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Last week, the government confirmed that Kayla Mueller had died while in the custody of ISIS. In the weeks prior, we learned about the brutal murders of three innocent people -- the beheading of two Japanese citizens and the immolation of a Jordanian pilot. That followed news that Russia was stepping up its aggression in Ukraine, which followed the overthrow of the Yemeni government by an Iranian proxy, which followed the Charlie Hebdo killings, which followed the North Korean cyber attack on an American company. The Pentagon has announced more troop deployments to the Middle East. Boko Haram is still kidnapping people in Nigeria, tensions are still high in the South and East China Seas, and Iran is still positioned to develop a nuclear bomb. China continues its massive military build-up, which is shifting the balance of power in its favor in the Western Pacific.

Keeping faith with the troops means more than protecting the existing compensation system. It means ensuring our military remains the best trained and equipped force in the world. Breaking faith with the troops is sending them into battle understaffed, undertrained, or with inferior equipment.

Next Monday the President is scheduled to submit his fiscal year 2016 budget request to Congress, an annual process that marks the official beginning of the budget season.  While we don’t have the details of what will be included in this year’s defense budget yet, the broad outlines are well known.  The Defense Department’s base budget for FY 2016 is expected to total $534 billion (not including war funding), which is a six percent real increase from the level appropriated in FY 2015.  The administration is also expected to request an additional $51 billion in war funding, for a total of some $585 billion in DoD funding.

On January 27, 2015, Ambassador Eric Edelman, Distinguished Fellow at CSBA, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the implications of the Obama Administration’s approach to the Iran nuclear negotiations. In his testimony, Ambassador Edelman expressed concern over the pattern of concessions and negotiating dynamic and the resulting prospect of negotiations moving far beyond the parameters of an acceptable final agreement. He called on the American policymakers to use all available instruments of coercive diplomacy to restore credibility to the oft-repeated statement that every option remains on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran.

U.S. defense strategy depends in large part on America’s advantage in undersea warfare. Multiple Quadrennial Defense Reviews, National Military Strategies, and Congressional hearing statements highlight how quiet submarines, in particular, are one of the American military’s most viable means of gathering intelligence and projecting power in the face of mounting anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) threats being fielded by a growing number of countries.

The nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran appear stalemated. Meanwhile Iran is on the march in the Middle East with its forces supporting the coup in Yemen, buttressing the Assad war-machine in Syria, mediating between factions in Iraq, and plotting with Hezbollah operatives on the periphery of Israel. Today, the American alliance system stands bruised and battered while our friends in the region perceive Iran and its resistance-front galloping across the region.These two simultaneous developments—the deadlock in nuclear talks and Iran’s aggressive moves in the region—are not coincidental. They are intimately linked, and that should be a lesson for President Obama: The nuclear deadlock cannot be broken unless Washington reengages in the myriad of conflicts and civil wars plaguing the region, particularly now that Yemen is vulnerable and the Saudi royal family is in a state of turmoil following the death of King Abdullah on Thursday.