US foreign policy is unrealistically broad and ambitious: How to rein it in

Is there a sound strategic logic guiding U.S. foreign policy? Or is it more, as Harold MacMillan, on becoming prime minister in 1957, responded when asked what would guide his foreign policy: “Events, dear boy, events.”  

Witness the current reality: The U.S. expands forces in Europe with a long-term Ukraine commitment, sends more ships and Marines to the Persian Gulf as Biden pushes a deal to make new security commitments to Saudi Arabia as a payoff if it normalizes ties to Israel, all as Washington expands its presence and alliances in Asia to counter China. 

You can be forgiven for thinking that the U.S. grand strategy appears to be everything, everywhere, all at once. Why? Because strategy is having an objective and aligning means to ends to achieve it. In effect, strategy is about what you choose not to do. 

Last October, the White House released its National Security Strategy. It defined “competition among the major powers” as the major challenge facing the U.S. It says that Russia “poses an immediate threat,” as its war on Ukraine underscores. But it defines China as a unique, supreme challenge because it, “is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, military and technological power to advance that objective.” 

The National Security Strategy says global problems such as climate change, pandemics, food insecurity and energy shortages are equal challenges that require global cooperation. But it doesn’t explain how such cooperation would happen if the U.S. is competing with major powers like China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.  

It may be said that Biden’s repeated argument that the issue of our times is the contest between democracies and autocracies, a major theme of the National Security Strategy, helps explain the rationale for deepening U.S. commitments in Europe and the Middle East. But added to the China challenge and quest to address existential global issues it is difficult to see the U.S. bandwidth or the resources to implement such an approach.

To be fair, stuff happens, and unpredictable events can demand attention and resources. The urgent often crowds out the important. 

That said, realism about the consequence of policy choices on strategic priorities is the first step toward a solvent foreign policy. In the case of deepening U.S. commitments in Europe, the urgency of the Ukraine war has so far meant $76 billion in U.S. military aid, training and economic support for Ukraine and an additional 20,000 troops deployed or extended in Europe since the war began. 

Increasingly there are concerns about shortages of ammunition and weapons systems not only for Ukraine but also for U.S. stockpiles, raising questions about the U.S. defense industrial base. Meanwhile, as China-Taiwan tensions mount, there has been a backlog of more than $19 billion in weapons for delivery to Taipei. The sense of urgency to bolster deterrence on Taiwan led Biden to use presidential authority to attach a Taiwan arms request to that for Ukraine. 

Even as Americans have grown weary of forever wars, U.S. involvement in the Middle East appears to be growing. Last month, Biden sent three additional warships and 2,000 Marines into the Persian Gulf as “tanker wars” with Iran are heating up. In response to the U.S. intercepting ships exporting Iran’s oil, in violation of sanctions, Iran has stepped up seizing — or trying to seize — ships in the Gulf.   

At the same time, Biden is exploring a deal in which the U.S. would provide more security guarantees, advanced weapons and a civil nuclear agreement to Saudi Arabia in exchange for Riyadh normalizing relations with Israel. Such an arrangement would be a huge political win for Biden heading into a reelection campaign and a legacy issue for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.   

But the Saudis are not popular on Capitol Hill, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest Netanyahu’s efforts to pass measures that could transform Israeli democracy into an illiberal, more authoritarian state. Congressional approval for the Saudi-Israel deal would be problematic. Ironically, there has been informal Saudi-Israeli intelligence, defense and economic cooperation growing for a decade or more — without any additional U.S. commitments. 

The point of all this is that U.S. resources and commitments are finite, and in theory, countering China is the U.S. overriding priority. At $882 billion, the defense budget is approaching $1 trillion annually at a time of uncomfortably large and growing budget deficits.  

Yet many in Congress worry that the U.S. is not investing enough in Pacific defense. Which brings us back to strategy. One of the few things there appears bipartisan consensus on is that the U.S. needs to strengthen efforts to counter China.  

But how many wars can the U.S. fight at once? The war in Ukraine shows few signs of ending soon, as U.S. support for it continues to grow. The possibility of tensions with Iran erupting into conflict cannot be dismissed. And new security commitments to Saudi Arabia could pull the U.S. into unexpected turmoil. This is on top of growing concern that China may use force to reunify with Taiwan sometime this decade. 

All this adds up to the need for the U.S. to come to terms with the limits of American power in a fragmenting, increasingly multipolar world. The U.S. needs to reconsider its security role. Its allies and partners need to bear more of the burden. Most of Europe is perpetually short of NATO defense spending targets, still freeriding on the United States. U.S.-Asia strategy needs to calibrate how much it can depend on allies and partners. 

At the end of the day, a strategy without resources is just a hallucination.  

Robert A. Manning is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. He previously served as senior counselor to the undersecretary of State for global affairs, as a member of the U.S. secretary of state’s policy planning staff and on the National Intelligence Council Strategic Futures Group. Follow him on Twitter @Rmanning4.