McConnell: America Faces Simultaneous Threats, Must Resource Accordingly
‘For years, by its neglect of the urgent requirements of the national defense… Its anemic defense budget requests… And its ongoing preference for micromanaging allies over confronting adversaries… the Biden-Harris Administration has compounded the challenges we face. What the Commander-in-Chief is reckoning with this week is the product of nearly four years of failing to check Iran and to prepare adequately for great power competition.’
“Yesterday, the Pentagon announced the deployment of additional U.S. servicemembers to the Middle East.
“The proximate cause, of course, is the threat of war on Israel’s northern border. But ongoing Iran-backed attacks against U.S. personnel from the Red Sea to Iraq and Syria offer plenty of reminders that America’s enemies lack neither the resources nor motivation to target us.
“Democrats and Republicans alike should recognize that America’s enduring security interests in the Middle East are not served by abandoning the region to Iran, Russia, or China.
“But what the Biden-Harris Administration is grappling with right now is a problem of its own making. It is the combination of a weak and ineffectual response to Iran-backed aggression. It’s the predictable and forewarned inadequacy of a force-planning construct that rules out serious preparation for meeting multiple threats at the same time.
“I’ve spoken repeatedly about the naivete of abandoning a multiple-war force planning construct, under-resourcing our military, and ignoring the growing and interconnected threats our adversaries pose to our interests.
“It’s worth remembering how former British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, reportedly responded to a question that the greatest challenge for a statesman is ‘events, dear boy, events.’
“Well, events have proven particularly challenging for the Biden-Harris Administration.
“At the risk of repeating myself, losing resolve to meet and defeat adversaries when they threaten us only emboldens them. Retreating from difficult challenges only invites even bigger ones.
“And, most importantly, there is no serious accounting of the global threats to America’s interests and our allies today that concludes they can be dealt with one at a time, at our leisure.
“The enemy gets a vote.
“The demand for a U.S. military that can meet simultaneous challenges is acute. And we ignore it at the peril of the entire American-led international order that underpins our security and prosperity.
“Today, when President Biden addresses the U.N. General Assembly, we will no doubt hear about the grave challenge these interconnected threats pose to America and the entire free world.
“But the President’s concern will carry little weight without explicit commitments to the sort of hard power necessary to address them.
“The President will insist that his leadership has ‘produced results’. And that’s true – just not good ones.
“For years, by its neglect of the urgent requirements of the national defense… Its anemic defense budget requests… And its ongoing preference for micromanaging allies over confronting adversaries… the Biden-Harris Administration has compounded the challenges we face.
“What the Commander-in-Chief is reckoning with this week is the product of nearly four years of failing to check Iran and to prepare adequately for great power competition.
“Four years of appeasement, hesitation, naïve and desperate nuclear diplomacy, and outright retreat.
“It is, indeed, too late to undo this Administration’s record of net cuts to defense investments.
“Likewise, it is too late to roll back its disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Here in the Senate, after weeks of partisan show votes, it is now too late for the Senate to discharge a fundamental obligation of this body – to provide for the common defense – and debate the annual defense authorization and appropriations bills before the election.
“It is not, however, too late to stop treating Israel as an escalatory regional force in need of finger-wagging micromanagement… and instead like a sovereign democracy encircled by the forces of the world’s most active sponsor of terror.
“It is not too late to start responding to proxy violence with the sort of unwavering force necessary to change Iran’s calculus – and for that matter, Russia’s and China’s as well. It’s not too late to show our adversaries that in their race to undermine America’s global influence and threaten its global interests, they will meet determined opposition.”
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Related Issues: Russia, National Security, Iran, China
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