What is the best way to build a military? That question was raised by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his recent remarks to a gathering of senior officers he had hurriedly gathered at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia.
In his address, Hegseth began by emphasizing that while the ultimate goal of the U.S. armed forces is peace, ensuring peace means “we must prepare for war.” As a result, he continued, the central organizing logic and sole mission of the U.S. armed forces must be warfighting, which requires “restoring and refocusing our defense industrial base, our shipbuilding industry and onshoring all critical components,” as well as having allies carry more of the burden in key regions.
There is nothing controversial in those takeaways. It is indeed the case that despite a record defense budget, the U.S. still lacks sufficient munitions to adequately supply two close partners—Israel and Ukraine—engaged in separate wars. Policymakers and analysts have been sounding the alarm about the sorry state of U.S. naval shipbuilding for years. And for too long the U.S. military focused its interventions and training on counterinsurgency operations more closely associated with 19th and early 20th century imperial policing, rather than serving to counter and deter major threats to core U.S. allies and interests from great power rivals.