Global Threats

The first sentence of the report — released over the summer by a bipartisan, congressionally appointed commission — was blunt: “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”The nation, the report continued, “is not prepared today.”The threats begin with China, which has grown more belligerent in Asia.In Europe, Russia started the first major war in almost 80 years.

In the Middle East, Iran finances a network of extremist groups.Increasingly, these countries work together, too, sometimes with North Korea.

The report described them as “an axis of growing malign partnerships.”I want to devote today’s newsletter to the findings from the group (officially known as the Commission on the National Defense Strategy) because I found them jarring — and because I suspect many readers haven’t yet heard them.“In a healthy political climate,” Walter Russell Mead, a foreign affairs expert at the Hudson Institute, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the report would be “the central topic in national conversation.”An anti-democracy allianceThis anti-American alliance presents a threat because its members are not satisfied with the status quo.

That’s why Russia invaded Ukraine and Iran’s proxies have been so aggressive in Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.It’s why China has rammed Philippine boats in the South China Sea and President Xi Jinping has directed China’s military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.

China, Russia and Iran all want more control over their regions than they now have.One of the bipartisan group’s central arguments is that American weakness has contributed to the new instability.“This is not a report encouraging the U.S.

to go to war,” Jane Harman, the former Democratic congresswoman from California and the commission’s chair, told me.“It’s a report making sure the U.S.

can deter war.”I...