Election 1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seeking an unprecedented third term, is challenged by Republican Wendell Willkie, former Democrat and businessman.
Germany’s bombers rain terror on Britain, and its U-boats hunt merchant ships crossing the Atlantic. In the Pacific, Imperial Japan has invaded Manchuria and threatens to expand its reach across South Asia. Roosevelt sees the election as a referendum on democracy and fears fascism will spread to America.
Hitler had already invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France by the fall of 1940. He split Poland with Russia and had a Tripartite Agreement with Japan and Italy, in which they pledged mutual support in establishing a “new order” in Europe and the Pacific.
Roosevelt knew support for Britain would likely pull the U.S. into the war. But he favored that over the alternatives—appeasement, nonconfrontation, and isolationism. Both he and Willkie promised to keep America’s sons from fighting another world war.
Plans without resources are only wishes—and wishes do not deter adversaries, much less defeat them.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor 15 months later, those hopes were dashed. The United States joined World War II, mobilizing 16 million troops and the nation’s vast industrial resources.
The risk of world war today has never been greater since then—and the United States has arguably never been less ready. Waking the nation up to that fact should be a top priority for our national leaders, though precious little has been said or will be said over the remaining days of the 2024 presidential campaign.
China’s territorial ambitions in southeast Asia are no secret, with the taking of Taiwan at the top of its list. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did not go as Vladimir Putin wished, but he’s shown no sign of giving up. Iran, gun shy after Israel and its allies neutralized a barrage of missiles and drones in April, isn’t letting go of its proxy forces or its desire to erase Israel from the map.
Their new tripartite marriage is eerily reminiscent of the WWII version. They too want a New World Order, one based not on liberty and self-determination, but on intimidation and centralized control.
All three interfere in the U.S. information sphere, planting cyber weapons, sewing doubt about elections and U.S. institutions, undermining confidence by leveraging American’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech to spread disinformation with impunity.
Economically, they support each other, while China holds sway over vast segments of the global supply chain, including 98 percent of the world’s gallium, a critical material for computer chips and LEDs, and 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth metals. In wartime, such market power is a threat worse than the economic tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. military is undersized for the challenge. The bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy sounded the alarm in July, criticizing the National Defense Strategy as inadequate for the threats facing the nation. Sized to fight one major war, the current strategy could be paralyzing: A future leader could prove unwilling to risk the force we have, and simply choose to surrender. Think of France in June 1940.
The commission rightly urges a two-war strategy and a Cold War-sized defense budget, harkening to a time when the U.S. spent 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product on defense, versus the 3 percent we spend today.
When Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall unveiled plans to reorient the Air Force and Space Forces for great power competition in February, he began with a warning: “We are out of time.” What’s clear today is that we’ve already entered that gray area between competition and hostility where a single misstep could trigger a wider conflagration.
Yet Kendall decided this summer to “take a pause” on the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—a critical element of a deep-penetration fighting force. Air Force leaders warned that cutting in half the F-22 buy, as the Pentagon decided in 2009, would have far-reaching implications. Time proved them right, but then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates was blinded by America’s ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fired them for fighting back.
This time, however, the Air Force is giving up on a next-generation air superiority fighter of its own volition, a self-inflicted wound that again risks an unaffordable long-term impact.
Kendall hit stop on NGAD not because he didn’t want it, but because he was out of money. The Sentinel ICBM replacement is non-negotiable because the 50-year-old Minuteman IIIs it’s replacing are already beyond reasonable service life. The B-21 is going into production and can’t go any slower than the few per year currently planned. The F-35 is short of required numbers as it is. Add overdue T-7 trainers, E-7 AWACS replacements, collaborative combat aircraft, munitions stockpiles, the proliferated space architecture, offensive space, advanced weather, targeting, and GPS satellites, and Kendall’s conundrum is clear.
But that doesn’t make it the right call.
By late 1940, Roosevelt was already ramping up weapons production to wartime levels, cognizant that Britain would not survive without U.S. support. New weapons were on the drawing board, and B-17 bombers were already in production.
Even so, it still needed the better part of two years after Pearl Harbor to build the mass needed to fight in Europe. It took another year to gain the upper hand. Undersized, and without the right mix of fighters and bombers to gain strategic advantage, the Eighth Air Force suffered hideous losses to gain the air superiority needed to make D-Day a success. And it took two nuclear bombs to finally end the war in the Pacific.
America’s win-hold-win strategy worked in World War II. But that approach might not be feasible today, where a second theater could reach a culminating point well before victory is assured in the priority warzone. And unlike World War II, the U.S. industrial base is ill-suited to rapid mass production of war materiel.
The Air Force is the only military service that can provide “night one” offensive power at scale to rapidly blunt and deny a Chinese or Russian invasion. To be effective, its force must be sized to do that in both theaters at once.
Kendall’s plan to reorient the Air Force and Space Force for great power competition pointed the department in the right direction. Paired with his operational imperatives, he has set the stage for developing the right portfolio of advanced capabilities to deter future war and win if needed. But plans without resources are only wishes—and wishes do not deter adversaries, much less defeat them.
The Roman adage applies: If you want peace, prepare for war.