The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

by Christian Brose

Trump is not wrong to demand that wealthy allies of the United States contribute more to our common defense. Indeed, friends who want America to help defend them if they are attacked have a special obligation to make themselves more defensible. And if they do not, they should not expect Americans to fight wars on their behalf that may have little prospect of victory. Having higher expectations of our allies, however, should not be confused with deriding the value of having allies at all. This is one of the most fundamental problems with Trump’s worldview, which he summed up in June 2019: “Almost all countries in this world take tremendous advantage of the United States,” he said.5 Trump sees America’s allies solely as freeloaders and free-riders, and unfortunately, he has done more to damage America’s relationships with our closest allies and to drive wedges between us than our adversaries ever could hope to achieve on their own. What Trump gets wrong is that the United States does not have allies because we are suckers. We have allies because it benefits America. We want allies because it is better than being alone. We need allies because maintaining a favorable balance of power is not possible without them. If we want our allies to be more capable and to share more of the burden of our collective defense, as we should, we should start by recognizing how the United States has intentionally contributed to our allies being less militarily capable. For example, we have often...