The US must prepare for a multi-front war

The “elimination” of Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel in southern Gaza was a bit of serendipity. An Israeli patrol reportedly saw three people running and opened fire. They were surprised to find Sinwar — and the best news is that there were no hostages near enough to be harmed.

How ironic that the deaths of so many terrorist leaders — Moammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hassan Nasrallah and now Sinwar — seem banal and yet so brutal.

So now what? Will this death prove an inflection point or yet another chapter in Israel's long wars against Iran and Iran’s proxies? Could momentum build now for a resolution that pulls the region together and isolates Iran — or better yet, changes it?

What world will we face next Oct. 7? It could well be even more dangerous. This is not just because by then, the U.S. will have a new president, nor because of the tactical playout in the region. Other countries are watching the chaos in the Middle East and the turmoil in America’s politics. And the ones that would seek to do harm to us, our friends and our interests are showing increasing willingness to cooperate and be opportunistic. Nothing spells opportunity like chaos.

Iran, of course, directly threatens and has directly attacked U.S. interests in the Middle East. But it is also part of an “axis of malign partnerships” involving increased cooperation among the Islamic Republic, North Korea, China and Russia. And we are already engaged in indirect or gray-zone conflict with them across multiple fronts.

While we seek to protect shipping from attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea, Iran is reportedly brokering talks for a shipment of Russian missiles to the group. And while Middle East battlefronts multiply, China helps underwrite Russian aggression in Ukraine, while Iran and North Korea provide Moscow with missiles, drones and other weapons.

This web of interconnections increases the likelihood that a conflict between the United States and any one of these adversaries could expand to multiple fronts.

If the U.S. was not ready for last Oct. 7, still less are we ready for what the next one could bring. Urgent threats in the Middle East notwithstanding, China remains the pre-eminent long-term challenge to the United States.

But in our current force construct, reinforcing our presence in one place, as we have recently done in the Middle East, means diminishing it in another. This is why the National Defense Strategy (NDS) Commission, which I chair, reached the unanimous, bipartisan conclusion that the U.S. must prepare for several conflicts at once. We have called for a Multiple Theater Force Construct that can defend the homeland as well as confront threats in the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. We cannot build our entire defense strategy around a single threat. The U.S. needs an approach that is both prioritized and global.

It is imperative that Congress and the incoming administration make the necessary investments now to position and equip the force for the possibility of a multi-sided conflict. The NDS Commission called on Congress months ago to pass a supplemental appropriation to invest in national security innovation, support U.S. allies at war, and reinforce America’s defense industrial base — Congress went on recess instead. More generally, Congress harms readiness every time it stalls a qualified nomination or fights over the debt ceiling or operates on continuing resolutions and shutdowns.

The changes and investments necessary to protect the U.S. will be expensive. The existing defense budget of $850 billion is the largest in the world, and it must be spent more effectively and efficiently, across all government agencies.

Global leadership will require sacrifices from ordinary Americans, in the form of higher taxes and reforms to entitlement programs. An important job for the next administration is to educate the public on why American life depends on national security, and to marshal public support for shouldering the necessary costs.

Finally, it is also past time that we faced the ways our hemorrhaging national debt endangers our security. I voted for a balanced budget in 1997 when the debt was less than $6 trillion. That figure is now $35 trillion, and interest payments alone are set to hit $870 billion in 2024 — an amount that dwarfs our current defense budget. We need to spend more, spend smarter — and pay for it.

Jane Harman is the chair of the National Defense Strategy Commission. She is a former nine-term congresswoman from California, former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and author of “Insanity Defense: Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe.”