Biden Releases 2022 National Security Strategy

The Biden Administration has finally released the 2022 National Security Strategy. According to the Secretary of Defense, the NSS is a report mandated by Section 603 of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-433). The NSS has been transmitted annually since 1987, but frequently reports come in late or not at all. The NSS is to be sent from the President to Congress in order to communicate the executive branch’s national security vision to the legislative branch. The NSS provides discussion on proposed uses of all facets of U.S. power needed to achieve the nation’s security goals. The report is obligated to include a discussion of the United States’ international interests, commitments, objectives, and policies, along with defense capabilities necessary to deter threats and implement U.S. security plans.

Without further delay, here is the summary of key points:

PART I: THE COMPETITION FOR WHAT COMES NEXT

• We face two strategic challenges. The first is that the post-Cold War era is definitively over and a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.
• The second is that while this competition is underway, people all over the world are struggling to cope with the effects of shared challenges that cross borders—whether it is climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages, or inflation.
• Although the international environment has become more contested, the United States remains the world’s leading power. Our economy, our population, our innovation, and our military power continue to grow, often outpacing those of other large countries.
• Our rivals’ challenges are profound and mounting. Their problems, at both home and abroad, are associated with the pathologies inherent in highly personalized autocracies and are less easily remedied than ours.
• The most pressing strategic challenge facing our vision is from powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy.
• Russia and the PRC pose different challenges. Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.
• The PRC also retains common interests with other countries, including the
  United States, because of various interdependencies on climate, economics, and public health. Russia’s strategic limitations have been exposed following its war of aggression against Ukraine. Moscow also has some interest in cooperation with countries that do not share its vision,
  especially in the global south. As a result, the United States and our allies and partners have an opportunity to shape the PRC and Russia’s external environment in a way that influences their behavior even as we compete with them.
• Heightened competition between democracies and autocracies is just one of two critical trends we face. The other is shared challenges—or what some call transnational challenges that do not respect borders and affect all nations…as we saw with the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic when the PRC was unwilling to cooperate with the international community.
• Of all of the shared problems we face, climate change is the greatest and potentially existential for all nations. Without immediate global action during this crucial decade, global temperatures will cross the critical warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius after which scientists have warned some of the most catastrophic climate impacts will be irreversible.
• Our goal is clear—we want a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order.
• Achieving this goal requires three lines of effort. We will: 1) invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence; 2) build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence to shape the global strategic environment and to solve shared challenges; and 3) 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.
• Our approach encompasses all elements of national power—diplomacy, development cooperation, industrial strategy, economic statecraft, intelligence, and defense—and is built on several key pillars
• First, we have broken down the dividing line between foreign policy and domestic policy. We understand that if the United States is to succeed abroad, we must invest in our innovation and industrial strength, and build our resilience, at home.
• Second, our alliances and partnerships around the world are our most important strategic asset and an indispensable element contributing to international peace and stability. A strong and unified NATO, our alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and our traditional security partnerships elsewhere do not only deter aggression; they provide a platform for mutually beneficial cooperation that strengthens the international order.
• Third, this strategy recognizes that the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge.
• Fourth, we will avoid the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and will continue to engage countries on their own terms.
• Fifth, we recognize that globalization has delivered immense benefits for the United States and the world but an adjustment is now required to cope with dramatic global changes such as widening inequality within and among countries, the PRC’s emergence as both our most consequential competitor and one of our largest trading partners, and emerging technologies that fall outside the bounds of existing rules and regulations.
• On the other track, we will deepen our cooperation with democracies and other like-minded states. From the Indo-Pacific Quad (Australia, India, Japan, United States) to the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, from AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) to I2-U2 (India, Israel, UAE, United States), we are creating a latticework of strong, resilient, and mutually reinforcing relationships that prove democracies can deliver for their people and the world.

PART II: INVESTING IN OUR STRENGTH

• The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $280 billion
  for civilian investment in research and development, especially in critical sectors such as
  semiconductors and advanced computing, next-generation communications, clean energy technologies, and biotechnologies. Through the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, we are investing more than $2 billion to harness the full potential of biotechnology and biomanufacturing, create jobs at home, strengthen supply chains, and reduce carbon emissions.
• We seek to increase equitable access to affordable health care and child care; career-long training and skill building; and high-quality education and training, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially for women and girls.
• The newly established U.S.-EU Trade and Technology
  Council is coordinating approaches to setting the rules of the road on global technology,
  economic, and trade issues based on shared democratic values. Our AUKUS security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom promotes stability in the Indo-Pacific while deepening defense and technology integration. We continue to deepen cooperation with the Five Eyes (with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom). The revitalized Quad, which brings the United States together with Japan, India, and Australia, addresses regional challenges and has demonstrated its ability to deliver for the Indo-Pacific, combating COVID-19 and climate change, to deepening cybersecurity partnerships and promoting high standards for infrastructure and health security.
• We have revitalized the G7 as the steering committee of the world’s advanced industrial democracies and believe it has a critical role to play in supporting our shared vision for the international order… including in supporting freedom of navigation and maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
• The Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal qualitatively increases our ability to combat defining challenges of the 2020s, like grand corruption, digital repression, and attacks on elections and independent media.
• We raised our annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000 and are rebuilding and improving the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to enable us to achieve that goal.
• The military will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the PRC as its pacing challenge.
• The war in Ukraine highlights the criticality of a vibrant Defense Industrial Base for the United States and its allies and partners. It must not only be capable of rapidly manufacturing proven capabilities needed to defend against adversary aggression, but also empowered to innovate and creatively design solutions as battlefield conditions evolve.
• We also seek to remove barriers to deeper collaboration with allies and partners, to include issues related to joint capability development and production to safeguard our shared military-technological edge.
• Our competitors and potential adversaries are investing heavily in new nuclear weapons. By the 2030s, the United States for the first time will need to deter two major nuclear powers, each of whom will field modern and diverse global and regional nuclear forces.
• Our National Defense Strategy relies on integrated deterrence: the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits. It entails:
  Integration across domains, recognizing that our competitors’ strategies operate across military (land, air, maritime, cyber, and space) and non-military (economic, technological, and information) domains—and we must too.
  Integration across regions, understanding that our competitors combine expansive
  ambitions with growing capabilities to threaten U.S. interests in key regions and in the homeland.
  Integration across the spectrum of conflict to prevent competitors from altering the status quo in ways that harm our vital interests while hovering below the threshold of armed conflict.
  Integration across the U.S. Government to leverage the full array of American
  advantages, from diplomacy, intelligence, and economic tools to security assistance and force posture decisions.
  Integration with allies and partners through investments in interoperability and joint
  capability development, cooperative posture planning, and coordinated diplomatic and economic approaches.

PART III: OUR GLOBAL PRIORITIES

• The PRC and Russia are increasingly aligned with each other but the challenges they pose are, in important ways, distinct.
• The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.
• At the same time, the PRC is also central to the global economy and has a significant impact on shared challenges, particularly climate change and global public health. It is possible for the United States and the PRC to coexist peacefully, and share in and contribute to human progress together.
• Our strategy toward the PRC is threefold: 1) to invest in the foundations of our strength at home – our competitiveness, our innovation, our resilience, our democracy, 2) to align our efforts with our network of allies and partners, acting with common purpose and in common cause, and 3) compete responsibly with the PRC to defend our interests and build our vision for the future.
• We will act in common purpose to address a range of issues – from untrusted digital infrastructure and forced labor in supply chains and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. We will hold Beijing accountable for abuses – genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, human rights violations in Tibet, and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms – even as it seeks to pressure countries and communities into silence.
• We have an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which is critical to regional and global security and prosperity and a matter of international concern and
  attention. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, and do not support Taiwan independence.
• While we have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese
  Government, those differences are between governments and systems – not between our people. Ties of family and friendship continue to connect the American and the Chinese people.
• Over the past decade, the Russian government has chosen to pursue an imperialist foreign policy with the goal of overturning key elements of the international order. This culminated in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to topple its government and bring it under Russian control.
• Alongside our allies and partners, America is helping to make Russia’s war on Ukraine a
  strategic failure. Across Europe, NATO and the European Union are united in standing up to Russia and defending shared values.
• While some aspects of our approach will depend on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, a number of elements are already clear. First, the United States will continue to support Ukraine in its fight for its freedom, we will help Ukraine recover economically, and we will encourage its regional integration with the European Union. Second, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory and will continue to build and deepen a coalition with allies and partners to prevent Russia from causing further harm to European security, democracy, and institutions. Third, the United States will deter and, as necessary, respond to Russian actions that threaten core U.S. interests, including Russian attacks on our infrastructure and our democracy. Fourth, Russia’s conventional military will have been weakened, which will likely increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning.
• The United States respects the Russian people and their contributions to science, culture and constructive bilateral relations over many decades.

The remaining sections of Chapter III cover climate change, pandemics, biosecurity, terrorism, cyber defense, trade, and hostages and wrongful detainees, in which President Biden offers similar recommendations that follow the 2022 Intelligence Community Threat Assessment.

PART IV: OUR STRATEGY BY REGION

Most of the points covered in PART IV, especially in Europe and the Indo-Pacific were covered in Parts I-III. However, President Biden does discuss the Western Hemisphere Africa, and the Arctic. Here are the key points:

• No region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere. With
  $1.9 trillion in annual trade, shared values and democratic traditions, and familial bonds, nations of the Western Hemisphere, especially in North America, are key contributors to U.S. prosperity and resilience.
• The movement of people throughout the Americas, including over six million Venezuelans forced to leave their homes since 2015, affects all of Latin America and the Caribbean and reinforces the need for regional action.
• Tackling the climate crisis and harnessing the dynamism of the region will be central to our approach, and we will use mitigation and adaptation efforts to fuel a sustainable economic recovery and protect forest ecosystems, including by promoting trade and investment in clean energy to achieve a collective target of 70 percent installed capacity for renewable energy generation in the region’s electricity sector by 2030 and mobilizing financing and other forms of support to promote conservation of the Amazon.
• Africa’s governments, institutions, and people are a major geopolitical force, one that will play a crucial role in solving global challenges in the coming decade. Africa is more youthful, mobile, educated, and connected than ever before. African countries comprise one of the largest regional voting groups at the UN and their citizens lead major international institutions.
• We will support African-led efforts to work toward political solutions
  to costly conflicts, increasing terrorist activity, and humanitarian crises, such as those in
  Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Sahel, and invest in local and international peacebuilding and peacekeeping to prevent new conflicts from emerging.
• We will support accelerating growth through private sector investment, help Africa unlock its digital economy, double down on tackling food insecurity, and expand clean energy infrastructure through the Prosper Africa, Feed the Future, and Power Africa initiatives.
• The United States seeks an Arctic region that is peaceful, stable, prosperous, and cooperative. Climate change is making the Arctic more accessible than ever, threatening Arctic communities and vital ecosystems, and creating new potential economic opportunities. and intensifying competition to shape the region’s future. Russia has invested significantly in its presence in the Arctic over the last decade, modernizing its military infrastructure and increasing the pace of exercises and training operations.
• We will uphold U.S. security in the region by improving our maritime domain awareness,
  communications, disaster response capabilities, and icebreaking capacity to prepare for increased international activity in the region.

This review of key points serves to outline the primary differences between the 2022 NSS and the 2022 IC Threat assessment.