The United States faces a pivotal moment in shaping its defense priorities. Decades of mismatched strategy and resources have left America’s military strength at a nadir, unable to fully meet its global responsibilities or adequately deter growing threats. The strategic-resource mismatch—the gap between what is expected of the military and the funding it receives—has undermined the US military’s strategic and conventional deterrence across the critical theaters of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Congress, the White House, and the armed forces must address this disconnect with immediate and realistic solutions to rebuild American military strength. The American Enterprise Institute launched this project to prove that the United States is not adequately addressing growing global strategic threats, dispel the pervasive myth that the United States cannot afford the defense its strategy demands, and develop a body of policy work focused on resourcing a multi-theater military that can meet its global requirements.
Affording Defense is the first step in this effort to provide Washington’s decision-makers a clear path to closing the strategy-resource mismatch at last.
Contributors
Editor
Mackenzie Eaglen is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works on defense strategy, defense budgets, and military readiness.
Authors
Kyle Balzer is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on great-power competition, US grand strategy, long-term strategic competition, US nuclear strategy and policy, and arms control.
Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations.
Hal Brands is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US foreign policy and defense strategy.
James C. Capretta is a senior fellow and holds the Milton Friedman Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies health care, entitlement programs, and fiscal trends in advanced economies.
Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition.
Giselle Donnelly is a senior fellow emeritus in defense and national security at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on national security and military strategy, operations, programs, and defense budgets.
John G. Ferrari is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where his work focuses on the defense budget, defense reform and acquisition, and the US military.
Rebecca Grant is vice president of defense programs at the Lexington Institute and writes on national security for Fox News.
Todd Harrison is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on defense strategy and budgeting, the defense industrial base, and space policy and security.
Frederick W. Kagan is a senior fellow and director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
Jim Mattis is a retired four-star Marine Corps general, and he served as the 26th secretary of defense.
Elaine McCusker is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on defense strategy, budget, and innovation; the US military; and national security.
Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Michael R. Strain is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.
Dustin Walker is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on US defense policy and strategic affairs in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.
Contact
For general information, please contact Eliza Fox at Eliza.Fox@aei.org.
For media inquiries, please contact Kareem Rifai at Kareem.Rifai@aei.org.