By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
The United States military was ranked as “weak” by the Heritage Foundation, for the first time in its annual assessment’s nine-year history.
As reported by Fox News, the conservative think tank based in Washington DC, which is mainly geared towards public policy, had a gloomy outlook in its 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength. The nonprofit, founded in 1973, warned in its latest annual report released Oct. 18, that the army faces an elevated risk of “not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”
The “2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength” focuses on the need for readiness in not one, but two wars — or “major regional contingencies (MRCs),” as the authors put it — with the theory that such a standard would prevent another competitor from taking advantage of U.S. preoccupation with another challenge. But the U.S. currently does not meet that goal, with the report rating America’s military power as “weak,” down from “marginal” in the previous year’s index, as was reported by DefenseNews.com.
“The 2023 Index concludes that the current U.S. military force is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict while also attending to various presence and engagement activities,” the report read. “It most likely would not be able to do more and is certainly ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous MRCs.”
The report assessed three major factors: the global operating environment, threats to U.S. interests and U.S. military power.
“It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were,” the Heritage Foundation said. The report highlighted that the military’s proposed defense budget under President Joe Biden’s administration was inadequate. Besides for underfunding, the report cited “poorly defined priorities,” “wildly shifting security policies,” “exceedingly poor discipline in program execution” and “a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment.”
The Heritage Foundation said the U.S. military’s power is measured in terms of modernity, capacity for operations and readiness for missions. The index seeks to assess the ease of operating in key regions, the presence of U.S. military, regional political stability, and the stability of key infrastructure. The Heritage Foundation added that the report’s downbeat assessment is based on the military’s ability to defeat two major threats almost simultaneously.
The index said that the U.S. needs the capacity to defend its interests in more than one region at a time “no matter how much [it] desires that the world be a simpler, less threatening place.” It noted acts of aggression from acts from China, North Korea and Iran, as well as Russia with its high profile invasion of Ukraine. The report by Heritage concluded that the military is at risk of not being able to meet the demands of more than one major regional conflict at the same time, adding that there have been reductions in the size of military units, and that modernization is necessary.
Overall, an evaluation of each military branch found that the Air Force was “very weak.” The Navy and Space Force were ranked “weak,” and the Army was ranked as “marginal.” The Marine Corps was ranked as “strong”. America’s nuclear capability, which was ranked separately, was rated as “strong”, but trending toward “marginal” or “weak.”
Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts made the following statement: “While America’s adversaries, particularly the Chinese Community Party, make chilling strides to challenge American leadership on the world stage and surpass our nation militarily, the professional political class is consumed with branding climate change as a national security crisis, injecting divisive ideology into the military, and undermining military readiness.” He added, “Biden’s reckless, naive foreign policy continues to embolden our adversaries, while his domestic agenda undermines the strength of our military. There is no question that under his failed leadership the strength of our military has hit an all-time low.”
