More Spending Alone Won’t Fix the Pentagon’s Biggest Problem

Russia’s abhorrent invasion of Ukraine has led to an upswing in support for a larger U.S. defense budget. This is good. If the U.S. is to credibly underwrite a sensible national security strategy in an era of great power rivalry, the nation needs to spend more on its military.

Some prominent voices are going beyond just pushing for more spending on defense, though, to argue that the U.S. can and therefore should re-adopt an approach of global military dominance, with armed forces able to simultaneously defeat even our most powerful adversaries. This is akin to the policy that the U.S. pursued in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

TIME