Defense Analysts Say Threats to US Have Risen to Dangerous Levels

WASHINGTON — Defense analysts repeated warnings Tuesday about a dangerous world the United States cannot afford to ignore in a second Senate hearing this week leading to a vote on an annual military budget.

Russia is trying to expand its borders through war with Ukraine, China is preparing to attack Taiwan, North Korea is building its nuclear missile arsenal and the United States has been decreasing its Defense spending, the analysts said.

“I think it’s fair to say that the United States faces more and more serious threats,” said Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C.

The 2.7% of the gross domestic product, or roughly $800 billion, allocated for Defense spending in 2024 is down from 6% during the Reagan administration and 14% during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

Meanwhile, military aggression has created “a situation the world has not seen since the run-up to World War II,” Brands told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He named China as a primary military adversary.

In one example mentioned during the hearing, China added 30 ships to its navy last year while the U.S. Navy reduced the size of its fleet by two ships.

China plans to boost its military spending by 7.2% this year, which is the same percentage increase as last year, during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s campaign to expand its armed forces.

At the same time, China’s economy is stagnating. Many young people who might otherwise have been unemployed are instead finding jobs in the Chinese military.

“Historically that has been a formula for trouble,” Brands said.

He suggested broadening alliances with other countries as “perhaps our greatest force multiplier.”

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said the war in Ukraine appears to be only a first step for the Russians in an attempt to return the nations of the former Soviet Union to its control. Two of them, Estonia and Latvia, are now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine is a threat to our national security,” Reed said.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said the U.S. military needs to increase its inventory of advanced weapons, such as nuclear submarines, hypersonic missiles and amphibious vehicles.

“We continue to ask our military to do too much with too little and that needs to change,” Wicker said.

The foreboding outlook described at the Armed Services Committee hearing was preceded a day earlier by a report from U.S. intelligence agencies about an “increasingly fragile world order.”

“An ambitious but anxious China, a confrontational Russia, some regional powers, such as Iran, and more capable non-state actors are challenging long-standing rules of the international system as well as U.S. primacy within it,” the agencies said in their 2024 Annual Threat Assessment.

A direct threat to the United States could come from China in November during the national elections, the report said. The most likely scenario is the use of technology to sway votes.

“[China] may attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 at some level because of its desire to sideline critics of China and magnify U.S. societal divisions,” the report said.

The report was the centerpiece of a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, where Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was the main witness.

She recommended that the United States act promptly to send more military aid to Ukraine to prevent the regional war from spreading into a wider conflict with Russia. A $60 billion aid package is being held up by Republicans in Congress who demand a tougher stance against illegal immigration before they will approve more assistance for Ukraine.

Haines said it is “hard to imagine how Ukraine” could avoid more Russian incursions against the territory it holds without additional U.S. assistance.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on a Defense budget as soon as next week.

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