US disarmament is a gift to its great power rivals

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. He tweets at @DaliborRohac.

There’s a vast ocean separating the U.S. administration’s rhetoric about its geopolitical competition with China and its practical actions, which essentially cede ground for no discernible reason.

First, there was the quick dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which, along with the yet-to-be-reauthorized funding for the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, is the main tool for engaging with countries of Sub-Saharan Africa – a region where China has recently made significant inroads.

Then, there was the gratuitous shuttering of government-funded broadcasting, a key element of U.S. soft power with a rather negligible price tag — and one that helped win the Cold War. Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reaches audiences in 23 countries, in 27 languages, and with an annual budget that’s less than half of what the Czech Republic spends on its public television.

The administration then discontinued support for the Open Technology Fund — a $43 million-a-year operation overseen by Radio Free Asia, helping citizens living under repressive regimes (especially China) access the internet and Western media. It also cut its funding for Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which received $26 million in federal funding since 2022 to investigate Russia’s abductions of Ukrainian children, resulting in international indictments against Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials.

If that’s not value for money, nothing is.

Speaking on the Hugh Hewitt’s show last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was right: “If [the Chinese] end up outcompeting us, out-innovating us, outworking us, what have you, that’s one thing. But for us to sort of unilaterally allow them to do that rise while not playing by the same rules, then that would be on us,” he said.

Yet, unilateral soft-power disarmament is the best way to describe what appears to be the administration’s policy — and it’s likely to extend to hard power as well.

There was no conceivable reason to close the Office of Net Assessment agency at the Department of Defense, a small but intellectually vibrant “think tank” tasked with examining the likely contours of future military conflicts.

Likewise, it is telling that the Republican chairs of the armed services committees in the Senate and House already spoke out, opposing the administration’s apparent intention not to appoint a new U.S. commander of NATO troops in Europe. Such a move would effectively end NATO’s role as a coherent military force, since it’s unimaginable the administration of President Donald Trump would place U.S. troops in Europe under European command.

Furthermore, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking to eliminate 8 percent from the Pentagon’s budget over the next 5 years.

So, a U.S. withdrawal from Germany — already contemplated by Trump in 2020 — might just be the logical outcome for an administration that’s consistently been penny-wise but pound-foolish.

But the deployment of some 35,000 troops in Germany isn’t an act of charity toward the Germans. If anything, German taxpayers contribute more than a billion dollars a year toward U.S. bases and other related expenses.

More importantly, the bases in Germany enable the U.S. to project power globally – including in the Middle East and Africa.

And while bringing troops home may save money in the short run, it will come at the cost of America’s ability to get things done. Plus, there will be second-order effects too: Will U.S. allies in Europe and beyond really be keen to buy military equipment, such as the exorbitantly priced F-35 fighters, from an unreliable U.S.?

And could they, in turn, be counted on to join Washington’s crusade against China if it were to invade Taiwan — or even join a regime of economic sanctions against Beijing? Unlikely.

Similarly, moving troops from “woke” Germany to Hungary, as some speculate may be the case, would be an own goal. Not only is Hungary “a pillar” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative according to strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but the move would require the U.S. to incur all the fixed costs of building the underlying infrastructure from scratch, without any benefit to its military capabilities.

And let’s be frank, Hungary is the last country Putin would feel the need to invade.

In short, Rubio might talk the talk about needing to compete with China — after all, he is “good on TV,” as Elon Musk put it — yet, the government he’s part of is busy organizing a historically unprecedented retrenchment of U.S. power.

Here’s hoping the American people recognize the cost and stop the drift before too late.