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“Sometimes, to solve a problem, you have to make it bigger,” said Hudson Institute founder Herman Kahn. To defeat the rising axis of aggressors, the United States needs to take a big-picture look at the playing field and leverage its military, economic, and information power to face the unified threat that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea pose to the US-led world order.
In an essay following his visit to Taiwan in early 2024, Hudson President and CEO John P. Walters explains what such a strategy might look like and why America urgently needs to implement it. “In the broadest sense, it is about the moral and practical superiority of freedom over tyranny,” he writes.
Read the full essay here, or read on for more Hudson analysis of how the US can succeed in great power competition.
Rising Axis showcases the depth of Hudson’s analysis on how America and its allies can compete with and defeat the axis of aggressors.
Facts and Analysis
1. There is no substitute for victory.
- Hudson’s Mike Gallagher writes in Foreign Affairs that if America wants to deter war in the long term, it needs to allow tensions to rise in the short term. The first step is to implement policies that rearm the US military, reduce China’s economic leverage, and recruit a broader coalition to confront China.
- The US also needs to respond to the next generation of geopolitical disruptions: (1) the China–Russia–Iran–North Korea axis’s rise, (2) a decline of climate alarmism and recognition of the need for cheap, abundant energy, (3) a new trade realism, and (4) artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Nadia Schadlow explains how Washington can exploit these disruptions in a Hudson report.
- “World War III is becoming more likely in the near term, and the US is too weak either to prevent it or, should war come, to be confident of victory,” warns Walter Russell Mead in an op-ed discussing the latest report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy.
For more, read Mike Gallagher’s op-ed “No Substitute for Victory.
2. America needs to reset its defense, economic, and diplomatic strategies to achieve an overmatch against the axis.
- The United States should develop advanced warfighting capabilities that give it asymmetric advantages over its opponents. With superior technology and innovative operational concepts, the US military can confound enemy war plans and lower the risk of its forces’ being overwhelmed and induced to capitulate at the start of a conflict.
- The US should incentivize investments in domestic industry, particularly in sectors that will strengthen the manufacturing base and help Washington establish greater control over the supply chains that support military production.
- While the US has allies and partners, its adversaries have proxies, clients, dependents, and vassals. To leverage this advantage, Washington needs to emphasize bilateral engagement and small coalitions rather than trying to work through sprawling multilateral processes.
For more, read Nadia Schadlow’s op-ed “How America Can Regain Its Edge in Great Power Competition.”
3. The US should rediscover peace through strength.
- “Who will lead the world in the rest of the twenty-first century? Will it be dictatorships, like Iran, Russia, Communist China, North Korea? Or will it be the great democracies of the West?,” asked Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) in a conversation with Walters. They discussed the senator’s report “Twenty-First Century Peace through Strength,” which lays out a strategy to restore American military deterrence.
- A one-size-fits-all US military cannot keep up with China while also maintaining America’s commitments to its global allies and partners. To regain the advantage, the US military should leverage existing and emergent technologies to develop a “hedge force” that would lower the risks the US would face during a Taiwan invasion and enable a more flexible US military.
- The axis of adversaries has discovered that the most direct way to break the US-led order is to undermine the credibility of America’s military alliances through both conventional attacks and nuclear threats. Washington should adapt its strategic posture and composition to meet this threat and convince adversaries they cannot outmaneuver or out-escalate the United States, writes Rebeccah L. Heinrichs.
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