The Gathering Storm: A Moonshot for National Defense Readiness

Geopolitical storm clouds are gathering at the far reaches of Pax Americana. Wars and growing instability are sending tremors through the post-World War II international order, as an “axis of autocracies” consisting of China and Russia and their rogue state backers is increasingly challenging the United States and its democratic allies around the world. Historically small U.S. military forces are already stretched thin by recent combat operations and hybrid and proxy warfare in multiple time zones, and the United States’ once vaunted “arsenal of democracy” finds itself dangerously shrunken and entangled in bureaucratic red tape and post-Cold War ennui.

At home, a war-weary public increasingly questions the burdens of American leadership, and for the first time in history our nation now pays more in interest to service its ballooning debt than it spends annually for defense. That loud noise you hear is thus the sound of alarms, as a growing number of national security experts fear that America is sleepwalking towards a global conflict it could well lose.

In our new report “The Gathering Storm: A Proposed Moonshot for National Defense Readiness,” the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress (CSPC) analyzes these worrying trends and provides practical solutions. We offer detailed insights into the health of our weapons acquisition system and defense industrial base. In the post-Cold War era both adopted a culture of risk aversion that impairs the ability of our industrial partners to deliver the technologically advanced systems needed to deter aggressors.

Throughout this study our goal is to help the U.S. defense enterprise change course and re-establish the technological supremacy that underwrote the “American Century” and a bloodless victory in the Cold War. The United States must once again sharpen its inherent advantages – derived from an unmatched innovation eco system, a robust industrial base and a well-managed collaboration between the government and the private sector -– in order to once again maintain peace through overwhelming strength.