“If you’re a combat veteran, your chances of getting promoted are greater, (but that) means that you have deep searing personal experiences with a certain type of warfare,” said Thomas Mahnken, head of the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “That didn’t serve the British and French militaries well” at the start of World War II, he said, when they were so intent on not repeating the horrors of trench warfare that they were blindsided by the new and much more mobile threat of blitzkrieg.

“After decades of nuclear weapons being consigned to the margins of national security, it is important for senior political and military leaders to re-acquaint themselves with nuclear capabilities, both ours and those of competitors,” Mahnken said. 

Thomas Mahnken of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments warned:

[W]e find ourselves today once again in a period of great-power competition with an increasing possibility of great-power war. It is the most consequential threat that we face, and failure to deter and prepare adequately for it would have dire consequences for the United States, our allies, and the global order. Because of that, I believe that preparing for great-power competition and conflict should have the highest priority.

“The National Security Strategy is to be commended for acknowledging the reality that the United States is enmeshed in a long-term competition with China and Russia for international influence. It is also to be commended for highlighting the fact that the challenge is a multi-dimensional one,” says Tom Mahnken at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Importantly, he adds this caveat: “We will now need to see the extent to which this emphasis is reflected in investment in national security, diplomacy, and economic policy.”

Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, discusses National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster’s preview of President Donald Trump’s national security strategy, identifies priorities, and more during a Dec. 2, 2017, interview with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian. The interview was conducted during the 2017 Reagan National Defense Forum, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. Our coverage is sponsored by Leonardo DRS.

“We've spent decades, first imagining that North Korea was just going to collapse on its own, then imagining that they wouldn't be able to master nuclear weapons, then imagining that they wouldn't be able to master the ability to deliver them over longer ranges. And we are where we are, but I think we need to pay attention to this allure, which still exists, of wishful thinking, to imagine a world as we wish it was, not the world as it is. As far as North Korea's concerned, I think we are going to have to be more active in deterring North Korea. We're also going to need to be more active in reassuring our allies. And in the end, that may prove to be the more difficult of the two tasks.” — Thomas Mahnken, president and CEO, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.