Today, Gary Roughead explains why speed of adaptation, not sheer scale of military might, will be critical in future military conflicts; Elizabeth Economy speaks with a former senior US diplomat about the importance of engaging allies in America’s geopolitical competition with China; and Matthew Kahn points out the issues in California’s state-centric model of wildfire risk reduction, as well as superior market-driven policy options.
Security and Defense
Writing for RealClearWorld, Distinguished Military Fellow Adm. Gary Roughead argues that central assumptions about warfare from the 20th century are breaking down amid rapid battlefield innovations in Ukraine and elsewhere. In the past, Roughead says, military scale and qualitative “overmatch” provided by superior technology were critical. Today, the former commander of the Pacific fleet writes, “the advantage no longer belongs to the largest force or to the most sophisticated. It belongs to the side that learns faster, iterates in real time, and redeploys a new variant before the enemy can respond.” While emphasizing that national will and prolonged public buy-in still matter, Roughead concludes that “the force that consistently owns the loop of learning, reacting, adapting, and producing faster than its opponent will increase the probability of victory.” Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
For China Considered, Elizabeth Economy sits down with former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to talk about his distinguished career, Indo-Pacific strategy, and the recent presidential summit in Beijing. Economy and Campbell discuss the current impact the war in Iran is having on both China and the US-China bilateral relationship following the Trump-Xi meeting. Campbell describes the Chinese perspective as President Trump arrived in Beijing, with many in the PRC concluding that the “correlation of power in many respects has shifted against the [American] president.” Looking at the broader strategic context, Economy and Campbell emphasize the importance of working together with allies and partners, even if a true multilateral strategy is lacking. The two conclude by discussing what the US role in Asia, and in the international system, may look like going forward, and how it has already changed. Watch or listen here.
Economics of Wildfires
At Defining Ideas, Visiting Fellow Matthew Kahn pushes back against ineffective means of adapting to wildfire risk, advocating instead for a market-based response. As Kahn explains, government responses to California’s recent severe wildfires have focused on costly subsidies and strict controls of insurance rates—approaches that lack the flexibility and focus that market-incentivized actors can bring to bear. Subsidies can actually weaken, not strengthen, homeowners’ preparedness, Kahn says, and those subsidies drive up the cost of rebuilding. Markets, on the other hand, force owners to shop carefully for insurance, make informed decisions about rebuilding and relocating, and help taxpayers avoid the wastefulness of public programs. Kahn argues that the state should experiment with suspending insurance-rate restrictions and one-size-fits-all mandates in fire zones to discover better ways to build a resilient California. Read more here.
Revitalizing History
In this new video episode of Reflections from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider discusses the history of wargaming, how wargaming exercises can assist policymakers in times of crisis, and the rationale for the establishment of the Wargaming Archive at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. To illustrate the importance of wargaming outcomes and assessments for policymakers and statesmen grappling with an unfolding crisis, Schneider discusses the Berlin Crisis Wargame, organized at Camp David in September 1961 as the construction of the Berlin Wall brought the US and the USSR to a high-stakes confrontation. Learn more and watch here.
Monetary Policy
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Writing for Barron’s, Policy Fellow Jon Hartley and coauthor Peter Ireland point out that Kevin Warsh’s leadership at the Fed will bring back a deeper appreciation for the insights of Milton Friedman and the monetarist school of macroeconomic thought. “Sustained price inflation is always caused by excessive monetary expansion. For inflation to come down, less money needs to be circulating in the economy,” Hartley and Ireland write of the monetarist view. The authors note that Warsh subscribes to an updated form of monetarism centering on interest-rate setting, not a pure doctrine of “fixed, stable money growth.” The authors argue that “Warsh’s first priority must be to finish the job of bringing inflation back down to the Fed’s 2% target.” Read more here.
Education Policy
“The National Assessment Government Board made some very good news last week, albeit a decade or two late, when it voted to commence more frequent testing of civics and, especially, to make 12th grade results available (in civics, reading, and math) at the state level,” Senior Fellow Chester E. Finn, Jr., writes at Flypaper. The distinguished education scholar praises this decision to provide additional “data at the end of high school on how much the young people of a state know and can do in key subjects,” noting that this information will prove invaluable for policymakers comparing results across school systems. Though Finn says this development was long overdue, he welcomes the change, concluding, “Better late than never.” Read more here.
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