Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: What grade does Biden’s National Security Strategy get?

 Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard:

What grade does Biden’s National Security Strategy get?

This week, the White House released its new National Security Strategy (NSS), representing the Biden administration’s view of the world’s greatest challenges—and how the United States can protect its interests. Strategy experts at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security dug into the document and graded it based on five criteria. In all, the document gets generally high marks for being clear-eyed about the challenges posed by Russia and China, but our reviewers downgraded it for a lack of focus as well as concerns about how to implement its ambitious aims. Here are their full assessments for the latest edition of the Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard.

Matthew Kroenig

Acting director at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and director of the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Overall, this is a fine strategy. Several of the key themes are similar to those that have appeared in Atlantic Council Strategy Papers over the past several years. The NSS recognizes the preeminence of the China challenge, the superiority of democracies in great-power rivalry, and the need to stitch together US alliances in Europe and Asia and to create new frameworks to address twenty-first century challenges.  

On the negative side, there is a potential gap between ambition and resources. The strategy prioritizes amorphous global challenges over concrete security threats; it is too optimistic about cooperation with China; and the section on strengthening the United States for strategic competition includes too many divisive domestic political issues

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

While not given the prominence it may deserve, the strategy does return to what some have called the Biden doctrine—the idea that the world is at an inflection point in a global competition between democracies and autocracies. Unlike previous statements from Biden that expressed doubt about whether democracies can deliver, the strategy correctly recognizes democracy as the wellspring of American strength and that “Our rivals’ challenges… are associated with the pathologies inherent in highly personalized autocracies and are less easily remedied than ours.” 

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategy essentially divides the strategic context into two sections: 1) the competition between democracies and autocracies; and 2) cooperation on shared challenges, such as climate change, pandemics, food security, arms control, etc. The first section is mostly well done, prioritizing competition with China and recognizing Russia as a secondary but serious threat. But the strategy places too much emphasis on the possibility of cooperation with China and on amorphous global challenges over more concrete, traditional national-security threats. The Iranian nuclear challenge, for example, is barely mentioned.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The goals are clearly spelled out: a “free, open, prosperous, and secure international order.” The strategy takes the traditional triumvirate of security, prosperity, and freedom and adds “open,” which it defines as giving all countries who participate in the order an opportunity to shape global rules. There will be debate around whether the objective of a US national security strategy should be to provide security, prosperity, and freedom for the “international order” or for the American people.  

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The strategy outlines a 3×3 framework. It says the United States will 1) strengthen the country at home, 2) build alliances, and 3) strengthen the military in order to 1) compete with adversaries, 2) cooperate on global challenges, and 3) shape rules of the road.  

So, yes, there are clear lines of effort, and it avoids the laundry list nature of some strategies. This section also includes many ideas that have featured prominently in Atlantic Council Strategy Papers over the years, including a dual-track approach to cooperation with like-minded democracies and other global actors. 

But the section on strengthening the United States at home misses the mark in several ways, including by listing many Democratic Party programs that do not enjoy bipartisan support, such as the Inflation Reduction Act.

Realistic implementation guidelines:

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

Implementing a strategy is always difficult, and this one will be no different. There are inconsistencies in the strategy, and I worry about a “say-do gap.” The strategy correctly notes Russian nuclear threats and the massive Chinese nuclear buildup, but then it incongruously re-commits to the ideological aim to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our strategy.” The strategy also says many of the right things, for example, about competition with China. But if you look at the Pentagon budget and the development of new operational concepts and capabilities, the United States is not yet where it needs to be.

Paul D. Miller

Nonresident senior fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

This is the best NSS since 2006—though that may be damning with faint praise. It is an improvement over then US President Donald Trump’s 2017 NSS in that it readily embraces the role and importance of democracy to American security, and it is better written (though I still caught at least three typos). It is more focused and tightly argued than then President Barack Obama’s 2015 and 2010 NSS documents with a clearer sense of priorities and lines of effort, though it still succumbs to laundry-listing at some points. Its inclusion of a variety of domestic issues and miscellaneous transnational issues (such as food security) weakens the document’s focus and succumbs to national security creep (the gradual colonization of every policy arena by national security concerns). This NSS falls prey to recency bias, focusing heavily on Russia and Ukraine and great-power conflict (similar to how then President George W. Bush’s 2002 NSS rewrote American grand strategy almost entirely around counterterrorism). It is also almost embarrassingly over-eager to ignore the fallout from Afghanistan and pretend the enduring threat of jihadist terrorism is manageable as a “shared challenge” rather than as a high-priority military mission. Like all other unclassified NSS documents, it is not a true strategy, but an outline of aspirational goals and lines of effort, and it does a better-than-average job at that.  

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

This is the most stridently pro-democracy NSS since Bush’s 2006 edition, while simultaneously continuing the emphasis on great-power competition with Russia and China from Trump’s 2017 NSS. The combination—the recognition that great powers compete partly through a war of ideas—is distinctive and welcome. The NSS does not have a pithy label for this distinctive mix. The one distinctive label that sticks out is “integrated deterrence,” in its discussion of the United States’ military posture, though the concept is a little fuzzy. It appears to mean better coordination across the government, with allies, and in US doctrine—in which case it is old wine in new wineskins.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategy identifies: (a) great-power competition and (b) “shared challenges” (transnational threats) as the two main features of the strategic context. The strategy does a good job highlighting the ideological component of great-power competition, noting that the competition is between supporters and opponents of a liberal international order.

Transnational challenges include climate and energy, public health, food insecurity, arms control, and terrorism. Here the NSS deteriorates into the typical grab-bag of miscellaneous issues and challenges without a clear framework or sense of priorities, nor a clear recognition of the enduring challenge specifically from jihadist-inspired groups. The one clear priority that stands out is the climate crisis, which the NSS characterizes as “the existential challenge of our time”—though one does not get the sense that the administration believes its own rhetoric when it lists climate as first among a long list of transnational challenges rather than the centerpiece of grand strategy, which is what a truly existential challenge would merit.

The decision to place a discussion of terrorism here, under shared challenges, rather than later, under defense policy, is telling. The Biden administration seems to want to distance itself from US military involvement in fighting terrorists. That would explain why the NSS is almost silent on Afghanistan. One would not know from this NSS that the United States had just lost a counterinsurgency war, nor that jihadists have unfettered control of an entire state in South Asia. The NSS says nothing about learning lessons from Afghanistan or sustaining hard-earned capabilities and expertise from that war. It gives the impression of wanting to sweep the entire thing under the rug and hope that over-the-horizon counterterrorism capabilities will suffice. I share the hope, but I do not confuse it for a strategy.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The overarching goal is stated clearly—“we want a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order”—but it is aspirational, under-specified, not actionable, and cannot be measured.

The NSS specifies three subordinate goals: (a) outcompete rivals, (b) mobilize allies, and (c) shape the rules of the road. The subordinate goals, especially the first two, are closer to being specific and actionable. The goals do a reasonable job of mapping onto the strategic context identified above. To meet the challenge of great-power competition, the United States must outcompete rivals. To meet the challenge of transnational threats, the United States shapes the rules of the road. And the United States mobilizes allies to do both.

The one thing I find lacking is anything that maps onto the rhetoric about global democracy. While the NSS recognizes the importance of the ideological aspect of great-power competition, it pays insufficient attention to the tools, opportunities, and possibilities for strengthening and championing democracy abroad.

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The strategy identifies three lines of effort: (a) invest in sources of American strength, (b) invest in coalitions and alliances, and (c) invest in the US military. The first is an echo of Obama’s proverbial “nation building at home.” The second is boilerplate liberal internationalism. Both contain laundry lists.

The third is also standard for NSS documents, but it is interesting to note what this administration chose to emphasize—nuclear modernization, deterrence, and conventional war capabilities, coupled with an almost total neglect of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, peace building, or state failure. This strikes me as a classic example of overcorrecting, letting the pendulum swing too far in response to currently fashionable intellectual trends. The NSS goes out of its way to state—by my count, four separate times—that the US military will not try to change regimes or remake societies, a striking indication of how much the administration’s thinking about defense policy is governed by recency bias and rebutting straw men. The only discussion of terrorism is under “shared challenges,” not under defense policy, suggesting that the administration sees little role for the military in fighting terrorists.  

Yes, these lines of effort will support the goals outlined above, except the “shared challenge” of terrorism, for which this NSS provides woefully inadequate thought or planning.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

Like every NSS, this is not truly a strategy document because it is mostly a discussion of ends with some consideration of ways and almost no consideration of means. As such, there is not much guidance in the document about implementation. The NSS is feasible but, to really succeed, would almost certainly cost much more than any administration would want to admit in this political environment. To compete with great powers while reviving the democratic world order and tackling a long list of shared challenges is a tall order, the costs of which the American people seem unable to understand and the Biden administration seems unwilling to admit.

Amanda Rothschild

Nonresident senior fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security 

The strategy correctly identifies strategic competition with China as the foremost threat facing the United States and is largely consistent with the foreign policy rhetoric the Biden team has advanced from the beginning of the administration. However, the strategy’s success will depend on resolving several internal tensions in its stated goals and ensuring that policies chosen to pursue those objectives will indeed deliver the desired outcomes. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s speech may be a better guidepost on priorities than the strategy document, which can suffer at times from a failure to clearly present essential goals, lines of effort, and underlying policies and their relationship to each other.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

Although this National Security Strategy is similar to the last administration’s in recognizing the preeminent threat of strategic competition with China, the strategy differs in its strong emphasis on transnational challenges, such as climate change, food security, and pandemic disease. The danger in presenting this latter grouping as one of two overall challenges, however, is that it is a very large category under which many issues could reasonably fall, making it harder to distinguish priority areas. Nevertheless, this difference is a notable change from the 2017 National Security Strategy and elucidates the Biden team’s general focus.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions? 

The Biden team rightly identifies China as the most consequential geopolitical threat facing the United States and its partners, but at the same time, it cites climate change as the greatest of all shared threats facing the world. The underlying problem here is that at times the Biden administration appears to sacrifice the former in favor of the latter. In implementing this strategy, the Biden team must ensure that efforts to counter China are not forgotten amid efforts to address climate change.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals? 

The NSS specifies several goals, but clarity remains elusive in that several of these objectives are in tension with or undermined by current realities. Maintaining the United States’ competitive edge requires a robust domestic economy—an area where the administration is now struggling. The administration claims to be willing to work with likeminded partners committed to peace and security—a notable emphasis away from its focus on only democracies. But in practice, the administration is negotiating with a regime responsible for terror and chaos across the Middle East—Iran—at the expense of regional partners. The strategy recognizes the centrality of energy policy to national security, but in practice the Biden team has not outlined a vigorous effort to achieve energy independence. How will the administration reconcile these goals and realities?

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The strategy identifies three major lines of effort to achieve its objectives: investing in US power; building coalitions; and modernizing the US military for new challenges. In theory, these initiatives would help the United States compete and advance its vital interests. Yet, the true test will be whether the policies underlying these efforts are sound and if the administration can resolve aforementioned tensions.  Interagency dynamics can often result in an NSS that is indeed a laundry list of incoherent goals, priorities, and efforts. At times, this NSS does read in that manner. Close attention should be paid to Sullivan’s speech, which is likely a better guide to the important objectives for the administration.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

As this strategy emphasizes, the United States is in a new era of strategic competition. In order to succeed in this environment, the US must compete effectively across all key arenas. For this strategy to be successful, it must narrow its objectives to the major threats facing the United States and be ruthless in prioritizing efforts to defend against those dangers. Many of the elements for success are included somewhere in the document, but a good strategy necessitates clear prioritization; that is its ultimate purpose after all. Successful implementation will depend on the degree to which the administration can prioritize goals and pursue effective policies that will achieve those outcomes.

Jeff Cimmino

Associate director with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Overall, this is a well-organized strategy with a clear objective and associated lines of effort to achieve it. The critical question will be whether there is sufficient political will in the United States and among allies and partners to make its ambitious vision a success.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

In one sense, the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy picks up where the Trump administration’s NSS left off, focusing heavily on major-power competition. Unlike the previous administration—which called its strategy one of “principled realism”—the Biden administration’s NSS is more willing to bring in ideology, stating that, “Democracies and autocracies are engaged in a contest to show which system of governance can best deliver for their people and the world.” This democracy/autocracy divide, already prevalent in previous remarks by the president, is a key theme of the strategy, even as the NSS eschews the notion that the United States favors separating the world anew into rigid blocs. Still, it formally pronounces the end of the post-Cold War world and marks the next decade as “decisive” for the future of the global order.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Overall, the strategy offers a reasonable assessment of the strategic context, effectively dividing threats facing the United States into major-power competition and transnational/shared challenges (e.g., climate change and food insecurity). The strategy articulates China as the primary challenge to the United States, while recognizing the immediacy of the threat posed by Russia. Importantly, the NSS explicitly notes that it seeks to break down the barrier between foreign and domestic policy, recognizing that US power and influence abroad requires strong domestic underpinnings.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The NSS clearly articulates its goal as “a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order.” It explains that such an order would ensure that people can enjoy basic rights; that nations abiding by the principles of the order can have a role in shaping the rules; that nations are able to improve living standards; and that it is “free from aggression, coercion, and intimidation.” While the goal could perhaps use some additional explanation, it is overall a concise, well-articulated objective, which the strategy then immediately links to three lines of effort.

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities?

The strategy consists of three lines of effort: “Invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence;” “Build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence to shape the global strategic environment and to solve shared challenges;” and “Modernize and Strengthen our Military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers, while maintaining the capability to disrupt the terrorist threat to the homeland.” The logic seems to be that strengthening at home and leveraging or constructing robust alliances and partnerships—undergirded by revitalized military power—will better position the United States to deter threats and mitigate the effects of aggression, defend democratic values, and promote prosperity domestically and abroad. In terms of prioritization, the strategy is clear when discussing major-power competition on the priority of Russia or China. Beyond that, the strategy could be clearer about the prioritization of transnational challenges.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The Biden administration is rightfully working to counter the immediate threat posed by Russia to European security. The United States should continue to support Ukraine in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity against Russian aggression. At the same time, the administration has correctly perceived China as the priority threat to the United States. The administration will need to work closely with allies and partners to leverage collective capabilities that will enable effective deterrence and defense against threats in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The strategy will require a substantial commitment of resources across the economic, diplomatic, military, and other domains. It is not unfeasible, but it will require considerable political will at home and abroad.

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and its allies and partners. The Center’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative serves to directly advance this core mission and embody its namesake’s commitment to strategic thinking. Toward this end, the initiative releases report cards analyzing the key strategies developed by the United States, its allies and partners, and multilateral bodies such as NATO. Through this analysis, the initiative aims to help leaders, strategists, and other decisionmakers hone their strategic thinking in pursuit of a rules-based international system that fosters peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.