If I Were Writing America's Defense Strategy Right Now, I Would Bring America Home

For decades, American foreign policy has operated on the assumption that American power is greatest when America is everywhere.

If I were writing America's defense strategy today, I would begin with the opposite assumption.

I would become almost ruthlessly self-focused.

I would pull America back from the war in Ukraine.

I would find a way out of the war with Iran.

I would tell Europe that its defense is increasingly Europe's responsibility.

Then I would take the money, weapons, political attention and industrial capacity we are spending abroad and begin one of the largest national rebuilding projects since World War II.

Not because I believe America should retreat from the world.

Because I think we need to rebuild the foundations that allow us to lead it.

We Are Spending Faster Than We Are Rebuilding

The problem became increasingly clear to me while examining Russia's war in Ukraine.

Every missile America supplies has to come from somewhere.

Every Patriot interceptor fired has to be replaced.

Every ship deployed requires maintenance. Every aircraft requires parts. Every weapons system ultimately rests on factories, workers, minerals, energy and supply chains.

Recent reporting on American missile inventories should be setting off alarms.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have placed enormous pressure on American air-defense stocks. Some American inventories in Europe have reportedly fallen to levels military officials consider critically low.

My conclusion is becoming increasingly simple:

Stop spending faster than we can rebuild.

I would not abandon American power.

I would consolidate it.

Bring the Arsenal of Democracy Home

America's first defense priority should become the reconstruction of the American industrial base.

Factories.

Shipyards.

Steel.

Semiconductors.

Rare-earth processing.

Permanent magnets.

Missiles.

Drones.

Nuclear energy.

Electrical infrastructure.

Ports.

Railroads.

Satellites.

Artificial intelligence.

Robotics.

And the skilled workforce required to build all of it.

The United States government itself now acknowledges that our dependence on foreign critical-mineral processing represents a national-security vulnerability.

That should be treated with the urgency of a weapons program.

Because it is one.

A missile design sitting on a Pentagon computer is not military power.

The ability to manufacture 10,000 of them is military power.

America Needs a National Mobilization Campaign

I would accompany this industrial program with an enormous national communications campaign.

For decades, American culture has celebrated finance, software, entertainment and consumption.

I would make building things prestigious again.

I would tell Americans that working in a shipyard matters.

Mining matters.

Welding matters.

Engineering matters.

Manufacturing semiconductors matters.

Building transmission lines matters.

Designing rockets matters.

Processing rare earths matters.

Working in a factory that manufactures an interceptor missile is an act of national defense just as surely as serving aboard the ship that fires it.

I would want American children looking at aerospace engineers, machinists, nuclear engineers, miners, electricians and rocket scientists the way previous generations looked at astronauts.

This wouldn't simply be an economic program.

It would be a cultural project.

Make building America patriotic again.

Get Out of Ukraine

This is where my strategy would become controversial.

I would begin withdrawing the United States from the Ukraine war.

Not because Russia is our friend.

It isn't.

Not because Ukraine's sovereignty is unimportant.

It is.

I would do it because I no longer believe America's primary strategic objective should be sustaining an indefinite war of attrition on Russia's border while American weapons inventories and industrial capacity are under increasing pressure.

Europe has vastly more at stake in Ukraine than the United States does.

It is time for Europe to assume the principal responsibility for European conventional defense.

America can remain a powerful NATO member while telling wealthy European countries that American resources cannot permanently substitute for European military capacity.

Our objective should become rebuilding American deterrence—not proving how long we can keep supplying somebody else's battlefield.

Get Out of Iran

I would apply similar logic to Iran.

Protect American territory.

Protect Americans.

Maintain overwhelming retaliatory capability.

Keep critical sea lanes open where essential.

But stop allowing Iran to determine where America spends its most sophisticated weapons.

If an adversary can repeatedly force the United States to fire extremely expensive interceptors against substantially cheaper offensive systems, the tactical exchange may be successful while the strategic exchange becomes increasingly questionable.

Sometimes restraint is not weakness.

Sometimes refusing to play the opponent's game is strategy.

Look North

Then I would look north.

The Arctic is rapidly becoming one of the most consequential strategic regions on Earth.

Russia already possesses the region's largest military footprint and extensive Arctic infrastructure. China is increasing its presence while cooperating with Moscow. New shipping routes, natural resources, undersea infrastructure and military geography are increasing the region's importance.

America should respond accordingly.

Icebreakers.

Ports.

Airfields.

Sensors.

Satellites.

Submarines.

Communications.

Missile defense.

Mining.

Energy.

Permanent infrastructure.

The Arctic should no longer be treated as the frozen edge of the map.

It should be treated as America's northern front door.

Greenland Is Strategic Geography

That makes Greenland extraordinarily important.

I would not advocate seizing Greenland. Greenlanders have their own political rights, and Denmark is an American ally.

I would pursue something much more durable: an aggressive American economic, diplomatic and security partnership with Greenland and Denmark.

Invest.

Build infrastructure.

Expand American access.

Develop resources where Greenlanders want development.

Expand space and missile-warning capabilities.

Build ports and airfields useful to both civilian communities and defense.

Make partnership with America economically valuable.

Greenland sits at the intersection of the Arctic, North Atlantic, missile defense, space surveillance and critical-mineral competition.

That is extraordinary strategic geography.

We should treat it accordingly.

Look South Too

I would simultaneously make the Western Hemisphere the center of American foreign policy again.

South America should matter enormously to Washington.

Energy.

Critical minerals.

Food.

Ports.

Manufacturing.

Shipping.

Technology.

Infrastructure.

China understands the strategic importance of the region.

America sometimes behaves as though geography stopped mattering after the Cold War.

It didn't.

If we are serious about reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains, we need alternatives.

Some of those alternatives should be American.

Others should be Canadian, Greenlandic, Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, Peruvian or sourced elsewhere in our hemisphere.

The objective would not be American isolation.

It would be hemispheric resilience.

Build a supply system that is extremely difficult for a hostile power outside the hemisphere to choke.

And Above Everything: Space

Then I would spend heavily on space.

Satellites are communications.

Navigation.

Intelligence.

Missile warning.

Weather.

Targeting.

Economic infrastructure.

Space is no longer a scientific side project attached to national power.

It is part of national power.

The United States' newly announced space transportation policy calls access to space a vital national and economic security interest and seeks the capacity for more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030.

I would go further.

I would treat American superiority in space with the urgency previous generations attached to naval superiority.

Reusable launch.

Satellite manufacturing.

Rapid replacement.

Space-domain awareness.

Lunar infrastructure.

Missile warning.

Communications.

Commercial space.

Military space.

And the industrial ecosystem underneath all of it.

America possesses an extraordinary advantage here.

I would protect it obsessively.

Fortress America Is the Wrong Phrase

Some people would call this isolationism.

I wouldn't.

Isolationism means believing the outside world doesn't matter.

I think the outside world matters enormously.

My argument is that America cannot indefinitely defend everything, everywhere, at the same intensity while allowing the industrial foundation underneath American power to erode.

I would call this strategic consolidation.

Pull back.

Rebuild.

Rearm.

Reshore.

Secure the hemisphere.

Secure the Arctic.

Dominate space.

Make the electrical grid resilient.

Rebuild shipyards.

Expand energy.

Mine and process the materials our technology requires.

Manufacture weapons faster than any adversary can reasonably hope to consume them.

Then America negotiates from abundance rather than scarcity.

Make America Difficult to Exhaust

The strategy I am proposing ultimately has one objective:

Make America extraordinarily difficult to exhaust.

Russia should not be able to weaken us by keeping Ukraine at war.

Iran should not be able to drain high-end American interceptors with cheaper weapons.

China should not be able to threaten American weapons production by restricting minerals or magnets.

A disruption in the Red Sea should not cripple American supply chains.

A crisis in Europe should not leave us wondering whether we have enough missiles for the Pacific.

No adversary should be able to look at America's commitments around the world and conclude that the easiest way to defeat us is simply to make us spend.

That requires accepting something uncomfortable.

America cannot make everything its immediate responsibility.

Prioritization means deciding that some things matter more than others.

For me, the hierarchy would be clear.

The American homeland first.

The American industrial base.

The Western Hemisphere.

The Arctic and Greenland.

Space.

Then the rest of the world.

That does not mean abandoning American leadership.

It means rebuilding the source of it.

For most of the last century, America's greatest strategic advantage wasn't simply that we possessed powerful weapons.

It was that behind those weapons stood an economy and industrial system capable of producing almost unimaginable quantities of everything.

That was the real arsenal of democracy.

I want it back.

And until we rebuild it, I would stop volunteering to fight wars of attrition against countries that may be perfectly happy to watch us exhaust ourselves.

Author's Disclosure: This essay presents the author's personal strategic framework for American defense and foreign policy. The central arguments—including strategic consolidation, reducing American involvement in Ukraine and Iran, rebuilding domestic manufacturing, prioritizing the Western Hemisphere, Arctic, Greenland and space, and using a national communications campaign to elevate industrial work as patriotic service—are the author's own. AI was used as a research, editorial, organizational and critical-analysis tool to test the strategy against competing arguments, verify current information, provide relevant strategic context, and assist with drafting and refinement. Where the essay makes predictions or proposes strategic consequences, these are presented as the author's analysis rather than established fact. The author retains responsibility for the finished work.