will “address acute forms of gray zone coercion from the PRC’s campaign to establish control over the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and disputed land borders….”
“The Department will advance our Major Defense Partnerships with India to enhance its ability to deter PRC aggression and ensure open access to the Indian Ocean region.”
Our strategy was to “address” something and to “advance” a partnership. Those are low bars to performance. You addressed something by writing a stern letter to the ambassador. You advanced partnership by sending a beautiful fruit basket to your counterpart. Success is yours.
Author Colin Gray wrote that military strategy is “the direction and use that is made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy.” He proposed “schools for strategy” to address the deficit in strategic thinking among senior military officers.
In both of these documents, the use of the term “strategy” is loose and even misleading in the same way that people use the term “debate” when they mean a casual discussion or exchange of views.
Neither of these reports were written by strategists, surely. The energy in each case is spent identifying a problem or potential problem (often in the most general terms) and, as one colleague used to complain to me, “making love to the problem.”
The strategy for addressing a challenge can be as weak as this (2025): “This will require not just further investment in our military—especially naval—capabilities, but also strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond, if this problem is not addressed.”
Our “strategy” will be to further invest and cooperate. How helpful is this for planners?
Talent for…
An epigraph preceding Gray’s study helps explain what is happening:
In a 1973 book on grand strategy, defense specialist John Collins observed that while “strategy” is a game that anyone can play, it is not a game that just anyone can play well….
Individuals either have the cognitive skills for strategy or they do not, and Collins’s observation, based on years of experience with National War College graduates, is most do not—not even among field-grade military officers with the potential for flag rank. There is scant evidence to date that professional education or training are at all successful in inculcating strategic insight into most individuals. Instead, the best we can do is to try to identify those individuals who have this talent and then make sure that they are put in positions in which they can use it to good effect.
The War Department bureaucracy is as unlikely to produce a talented strategist as any other organization. This results in discussions of national defense strategy that are written at the level of “carry on with your usual priorities” and “do the best you can.” Not even a “try harder.”
In 2025, our strategy is to “further invest,” “cooperate,” “address,” and “advance partnerships.”
Senator Eugene McCarthy once wrote a book called No-Fault Politics. These reports produce “no-fault strategy.” □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
