The description of this panel starts from the premise that military power has regained its function as one of the main instruments of global influence. But of course, for the United States, military power has always played a central role in the country’s approach to the world. Even in the era before World War II when the United States was supposedly an isolationist power, it was using military force readily and often, to protect its economic interests and sway political outcomes in countries across the Western Hemisphere. It was after World War II, however, that the U.S. military’s global role exploded, as it was used to underwrite a massive American empire, spanning Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
The rationale for the hundreds of thousands of forces that the United States has deployed around the globe over the past eight decades are many and varied: protecting allies, defeating threats to the homeland before they reach U.S. shores, ensuring access to economic markets, and spreading democracy and liberal values. At home, other benefits of the heavily militarized U.S. foreign policy are frequently championed. U.S. officials tell their voters that defense spending creates jobs and spurs technological innovation, while having a powerful military is seen as a source of patriotism and national pride.
Across many dozen military interventions, America has achieved many tactical successes, but these have not always added up to strategic victories. The costs of U.S. military adventures have been extremely high—in the United States and outside of it. Since the end of World War II, the United States has spent trillions of dollars on military interventions that have lost over 100,000 American lives, squandered geopolitical influence, and created new state and non-state adversaries. The countries where the United States has sought to display its military power are rarely better off after U.S. forces leave (if they leave), and some are decidedly worse off. And U.S. policymakers have seen their ambitious nation- and world-building projects scuttled.
As other countries invest heavily in building their military forces and using military power to advance their own influence and interests, they can learn from U.S. experience—about what not to do.
There are many reasons that the United States has struggled to achieve its goals despite often having significant advantages in terms of capabilities, resources, and numbers of personnel. The biggest failures have come however when military power has been used in pursuit of goals for which it is the wrong instrument.
The U.S. track record suggests that for all its benefits, military power has a very narrow set of applications. It is useful for seizing and defending territory, for protecting waterways and airspace, for providing physical security at key strategic locations, and for imposing costs on an adversary. Military threats can sometimes be used for leverage, to influence or sway the behavior of other states, or to force economic or political concessions.
But military power has limits. It cannot achieve political objectives and only sometimes helps states advance economic aims. The U.S. experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are reminders that while military power can overthrow governments, it cannot rebuild them. Military power can kill insurgents, but it is rarely effective at defeating the ideas that motivate them. Military personnel may be highly trained and effective at their jobs, but this doesn’t mean that they are also good at training or building the military forces of other countries. Militaries can seize economically valuable terrain or resources, but they cannot guarantee favorable trade balances, create industrial capacity, or generate economic growth. And in the United States, high military spending has not benefited the average worker but has instead contributed to rising inequality and diverted money from domestic priorities.
These limitations should make even major powers wary of relying too heavily on military power, but they do not diminish the importance of having a self-sufficient military force especially in today’s world. For all countries, having a military strong enough to defend its territory and the ability to supply those forces with equipment in peace and wartime is a requirement. States that have not invested sufficiently in their militaries face both physical insecurity and the chance for geopolitical irrelevance. This is the situation Europe faces today, unable to influence decisions that will affect its own security. In contrast, states that have built strong armed forces and defense industrial bases have been able to use those resources to protect and sometimes improve their strategic position—but only to a point. A certain baseline set of capabilities is necessary, but beyond that baseline additional military investment may not be worth the opportunity costs or may create more risks—of entanglement and escalation—than rewards in terms of economic and political leverage.
That military power is increasingly important does not mean, however, that using it successfully will get easier. In fact, changes in technology mean that it will get harder—even for countries best positioned to exploit those technological advances to build the most cutting-edge weapons systems. I will offer two examples.
First, the proliferation of cheap weapons has democratized access to military power making it much easier for small insurgent groups and weak states to get access to enough cheap drones, loitering munitions, and missiles to deny even large military forces like the United States their objectives.
Small states and non-state groups may never be able to defeat the military of a much larger adversary, but they can keep that adversary from achieving its goals, contesting airspace and naval chokepoints or using drones to make ground advances impossible. We saw this clearly in the Red Sea, where the Houthis were able to disrupt shipping traffic despite an extended U.S. effort to interrupt their campaign. While the Houthis fired $10,000 drones at commercial ships, the U.S. military wasted billions in munitions before ultimately turning to diplomatic channels to broker a ceasefire.
This trend toward cheap mass will level the playing field and make it hard even for states with overwhelming military power to achieve tactical aims on the battlefield, let alone political goals.
Second, to gain advantage in this challenging military environment, states are looking to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and quantum mechanics to gain an upper hand. One area affected by this drive for ever more exquisite capabilities is long-range missiles, conventional and nuclear. The newest missiles can travel further, faster, and carry more firepower. With the help of new sensing and command-and-control systems they are better at evading air defenses and finding their targets. They allow countries that possess them to inflict significant damage from afar. In recent years, the U.S. military has increasingly relied on what some call “over the horizon” capabilities—in counterterror operations in the Middle East and now against drug smugglers in Latin America—to reduce its reliance on larger ground and naval interventions and it also expects long-range missiles fired on the ground, in the air, and at sea to play an increasingly large role in future warfare.
Advanced missile technologies can produce spectacular effects, but their utility also has hard limits. Controlling territory, airspace, and waterways will always require physical presence. Long-range missiles can impose costs and may make states feel stronger and safer, but they cannot build political influence, shape economic outcomes, or provide real, lasting security. In fact, they bring tremendous risks, of escalation and miscalculation, raising the potential for catastrophic outcomes.
The bottom line is that political and economic effects will always demand more than military power, no matter how advanced the missile or numerous the weapons.
A world in which military power becomes more important, more widespread, and harder to use all at once is a risky one. As they build their military capabilities states may find it tempting to use force and threats of force widely, for all sorts of goals. The U.S. experience previews the often-negative consequences of such a strategy, however. Wars may become more common, and when they do occur, they are more likely to be wars of attrition, with high casualties and slow gains. The risks of escalation will also be high as states seek any source of advantage, whether that means new weapons, more missiles, or expanding the conflict into space or under the sea. And as has been the case so often for the United States, as the costs of war rise, the prospects of success may diminish, leaving states with nothing to show for the devastation they have caused or suffered.
Military power is important for states looking to be players in a power politics world. But it is a specialized tool, best used sparingly and with careful intent. As states militarize, diplomacy becomes more important not less. So does communication between allies and adversaries to clarify and respect redlines and to define guardrails that prevent misunderstandings. The old rules and norms in these areas are not well-suited to today’s world. We can and should make new ones. This is a project where great powers like China, Russia, and the United States should take the lead.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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