Conclusion

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

—Albert Einstein

On December 1, 2009, President Obama traveled to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to deliver a major speech on Afghanistan. For nearly eight years, the United States had been waging war there, but the conflict hardly looked to be any closer to a conclusion. If anything, the opposite was true: the Taliban insurgency was expanding its reach, the Afghan government had become increasingly dysfunctional, and U.S. military commanders were demanding more troops to throw into the fight. After a months-long review of U.S. policy, in which Obama had been placed under extraordinary public pressure by military leaders, many of his advisers and, a host of foreign policy pundits to increase America’s military commitment in Afghanistan, the president was finally ready to announce his plans.

It was not a surprise.

“As Commander-in-Chief,” he told the assembled cadets, “I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After eighteen months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.” Though Obama acknowledged that al-Qaeda did not have a significant presence in Afghanistan and that the Afghan government was not in immediate danger of being overthrown, he nonetheless told Americans that he was “convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan” and that the U.S. must follow through on a strategy “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda.”1

According to the president, “Af-Pak,” as it became known, “is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat.” As long as Afghanistan was insecure, argued Obama, so too was America.

The president, however, did not point to any specific threats emanating from Afghanistan but rather from those across the border in Pakistan. His argument boiled down to the simplistic notion that 9/11 had been plotted and organized in Afghanistan and that even though al-Qaeda had a relative safe haven in Pakistan, it could return to Afghanistan to create a new one. It had been eight years since 9/11 and there had been no major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Obama had run for office on a platform of ramping down America’s war on terrorism. Yet now, ten months into his presidency, he was escalating that conflict.

Obama’s decision was more a function of politics than sound policy. In an effort to burnish his foreign policy bona fides during the presidential campaign, he promised more attention to the war in Afghanistan—without giving much thought to what that attention would look like. Once in office, the young president was put under concerted pressure to abide by the military’s wishes for more soldiers and the resources for a counterinsurgency strategy. On Afghanistan, the chickens had come home to roost.

However, what is most interesting and surprising about Obama’s remarks is what came at the end of his speech. He explicitly criticized a U.S. foreign policy focused on searching for monsters to destroy and the lack of national attention to challenges at home.

“We’ve failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy,” declared the president. “In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills. Too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars,” as he noted the trillions of dollars spent prosecuting the war on terror.

But the president went even further. “We must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last.”

He said American security and leadership “does not come solely from the strength of our arms” but also from “workers and businesses,” from “entrepreneurs and researchers,” “from the teachers that will educate our children,” and from “the service of those who work in our communities at home.”

Obama would frequently return to these themes during his presidency. In his first National Security Strategy, unveiled in May 2010, Obama pledged renewed American leadership but also greater focus on domestic policy because “what takes place within our borders will determine our strength and influence beyond them.”2

Defining the U.S. economy as “the wellspring of American power,” Obama called for new “investments” in “a quality education for our children; enhancing science and innovation; transforming our energy economy to power new jobs and industries; lowering the cost of health care; . . . reducing the federal deficit”; and creating “a more resilient nation” that is better able to withstand natural and man-made threats.3

In 2011, when Obama followed through on his pledge to draw down troops from Afghanistan within eighteen months, he told the American people, “it is time to focus on nation building here at home.”⁴ During his 2012 State of the Union Address, he pledged to “take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”⁵ While campaigning against Mitt Romney later that year, Obama added, “Let’s rebuild our infrastructure, . . . our roads and our bridges, . . . broadband lines and high speed rail. Let’s expand our ports and improve our airports.” And once again he asked the American people, “Why wouldn’t we do some nation-building here at home?”⁶

The disconnect is dizzying and is one of the more compelling examples of the pathology of threat inflation. Obama clearly recognized the need for America to focus on pressing domestic challenges and noted their connection to national power. But only in America could the president expand a military commitment against a largely phantom threat, while at the same time decrying the deleterious impact of pursuing such policies. Unsurprisingly, Obama’s efforts to recast U.S. foreign policy and focus less on distant and foreign threats and more on the challenges America faced at home fell on deaf ears.

Indeed, the 2016 presidential campaign made clear that America had returned to an era in which fear was the key driver of domestic politics. From literally the moment that Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president on June 16, 2015, his campaign was defined by xenophobia and fear-based rhetoric that grossly mischaracterized and inflated foreign threats. This ran the gamut from “rapist” Mexican immigrants and Islamic State terrorists posing as refugees to foreign governments—allies and rivals alike—that were allegedly ripping off America blind.

While Trump’s pledge to “build a wall” along the U.S.-Mexican border put his candidacy on the map, it was his call in December 2015 for a total ban on Muslim immigration—in the wake of a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, by two radicalized jihadist terrorists—that solidified his support within the Republican Party. Trump’s proposal was certainly radical, but it also followed a familiar and growing pattern of anti-Muslim attitudes within the GOP.

During the 2016 Republican primary campaign, the former pediatric surgeon and later Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson determined that Islam was inconsistent with the Constitution, adding, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”7 Sen. Ted Cruz advocated “empower[ing] law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”⁸ Sen. Marco Rubio proposed monitoring “anyplace—whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site—where radicals are being inspired,” without revealing how such a seemingly infinite number of places could be identified or how those who happened to be there would receive Fourth Amendment constitutional protections.⁹ In an unhinged speech at the Republican National Convention, Newt Gingrich declared, “We are at war with radical Islamists,” who he claimed would somehow acquire weapons of mass destruction. “Instead of losing 3,000 people in one morning,” said the former Speaker of the House, “we could lose more than 300,000.”¹⁰

Even the relatively moderate former Florida governor Jeb Bush joined practically every other Republican officeholder in America in calling for a ban on Syrian Muslim refugees entering the country. It was a far cry from his brother, George W. Bush, who in the days after September 11 ventured to a Washington, DC, mosque and called for tolerance toward Muslim American communities.11

Trump’s top foreign policy adviser and later his short-lived national security adviser—retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn—embraced and informed Trump’s anti-Islamic views. “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL [sic],” he tweeted out at one point during the campaign. He also coauthored an incendiary book that, among many unfounded claims, asserted, “We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. . . . Suffice to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety tyrants.”¹² These imagined links between all U.S. adversaries was a willful distortion of reality yet consistent with the Trump campaign’s apocalyptic threat inflation. As the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani put it starkly at the Republican National Convention, unless Trump won in November, “there’s no next election, this is it.”¹³

In ordinary political moments, such divisive and bigoted rhetoric would have been a national scandal—and the death knell of a presidential campaign. But the 2016 campaign offered a depressing reminder of the extent to which fearmongering remained a potent political weapon.

Once in office, Trump did not let up. Days after his inauguration, he signed an executive order (EO) banning all refugees from entering the country for 120 days and blocking travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas,” Trump said in seeking to justify the ban. Homeland Security secretary (and later White House chief of staff) John Kelly echoed these sentiments, arguing that the EO was necessary because “this way we can ensure the system is doing what it is designed to do, which is protect the American people.”14 It should be noted that the chances of an American being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack is about one in 3.6 billion. In contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning are one in seven hundred thousand—being struck twice is one in nine million.¹⁵ In fact, between 1975 and the day Trump signed his EO, only three refugees had committed deadly terrorist attacks within the United States. They had all been from Cuba.¹⁶

Nonetheless, Trump defended the White House’s decision to announce the travel ban without warning or guidance to the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Border Patrol on the grounds that “if the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!”¹⁷

Though numerous federal courts struck down the ban, the White House issued another order that was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court. The court’s decision notwithstanding, the economic and reputational damage to the United States from Trump’s actions is quite clear. When the ban was put into effect in January 2017, residents of seven Muslim-majority countries, including some dual-citizenship Americans, were detained and questioned at airports across America for hours on end. Translators who served alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq had been forced to return to the countries where their lives, and those of their families, were placed in danger because of the support they had provided to the U.S. military.¹⁸

Even American citizens flying from San Francisco to New York City were stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents while deplaning and required to show their “documents,” which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.19 More directly, pulling away America’s welcome mat damaged the U.S. economy and tourism industry, hurt colleges and universities that relied on foreign students, and undermined health care services for Americans in poor rural areas, where often only foreign-born doctors and nurses will work. In just the first week after the ban had been announced, the United States saw a $200 million drop in business travel. For 2017, while tourism boomed around the world, international bookings for travel to the United States fell by 4 percent, costing the United States more than $4.6 billion and forty thousand jobs.²⁰ At the same time, newly empowered immigration enforcement officials began systematically rounding up undocumented immigrants across the United States—even those who had never been accused or convicted of a crime and had lived peacefully in America for years. As this book prepared to go to print, the Trump administration implemented a policy of forcibly separating migrant children from their parents, including those seeking asylum in the United States. Public outcry forced the White House to reverse course, and a federal judge ordered the administration to immediately reunify children—some younger than five years old—with their parents. However, the harm to America’s standing in the world—as well as the chilling effect on tourism and immigration—is impossible to ignore.

Trump’s focus on overseas security threats was felt elsewhere. His first budget proposal, titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” called for more than $50 billion in new military spending, along with dramatic reductions in domestic spending initiatives, from cuts to job-training and employment-assistance programs to massive cuts for government agencies that focus on worker safety and environmental protection.²¹

Trump also implemented what he called an “America First” foreign policy that eschewed long-standing alliances, international agreements, and global cooperation. Trump spent far more time berating NATO allies for their spending on national defense than he did extolling the virtues of the nearly seventy-year security relationship. He pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Change Treaty, walked away from the multilateral nuclear-nonproliferation agreement with Iran (with no better, or alternative strategy), and enacted unilateral tariffs that risked sparking a global trade war. Though, not to fear, the president proclaimed, “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”22 Later, in July 2018, when asked who is America’s “biggest foe globally right now,” Trump amazingly responded that it is the European Union.²³

Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in his maiden major foreign policy speech spoke of the importance of putting national interests ahead of values like democracy and human rights—rather than viewing them as operating hand in hand. Internally, he enacted decimating personnel cuts and sidelined career diplomats, which led to a historic exit of Foreign Service officers and a precipitous drop in agency morale. Trump also proposed massive cuts to the State Department budget, including a 29 percent reduction in foreign operations and foreign-aid programs. At the United Nations, he ended support for international family-planning programs. Perhaps worst of all, Trump openly embraced antidemocratic leaders, such as Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, an increasingly authoritarian Xi Jinping in China, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and most controversially, Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Trump’s domestic policies were not much better at making America great again. His initial legislative gambit was a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare and rip health insurance away from tens of millions of Americans. However, the administration continues to take steps to undermine the legislation and, in effect, weaken health care coverage for millions of Americans.24 On issues like the rising opioid epidemic, his administration did little; on gun violence, nothing. Environmental and labor regulations were slashed, and infrastructure spending—an issue with bipartisan support—went nowhere in Congress. Trump’s one big legislative victory was a massive trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans. The bill, however, was projected by the Congressional Budget Office to increase the federal deficit by nearly $2 trillion and is estimated by the economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve to have had between minimal and zero impact on economic growth.²⁵ This legislation makes it increasingly difficult for Congress to find future budgetary resources needed to tackle the country’s growing set of domestic challenges.²⁶

Trump constantly pointed to billions of dollars in new defense spending that was aimed at confronting foreign dangers that either did not exist or were at best minor threats to Americans. At the same time, he cut the legs out from under the domestic elements of American power. Rather than making the country safer, his proposals have had the exact opposite effect. Nation building at home, it seemed, would have to wait another day.

A Better Way

As this book has shown, threat inflation and the inevitable counterproductive and costly policies that it leads to are the road to a weaker, more insecure, and less safe America. Worst of all, this mind-set ignores the clear and present threats lurking among us—ones that kill Americans on a regular basis and at rates far higher than in most other developed countries. Beyond such life-and-death issues are the daily impact of weakening Americans’ quality of life and the ability of workers and businesses to compete in a globalized economy. This diminished safety, security, and well-being is a collective, if often unconscious, choice of American citizens and their elected leaders. But these constant self-inflicted wounds—enabled by the Threat-Industrial Complex’s misleading portrayal of the world—should not be America’s future.

If America is ever to change course and adopt the policies that will truly keep its people safe, it first needs to recognize that it has a problem. In May 2014, former secretary of defense Robert Gates provided a stellar example of what owning up to this reality sounds like. Bob Schieffer, the host of CBS’s Face the Nation, posed to Gates the kind of question that Sunday-morning talk shows were seemingly invented to ask: “Do you see Russia as posing the greatest national security threat to this country at this point?” Gates replied with refreshing and unusual frankness. He said, “I think the greatest national security threat to this country at this point is the two square miles that encompasses the Capitol Building and the White House.” According to Gates, who worked for eight presidents, including as CIA director and secretary of defense, “If we can’t get some of our problems solved here at home, . . . some compromises on the Hill that move the country forward, then I think these foreign threats recede significantly into—as far as being a risk to the well-being and the future of this country.”27

That Gates’s honest observation was unprecedented and made only after he had retired from public service demonstrates how narrow our national discussion about “national security” has become. So how do we change the dominant threat-inflation narrative documented throughout this book?

The primary transmitter of foreign-threat inflation is, first and foremost, the president’s bully pulpit. In the fall of 2016, President Obama guest edited a special issue of Wired magazine and made an observation that is all too rarely heard from the commander in chief. “The next time you’re bombarded with over-the-top claims about how our country is doomed or the world is coming apart at the seams, brush off the cynics and fearmongers. Because the truth is, if you had to choose any time in the course of human history to be alive, you’d choose this one. Right here in America, right now.”28

If there is one problem with Obama’s statement, it is that it came in the fall of 2016—at the tail end of the second term of his presidency. Presidents have an enormous impact on how Americans see the world. Too often their inclination, when it comes to foreign affairs and national security, is to focus on reasons to be fearful rather than optimistic. Politicians will and should talk about foreign dangers and challenges, but they are responsible for placing such discussions in a proper context. Portrayals of overseas threats should not be accompanied by hopeful platitudes about the future but rather recognition that there are plenty of reasons to be enthusiastic about the present—and that these reasons for optimism far outweigh reasons for concern.

Change must not only come from the executive branch. Every spring, for more than twenty years, congressional intelligence committees have held a series of “global threat” briefings. There intelligence and Pentagon officials routinely describe a world of ever-increasing chaos in which Americans perpetually face more and more lethal foreign threats. To counterbalance this exclusively one-sided portrayal, Senate and House foreign affairs committees should hold annual U.S. foreign policy “opportunity briefings.” State Department and USAID officials, plus outside experts, would be called on to describe positive advances in world affairs and to offer recommendations for how the United States can further consolidate and advance them.

Beyond public hearings, Congress holds tremendous power to shape foreign policy perspectives with its mandated reporting requirements. The House and Senate foreign relations committees should require the State Department (with contributions from other agencies) to produce a public report that is dedicated to documenting positive global trends. This would include the decline in global conflict, long-term improvements in democratization, the continuing and unprecedented decline of extreme poverty rates, and steady international gains in education and life expectancy.

As noted earlier, presidential debates are tremendously skewed toward terrorism and the Middle East when they address foreign policy. This is unsurprising given that debate moderators—almost always TV news hosts—choose the questions and thereby frame how the candidates will respond. The Commission on Presidential Debates should agree to use moderators who are respected and balanced experts in foreign policy (when that is the focus of a debate), not simply TV news readers. Moreover, the commission should crowdsource foreign policy topics and questions from prospective voters and nongovernmental experts. Without such changes, these highly watched and influential events will remain overwhelmingly focused on foreign threats and continue to promote fear, not understanding.

Media

Even though President Trump derides any disagreeable information as “fake news,” prominent media outlets still play a vital role in framing the world for Americans. More accurate context and balanced viewpoints are particularly important when covering terrorism. One study of how the media covered eighty-nine terror attacks committed within the United States between 2011 and 2015 found that attacks carried out by Muslims received 44 percent of all coverage, even though Muslims perpetrated just 12.4 percent of them. Attacks by a foreign-born Muslim were more than ten times as likely to have a story written about them than if the perpetrator had been a right-wing extremist or their motivations were unknown.29 This is happening despite the fact that between 2008 and 2017, of the 387 extremist killings in the United States, 71 percent were committed by right-wing extremists and 26 percent by Islamic extremists.³⁰ Given this disproportionate coverage, almost half of all Americans supported Trump’s travel ban, mistakenly thinking it would protect them from terrorist attacks.

Print, digital, and television media need to change the way they cover and contextualize terrorism. As things stand, to quote the terrorism scholar Brian Michael Jenkins, “warnings of imminent doom have an advantage over those counseling calm. Fear sells.”³¹ One way to correct this skewed perspective is for the media to make greater use of terrorism scholars who do peer-reviewed, data-driven research. Few of these individuals are ever invited to speak on cable news. Producers instead rely on the same group of retired military officers or homeland security officials, many of whom are employed by private-sector companies that are de facto members of the Threat-Industrial Complex. Beyond expanding the number and diversity of “expert” voices, news organizations should push themselves to make more evidence-based and data-driven arguments. Journalists are often rightly skeptical of politicians’ claims about domestic issues. They should employ the same skepticism the next time a TV talking head claims that World War III could be upon us.

Media outlets should also highlight relevant financial and professional interests of experts appearing on their shows. Presently, news hosts occasionally mention that those pundits who appear exclusively on their networks manage companies that have U.S. government contracts. But news shows overwhelmingly omit the fact that TV pundits frequently have direct financial interests in whatever issue is being discussed. The business press provides a best practice worth emulating: when financial analysts appear on shows or write corporate profiles, they disclose whether they hold positions in the companies mentioned or have plans to initiate one within the next seventy-two hours. If a terrorism expert or retired admiral is asked for advice on a news program, either the host should state explicitly or it should appear on screen what government or private-sector links that individual has related to the issue being discussed.

Think Tanks

Think tank experts provide a significant and respected source of information that politicians and the media use when engaging in foreign-threat inflation. But many of these individuals have financial interests or affiliations that—perhaps even unconsciously—shape the focus and tone of their research findings. When publishing these conclusions, think tanks should be required to reveal the consulting contracts and outside sources of income for their employees that are related to their field of research. In addition, any potential financial or professional conflicts of interest should be listed on their personal bio pages.32 Meanwhile, think tanks should transparently outline their financial support and what percentage of their overall funding individual donors contribute. Transparency groups, such as Transparify, should continue to “name and shame” organizations that refuse to divulge their donors or detail how money received is being spent and to rank them by their relative levels of openness.33

Philanthropic foundations have tremendous influence over the foreign policy topics on which think tank fellows and university professors write. These grant-giving institutions make clear the issue areas that they will support and the types of publications and even likely conclusions they expect to receive in a proposal for funding. Among prominent funders, there are requests for research into nuclear nonproliferation, torture, drone strikes, the erosion of civil liberties, the chronically unstable Middle East, or advances in threatening robotics or big data. Rarely is support given for research that disagrees with the severity of such purported threats or more crucially that views the world in less alarmist terms. These organizations fund research into the destructive policies that flow from foreign-threat inflation, but they all too rarely question the overarching narrative that makes these policies possible. Philanthropic foundations, particularly progressive-oriented organizations, should make it a priority to seek out and support new voices and perspectives that go against the conventional national security narrative.

You

Finally, changing the national security narrative requires Americans to be better informed about the world around them. This begins by recognizing the fear-based appeals of the Threat-Industrial Complex. When a politician or general refers to a foreign threat as “existential” or justifies the next war as essential to “safeguard your children,” understand that these emotive claims are intended to scare, not inform, you. Fear is peddled to elicit public support or acquiescence for policies that, far too often, will not make you safer, freer, healthier, or happier.

One way to better educate yourself is to bookmark, or follow on social media, websites that provide nonpartisan, factual information about the world. Our top-dozen such sites would include Our World in Data, Gapminder, OECD Library, Wikipedia (for almost any issue, it provides the most accurate information, with citations for deeper exploration), Human Security Report Project, Uppsala Conflict Data Program, World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for Systematic Peace, Gun Violence Archive, Global Terrorism Database, and HumanProgress. These websites provide a free, constantly updated, and accurate characterization of domestic and international affairs that are consistently misrepresented by the Threat-Industrial Complex.

Not only will community engagement provide essential context about the never-ending threats peddled each news cycle, but getting involved with organizations like the American Red Cross or other volunteer groups will provide a sense of control over your and your family’s safety. If it is within your means, travel is perhaps the best way to ease one’s fears of the outside world.34 In the absence of political leadership that assuages our misplaced fears, take the initiative to play that role yourself. Whether your “audience” is your family, Facebook friends, or the classroom, you can combat the Threat-Industrial Complex by sharing not only comforting words and resilient rhetoric but also evidence and information that puts the alleged threats into perspective. This will not make you naïve or Pollyannaish but rather empowered and accurate.

National Security for American Citizens

Changing how Americans think about “national security” is critical and long overdue but not simply because of the foreign policy implications. Change must begin at home with the fundamental recognition that the foundations of American power—and in turn national security—are eroding and must be repaired. That means that political attention and resources must be directed toward the domestic risks and systemic harms that threaten Americans and undermine their quality of life far more frequently and consequentially than any combination of foreign dangers does.

The revamped approach to national security offered here does not contain an exhaustive list of policy recommendations but rather highlights five of the most pressing challenges that Americans face. We also focus on those policy interventions that have demonstrably worked in the past and that should be politically tenable for government officials and policy makers who often claim that their number-one priority is to protect the American people.

Health Care

As discussed in “That Which Harms Us,” the gravest threat to Americans is noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which prematurely kill nearly nine out of ten of all Americans every year. What is so frustrating about NCDs is how easily preventable they are and the extent to which eating healthier, quitting smoking, moderating drinking, and increasing exercise or any physical activity would save lives, save money, improve economic productivity, and heighten the quality of life for hundreds of millions of Americans. Policy interventions for tackling NCDs are relatively cheap and straightforward.

For example, a 20 percent tax on sugary drinks would dramatically reduce the number of Americans suffering from diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. A one-cent-an-ounce tax on these drinks (twelve to sixteen cents per beverage) would also result in $17 billion in savings on health care costs over ten years.35

A 30 percent subsidy on the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables could significantly increase consumption for the forty million poor Americans enrolled in the highly effective Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).36 Numerous evidence-based studies have shown that eating more fruits and vegetables is associated with lower rates of mortality for all NCDs and cancer.

Since 1995, smoking rates have fallen 40 percent among adults and 35 to 70 percent for high school students, and the main reason is very simple: taxes on cigarettes were increased.³⁷ Further increasing the tax on cigarettes by one dollar a pack could prevent an estimated two million smoking-related and premature deaths every year.³⁸ Such a tax, applied nationally, would generate an extra $8.6 billion in tax revenue that could be used to fund tobacco-cessation programs.³⁹ In addition, limiting the advertising and marketing of cigarettes would also keep more kids from picking up a habit that will likely shorten their lives.⁴⁰

Finally, changes in the tax code that incentivize companies to create programs encouraging their employees to exercise, to offer healthy vending machine options, and to provide financial incentives for participation in health and wellness programs, such as gym-membership reimbursement, would significantly reduce the number of Americans who fall victim to an NCD. It would also improve their quality of life and that of their families. None of these are onerous policy changes; they have all been shown to work and would more than pay for themselves within several years via lower health care costs and stronger economic growth.

Gun Violence

Gun deaths claim more than thirty-eight thousand Americans every year, cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity and health care expenditures, and cause untold suffering for those affected by it. Gun ownership, however, is so embedded in American society that it is politically difficult for the United States to reduce this self-inflicted and preventable carnage.

But there are still cost-effective and even politically feasible ways to make gun deaths rarer. That process can only begin with better information. Between 2004 and 2015, an equal amount of federal research funds went to gun violence as to drowning, even though the former kills eight times as many Americans annually.41 A vast expansion of research monies for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to study gun violence would tell policy makers more about the backgrounds of murderers and how they obtained their weapons—and provide a policy road map for keeping guns out of the hands of likely perpetrators.⁴²

But what we do know is that the easy availability of guns is strongly associated with America’s increasing suicide rate from firearms.⁴³ States with mandatory waiting periods and universal background checks have significantly lowered suicide rates. When those laws are reversed, suicide and also homicide rates spike.⁴⁴ Gun locks, mandatory gun safes when children are present in a home, restrictions on the size of gun magazines, taking firearms away from people accused of domestic violence, treating what are now seen as accidental gun deaths as criminal neglect, and even public education programs are all steps that, though unlikely to dramatically lower gun deaths, would certainly save lives. Most of these modest and sensible initiatives also enjoy overwhelming public support.⁴⁵

Drug Deaths

The fastest growing threat to Americans is drugs and primarily opioids—such as heroin, fentanyl, and prescription pain relievers. With seventy-two thousand fatalities annually, drugs now kill nearly as many people as guns and cars combined.46 More money for and access to drug treatment, including diversion programs for people arrested for drug possession, would reduce these numbers significantly. Every dollar invested in effective drug prevention in secondary schools saves up to eighteen dollars in long-term substance-abuse costs.⁴⁷ Mandating greater federal and state regulation of opioid prescription guidelines and placing tighter controls on the importation of powerful synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, would dry up the supply of drugs that are often legally prescribed.

Even increased political focus on job creation and economic development would reduce drug deaths. One study of every county in the United States between 1999 and 2014 found that as the county’s unemployment rate increased by one percentage point, the opioid death rate per one hundred thousand rose by 0.19 (3.6 percent), while overdose visits to emergency rooms increased by 70 percent.⁴⁸ Of course, creating more jobs and spurring economic growth have enormous societal benefits beyond simply reducing drug use.

Infrastructure

America’s crumbling infrastructure hinders economic prosperity and job growth, burdens business owners, and puts lives needlessly at risk. The price tag to create a modern twenty-first-century infrastructure in the United States will run in the trillions of dollars, but the ripple effect of such public investment would be transformative. It would create millions of jobs, spur innovation, increase productivity, and alleviate the daily stresses that Americans face when commuting and traveling.

Raising the federal gas tax by just one quarter to a mere 43.4 cents per gallon would create $291 billion in new revenue over the next decade, which could be used to expand and upgrade mass transit. Congress and state legislatures could pursue other ways to raise revenue for new spending, from establishing an infrastructure bank and incentivizing the private sector to partner in infrastructure improvements to taking advantage of relatively low interest rates and beginning new public-works projects. Ironically, while there is bipartisan support for improving national infrastructure, the first eighteen months of the Trump administration saw virtually no tangible progress in addressing the worsening situation. This unwillingness to act will only ensure that America continues to become less economically competitive compared to other developed countries—and ultimately individual Americans will pay the price in lower wages and greater economic anxiety.

Education

The primary way for maintaining America’s economic competitiveness, better ensuring that citizens have healthier and more fulfilling lives, lifting families out of poverty, and reducing income inequality is through education. America already spends more per pupil on education than any other developed country in the world does, so throwing more money at the problem is not necessarily the ideal solution. But redirecting resources to areas of greatest need could do a world of good. Increasing access for universal prekindergarten and helping low- and middle-income students pay for college are relatively inexpensive initiatives that could have an enormously positive impact. Today, attending community college is the primary way that low-income and minority students can address historical underachievement; yet by one estimate, there is four thousand times more public funding for four-year research universities per student than for two-year community colleges. In addition, modest federal initiatives that in recent years have encouraged administrators to transform their curriculums and rewarded high-performing schools should be continued and fully supported.49

Improving educational outcomes must, however, be about more than classrooms and degrees. Workers who have lost their jobs to the relentless trilogy of algorithms, robotics, and globalization need greater access to job training and connections to potential employers that will help them find new, well-paying jobs. Unfortunately, the United States spends a smaller proportion of its wealth on work retraining than does any other OECD country, except for Mexico and Chile.⁵⁰ Correcting that imbalance would help create a workforce that is better able to compete against similarly advanced economies.

Countless American politicians will tell you that their number-one priority—and their most sacred obligation—is to keep the American people safe. Putting aside the fact that the number-one priority of any American politician should be to uphold the Constitution, this national devotion to safety has, over the past seventeen years, led to one destructive, expensive, and counterproductive policy after another. But if American politicians are being honest about protecting the American people from harm, then they need to be focused on the foregoing five issue areas. Redirecting a fraction of the money currently maintaining America’s military might to modest policy interventions at home is the single best way to truly keep Americans safe.

A Foreign Policy for a Better World and a Safer America

The cynic might argue that in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War, America has become the world’s most powerful nation—with the strongest military and economy and unparalleled global influence. In short, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But an America that is militarily overcommitted, that defines its national security interests in the broadest manner imaginable, and that gives inadequate attention to far more pressing problems at home while focusing obsessively on phantom threats overseas will likely not remain a great power forever. Overstretch abroad and inertia at home will inevitably take its toll. While it is essential that America rebuild the domestic foundations of national power, it also must recalibrate its approach to foreign policy.

That process can only begin with the realization that the dramatic global economic, political, and social improvements that have occurred since the end of the Cold War—and have made America safer and the world a demonstrably better place—have less to do with America’s massive military than we have been led to believe.

The reality of post-Cold War American foreign policy is that U.S. military strength has been most powerful when it has not been used. Security alliances in Europe and Asia have increased regional security and reduced the likelihood of war. Coercive diplomacy with Iran and Syria has led to nonproliferation agreements that have reduced the threat of weapons of mass destruction being used. Security assistance, training, and education have helped professionalize militaries in virtually every corner of the world. Finally, the more modest use of military force and support for peacekeeping operations—both direct and indirect—in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Africa have been among the biggest contributors to international peace and security.

Force is generally seen in Washington as the default elixir to that which threatens America. In reality, when the United States employs its military (for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan), it usually does as much to weaken American national security as promote it.

Instead, it is the quiet work of diplomacy, foreign assistance, and support for international organizations that has been more consequential and enduring for U.S national security interests. The work of civilian agencies, U.S. diplomats and negotiators, and nongovernmental organizations as well as direct support for international organizations has helped to improve global living standards, spur economic innovation and growth, and promote democracy and adherence to the rule of law.

The focus of U.S. leaders going forward should be to consolidate the extraordinary progress detailed in this book and orient American foreign policy toward ensuring that these advances continue and become more difficult to reverse. This does not mean that the United States should pull up the drawbridge to the rest of the world—far from it. But it does mean placing greater emphasis on soft power over hard power and inexpensive diplomacy and development assistance over costly and open-ended military engagements.

First and foremost, America must increase its national investment in the nonmilitary elements of foreign policy. As we wrote several years ago, “American foreign policy needs fewer people who can jump out of airplanes and more who can convene roundtable discussions and lead negotiations.”51

The increases in military spending and cuts to the foreign-operations budget are examples of the misguided priorities that drive national security decision-making. If anything, the State Department, the Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, among others, should not be fighting for budget scraps but should be fully resourced by Congress and the president. In addition, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, Export-Import Bank, and International Finance Corporation incentivize U.S. firms to invest in supposedly dangerous foreign locales. More public support for such efforts could encourage business leaders and their employees to push back on the narrative that the world is defined by instability and upheaval and could bring greater awareness among Americans of their economic and political potential.

USAID in particular has been hollowed out by budget cuts, reorganization, and a lack of attention and interest from policy makers.52 Currently, the United States spends approximately 0.18 percent of its GDP on development assistance.⁵³ That is far behind other OECD countries, many of which match or surpass the long-standard benchmark for advanced nations of 0.7 percent, which is also reflected in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Considering the benefit to American foreign policy of a world that is freer, wealthier, and better educated, the United States should be number one when it comes to support for global development. Do not just take our word for it. As the former commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen has noted, “In many respects, USAID’s efforts can do as much—over the long term—to prevent conflict as the deterrent effect of a carrier strike group or a marine expeditionary force.”⁵⁴

Conversely, when it comes to defense spending, policy makers should be looking at ways to save money and reduce America’s military footprint. This is particularly true of the Army, which is by far the largest service branch and remains a formidable fighting force. But the nature of conflict in the twenty-first century does not lend itself to a future in which national militaries engage in large set-piece battles, which the Army remains currently structured to do. In recent years, the Army has been focused on counterinsurgency and post-conflict stabilization operations—neither of which falls within its core competencies. Rather, the comparative advantage of the U.S. military lies elsewhere: its extraordinary power-projection capabilities, relative air and naval superiority, offensive cyber programs, alliances and overseas bases, special operations forces, and integration of information technology into war-fighting capabilities.

Instead of maintaining an oversized active-duty ground force, the Pentagon should reduce the Army’s size and shift more of its capabilities to the reserve component (the Army Reserve and Army National Guard), which played such an important role in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. A more streamlined active-duty force could be reoriented to discrete tasks, such as projecting force quickly and lethally, while the reserves could build up skills in areas such as peacekeeping, building partner capacity, civil-society support, and cyber operations.

Such steps would bring significant budgetary savings. Humans are costly and rarely more so than when they serve in the military. Between 2001 and 2016, military compensation increased by 44 percent, and military health care costs went up by 114 percent. Much of these expenses were localized in the Army.55 As we have documented in “An Alternative Post-9/11 History,” those costs, particularly the latter, will undoubtedly increase in the future. The money saved by shifting toward a larger reserve force would allow greater investments in the areas where the United States needs to maintain and expand its comparative military advantage: the Navy, the Air Force, information technology, space systems, and unmanned platforms and robotics.⁵⁶

But there is one other key reason to consider reducing the size of the active force. Since the U.S. military is so disproportionately larger than every other aspect of American power, all challenges to the United States are perceived through the lens of a military solution. If your biggest national security tool is a hammer, there is a natural inclination to view all overseas challenges as if they are nails. Reducing the size of the Army and increasing the use of reserve and national guard forces (which creates political dilemmas since such forces are largely made up of civilians) would not end all U.S. military misadventures, but it could make them more politically difficult to initiate and sustain.

Finally, policy makers should be focused on strengthening the architecture of international institutions—and global norms—that provide a platform for promoting U.S. interests and are essential for maintaining global peace and security. This, of course, means continuing strong U.S. support and engagement in the United Nations and its affiliated agencies, such as UNICEF, the UN Development Program, and the UN Department of Peacekeeping. The hundred thousand UN peacekeepers deployed in support of fourteen peace operations around the world not only are relatively cheap—one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan costs $2.1 million a year, while the annual reimbursement rate for one peacekeeper is less than $16,000 annually—but also reduce the potential and length of civil wars.57

But strengthening international institutions also includes support for—among others—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement in May 2018, is still actively verifying the Iran nuclear deal at a staggeringly low price tag of $11 million a year. It means standing up the World Trade Organization, which is an essential global body for resolving trade disputes among member states that at one time might have led to conflict, and the International Criminal Court (ICC), of which the United States is not a member but should be.⁵⁸ Though American policy makers often dismiss the importance of the ICC, research has shown that it plays an important deterrent role. Members of the court are nearly 50 percent less likely than nonmember states to kill civilians when fighting civil wars.⁵⁹

Then there are the regional organizations like the Organization of American States (OAS), the African Union (AU), the Association of South Eastern Asian Nations (ASEAN), and other regional groups. In the post-Cold War era, these groups have been a crucial impediment to regional conflict and have also spearheaded greater respect for the rule of law and human rights. In Europe, the allure of participation in the European Union has pushed countries in eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and even Turkey to do away with the death penalty and pass laws providing greater protections for minority communities. In Latin America, the OAS has worked to avert conflict between Ecuador and Colombia, and the AU has conducted successful peacekeeping missions in Somalia and South Sudan (in collaboration with the UN).

Finally, the United States must continue to be engaged in international technical organizations that promulgate and maintain universally applied rules on the global commons. This includes everything from outer space and international air to maritime travel, telecommunications, and the internet. With growing demands on these domains from governments, businesses, and consumers—asteroid mining and suborbital tourism could be coming in our lifetimes, for example—U.S. participation can both shape the direction of these organizations and assure that their rules remain consistent with U.S. national interests.

Beyond these international and regional organizations are the global norms—both written and unwritten—that strongly influence international behavior. The international coalition that was assembled to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991 not only upheld international law but put teeth in the international norm against cross-border invasion, occupation, and seizure of territory. Nuclear-nonproliferation efforts received a significant boost from the international diplomatic initiatives—and the UN Security Council–backed multilateral sanctions regime—that pressured Iran to recommit itself to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to place its nuclear program under intrusive IAEA inspections. The lever of U.S. military force compelled Syria’s Assad regime in 2013 to turn over its known chemical-weapons program to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Greater adherence to these international norms and rules has not ended the potential for countries to invade their neighbors or to develop prohibited weapons of mass destruction, but the growing international consensus around these issues has made it more costly for countries to openly violate them. Certainly, the Gulf War did not stop Russian-backed forces from forcibly annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but the international response ensured that Moscow paid a significant price. Since the war in Ukraine, Russia has become more isolated diplomatically while international sanctions have contributed to significant capital flight, negative GDP growth, and currency devaluation.60

One of the ironies of the punishment meted out to Russia is that the leading voice of condemnation came from the United States—the same nation that in 2003 flagrantly violated international law and global norms when it assembled a meager coalition of willing nations to invade and occupy Iraq. The United States often pushes hardest for other countries to abide by international norms while remaining the least inclined to consistently do so itself. This hypocrisy is one of the many benefits that come from being an unrivaled and largely unthreatened global superpower. This lesson has not been lost on Russia and China and their regional and global ambitions.

There are consequences for such actions, both direct and indirect. For example, the Senate has refused to consider the ratification of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 168 countries, including China and Russia.61 The treaty defines universal legal standards for fishing, shipping, and mining, while also codifying sensible and safe navigation principles that are adhered to by most of the world. Every senior U.S. military official—especially those serving in the Navy—have strongly endorsed UNCLOS ratification for decades on the grounds that it would give the United States a seat at the table in crafting global rules for resolving maritime disputes and conducting routine naval operations. By staying outside the international laws and norms outlined in UNCLOS, the United States has less leverage and authority in maritime issues.

The repeated use of unilateral force and the creation of coalitions of the willing may fulfill certain near-term American interests but in the long term will make it more difficult to create international consensus in condemning actions that go against U.S. interests. An argument often heard in U.S. foreign policy debates is that when America conforms its behavior to international laws and institutions, it weakens national security. But the exact opposite is true. The more America universalizes international issues and the more it is able to create consensus around adherence to the rule of law, respect for human rights and electoral democracy, and condemnation of flaunting international laws, the more it makes America stronger and more respected.

In the wake of World War II, U.S diplomats and policy makers laid the foundation for a rules-based international system and a series of international organizations to administer allegiance to these precepts. To a largely underappreciated degree, the United States can point, more than seventy years later, to extraordinary success in that effort. This is perhaps the saddest and most misguided element of America’s propensity for foreign-threat exaggeration: Americans fail to see and appreciate their abundant accomplishment in helping to create a world that is very much in America’s image.

Much of this book was researched and written as Donald Trump was elected president, and admittedly, it is hard to feel positive about the future of international affairs with him residing in the White House. Since Trump took office, he has repeatedly shown contempt for the international system. Even worse, Trump’s “America First” rhetoric posits that if a global problem does not directly impact the United States, he is not interested in dealing with it. When we first began working on this book, we could only imagine a black-swan event that would divert America and the world from the progress that has been made over the past several decades. Trump’s election has the potential to be precisely that black swan.

Trump’s ascendancy also comes at a time of growing concerns about the state of political freedom in the world. For all of the positive advances that we chart in this book, nowhere is the record more mixed—and is the potential for significant reversals greater—than on democracy and adherence to the rule of law. This refers not just to semiauthoritarian rulers turning into fully authoritarian rulers in China, Turkey, and Russia, among others. There is a growing crisis in Western democracy in which populism and xenophobia are pushing democratic nations toward the policies and politics of exclusion. This is happening in places like Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Philippines, Great Britain, and, of course, the United States.

There are still plenty of reasons to be bullish about the present and cautiously optimistic about the future. But we are also painfully aware that the past several decades of extraordinary progress are not destined to continue. It would be the height of hubris to suggest that the world can only move in one direction—forever better and brighter. Things can fall apart, and while we do not believe that we will return to the conflict-ridden, undemocratic, and economically stagnant world of thirty or forty years ago, progress can be halted and, in some cases, reversed. We wrote this book not just to point out how far we have come but also as a reminder that bad decisions and poor policy choices can do untold—and sometimes permanent—damage.

Reversing the international cooperation and active U.S. engagement that has defined the post–Cold War era is precisely one of those bad decisions that could have grave long-term consequences. On few issues is this more true than climate change, the effects of which will not be restricted to one nation. If there is the same level of commitment and cooperation in confronting rising temperatures and cresting seas that we have seen in improving literacy rates, wiping out disease, consolidating democratic gains, and limiting cross-border conflict, then the world can find a way to weather the proverbial storm. The United States has the ability and the global influence to lead that effort. The question today is whether it will.

As we’ve argued in this book, America should stop overdramatizing foreign threats—and deemphasize the role of the U.S military. But contra Trump, this is not a call for America to walk away from its traditional role as a global leader. We reject the notion, sometimes heard on both the far left and the far right, that America would be safer or wealthier if it played a less sustained role in the world. Particularly now, at a time of more explicit great-power competition and efforts by China and Russia to rewrite the rules and norms of the international system, it is more vital than ever that the United States—in concert with partners and allies—pushes back on such efforts. This does not mean military interventions or unilateral coercion. As this book has exhaustively demonstrated, those approaches have consistently failed at tremendous cost and political consequence since 9/11. What is needed is forward-leaning direct engagement and a spirit of cooperation with international political organizations, humanitarian and public health nonprofits, scientific and technical alliances, and multilateral industry forums. These are the underpinnings of the international system, from which Americans benefit every day. To abandon these organizations—and to abdicate America’s global leadership role—to China or Russia will diminish the lives of not just the American people but all of the world’s citizens.

Rather than huddle in fear at the happenings outside our borders, Americans should take pride in having helped build a world that is safer, freer, wealthier, healthier, and better educated than at any point in history—and make a commitment to continue the effort. At the same time, Americans must also look inward—to the inequalities and inadequacies at home—to ensure that their country is matching the human development progress that is so evident overseas. America’s global influence will only be as strong as the foundations of national power at home.

We know the path forward for a better future, but it will rely on the decisions that are made by America’s elected officials today. There is no reason that the extraordinary advances of the past quarter century cannot continue and that tomorrow will not be brighter than today. The choice is in our hands.