Jennifer Kavanagh on Restraint, Retrenchment, and the Limits of American Primacy

For years, Jennifer Kavanagh has pushed against one of Washington’s deepest strategic reflexes: the idea that American credibility is measured by how many commitments it can sustain at once. In this conversation, she argues instead that security begins with a more basic fact, often obscured in Washington’s threat inflation: the United States is already extraordinarily safe. From that premise, she makes the case for retrenchment, rethinks NATO and Taiwan, and explains why postponing prioritization only raises the eventual cost.
What follows is a conversation about strategy, but also about institutional habit: how bureaucracies avoid choosing, how defense spending can become a substitute for discipline, and how foreign policy establishments cling to primacy even as material constraints tighten. Kavanagh also reflects on her own path into the field, the challenge of making unpopular arguments in Washington, and the books and debates that shaped her thinking.

-Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior fellow & director of military analysis at Defense Priorities whose work focuses on US military strategy, alliances, and the case for restraint.

Strategic Strength and the Costs of Activism
Ben Wolf: A lot of your work pushes against the reflex to define US credibility by the number of commitments it takes on. At this point, what do you think Washington still gets most wrong about the relationship between military activism and actual strategic strength?

Jennifer Kavanagh: My view is that the United States is actually very safe, and that’s not the narrative you hear in DC most often. Every day I read the paper and hear about how the world is more dangerous and the US faces more complex threats, and I just disagree with that. The US has oceans on two sides and weak neighbors to the north and south. It has a powerful nuclear deterrent. It is very secure and very safe, and it does not need hundreds of thousands of US military forces or 700 bases abroad to protect itself.
So I see the US approach to security, which is to basically define anything that happens anywhere in the world that changes the status quo as a threat, as counterproductive. I don’t see having US military forces based forward as stabilizing to the world. I see US military power, actually, as quite destabilizing.
I came to that conclusion based on my work when I was at the RAND Corporation on US military interventions, where I studied every time the US has used force since 1898, the Spanish-American War. My big conclusion was that these interventions fail. They don’t make the US safer, and they don’t make the places we intervene any better off.
Starting from that assumption, what my work tries to do is look at which commitments we actually need and which we don’t. And when I started challenging a lot of the conventional thinking, I came to the realization that most of the commitments we have don’t actually make the US safer, and they create perverse incentives for our allies to behave in ways that are inconsistent with their geopolitical reality. If they believe they have an ironclad US security guarantee, they act in ways that are too aggressive or too provocative, or assume a level of military backing that they wouldn’t have if the US weren’t there. Japan is a good example. Israel is a good example. These are countries that take on significant risks because they believe the US will back them up.
I think the world would be better off if they didn’t do that, if they had to deal with their own geopolitical realities without the backing of US security guarantees.


Which Commitments Should Be Reconsidered?
BW: You hinted at it a little bit just then, but a theme that runs through your work is that prioritization is unavoidable. So if you were sitting with a president who accepted that premise, what would be the first two or three commitments that you would ask them to reconsider?

JK: Everything in the Middle East. The US does not have major strategic interests in the Middle East. It keeps getting sucked into wars in the Middle East, and the rationale for those wars is usually that our bases in the Middle East are at risk. But that doesn’t make sense. Those bases are supposed to be there to protect the United States. They are not, in and of themselves, something that needs to be protected. If the goal is to protect the bases, we’ve made a mistake. So that would be the first thing.
Then I would look very carefully at the commitment in Europe. I don’t know if the number of US forces in Europe should be zero, but it should be much less than 70,000 or 80,000, which is what we have now. I don’t think NATO is really necessary anymore for global security. It certainly isn’t really benefiting the United States. So I would relook at that commitment and see whether US involvement in NATO continues to make sense, at least to the extent that it is currently involved.
So those are the two places I would start.


Why NATO?
BW: Can you go a little bit deeper into the “why NATO?” question, or I guess, “why not NATO” in this sense?

JK: NATO was founded in 1949. It was basically a compromise with Europe to make them feel secure so they could focus on their economic rebuilding after World War II. The idea was that if the US was there to protect them militarily, they could continue to invest in their economic infrastructure, which had been devastated after the war.
It was also a move by those in the United States who believed that the only way the US could protect its interests was to basically take control of security everywhere. And it was built to inculcate dependence, to ensure that European allies couldn’t be a threat to the United States, and to make it so they couldn’t make their own decisions geopolitically, so that the US could, number one, be the number one global power, and number two, prevent things like World War II, which was in some sense a European mistake that the US had to clean up.
But the world is quite different now. I don’t see Russia as a conventional threat to the United States. It certainly is a nuclear threat, has extensive cyber capabilities, and acts in the hybrid domain a lot. But in terms of conventional military power, it’s not a threat to the United States. And it’s not really a threat to Europe.
I disagree with Europeans who are very concerned that in 2028 or 2029, when the Ukraine war is over, Russia’s next move is going to be to invade Europe. I talk to Russians all the time, and that’s just not how they see the world, and it’s not something they’re interested in.
And if the purpose of NATO is to defend against Russia, and Russia is not really a threat anymore, do we need NATO anymore? But even beyond that, Europe is rich and technologically advanced. The days of the 1940s and 1950s, when Europe was weak and couldn’t defend itself, are gone. Europe is perfectly capable of building a military capability that could defend against Russia, which has a smaller total population than all of Europe together and a smaller GDP than all of Europe together.
So I have a lot of confidence that Europe could defend itself without the United States. And even if it couldn’t, I don’t believe that Russia has the military power to take over Europe. So does it have enough military power to seize a corner of Estonia? Maybe. But does that really affect US interests? Not really. Do I want that to happen? No. But do I think it’s worth fighting a potentially nuclear war with Russia over? No.
And so that’s the final reason I would get out of NATO: I see it as more of a risk than a benefit. It entangles the US and risks nuclear war with Russia when that’s not in US interests. That doesn’t mean I hate Europe or think the US shouldn’t be partners with Europe. It’s just that the NATO alliance needs something specific to justify it, and I’m not sure that thing is in US interests anymore.


Ukraine and the Meaning of “Victory”
BW: If you strip away the rhetoric, what do you think US policymakers actually believe victory looks like in Ukraine? And do you think they believe it privately as much as they say it publicly?

JK: I don’t know that policymakers know what they mean when they say that. I think there was a time, when Ukraine was doing quite well on the battlefield, when there was some hope that maybe Ukraine could push Russia back, at least to pre-2022 borders. But now I don’t even think they believe that’s realistic. The battlefield has been stalled for a long time, and while it doesn’t seem likely that Russia is going to make big breakthroughs, it also definitely doesn’t seem likely that Ukraine is going to make big breakthroughs.
So now, when people talk about victory, I think what they really want is a peace settlement that doesn’t force major concessions on Ukraine, that doesn’t leave Russia feeling like it won the war. Giving up the rest of Donetsk, for example, would be something they would argue against because they would feel that would reward Russia, that it would suggest surrender or capitulation on the Ukrainian side.
They don’t want a postwar settlement that gives Russia major sanctions relief or places constraints on Ukraine’s military capabilities or sovereignty in any way. They don’t necessarily even want to close the door on Ukraine’s NATO membership. So they want a peace settlement that can be sold as a victory for Ukraine, and not a victory for Russia.
I understand, as a human being, why that’s appealing. Russia is obviously the aggressor that started the war, and no matter what its security concerns or grievances against NATO and the United States may be, war is a terrible way to solve that problem.
That said, ultimately I think the outcome of the war in Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of impact on US national security. It doesn’t even have a lot of impact on European national security, or I guess European regional security would be the better way to say it. So I would be in favor of pushing harder for something that does require some concessions from Ukraine, just acknowledging the reality that Russia can probably keep fighting longer.
And now, especially after the war in Iran, the US doesn’t have the excess material or resources to continue supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to protect its infrastructure. So continuing to fight is just a losing bet.


Defense Budgets and Avoiding Prioritization
BW: On the defense budget, do you think more money is sometimes politically attractive precisely because it postpones the need to make these choices?

JK: Yes. I think more money is appealing for a couple of reasons. The first is that there are a lot of constituencies that want more defense money. The defense contractors are a powerful lobby. Congressmen like more defense money because it creates jobs in their districts.
And then, yes, there’s the argument you just articulated, which is that it postpones the need to prioritize. If you look at the report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, not the current one that just came out in 2026 but the one that came out under Biden in 2023, they did a review of this issue, and their argument is that prioritization is impossible. The US is so essential that it cannot afford to prioritize across regions.
And then they acknowledge that in order to meet the requirements of this, the US must spend dramatically more every year. They also make the point, very honestly, that the only way to fund this really is through reform to entitlements, which would mean less Medicare, less Medicaid, less Social Security, or higher taxes. And that’s the tradeoff.
That’s the reason policymakers like this, because no one wants to prioritize. No one wants to give up US primacy. Well, except me. I want to give that up. But congressmen don’t want to. They want America to continue to be the global hegemon. But it’s just not sustainable, because you can’t outspend China.
The argument often made is that with the Soviet Union, we were able to outspend them. We could just keep spending on defense and their economy eventually couldn’t support it. But with China, you’re not going to outspend China. So you need a different strategy, not just more money.


Retrenchment Before Reality Forces It
BW: Ten years from now, what do you think will look more obvious in hindsight than it does today?

JK: That the US should have started retrenching earlier, because I fear that we’re entering a world now where, especially after the war in Iran, US resource constraints will really start to impinge on its strategy.
We’re entering a world where the question isn’t “Should the US do something?” but “Can the US do something?” If you think about the big debate a lot of us are having in DC, it’s whether the US should defend Taiwan. This is a long-term question that has become quite an active debate, which is interesting because it used to be very taboo to say that the answer to this question was no. But now I don’t think the question is “should” anymore. In my view, the question is “can?”
And at least right now, the answer would be no, because the United States doesn’t have the munitions to fight a war in Asia right now. It doesn’t have the air defenses. It doesn’t have the offensive munitions to do that. It doesn’t have the naval or air capacity as long as we have so many ships and aircraft committed in the Middle East.
So you’re entering a world where you’re not able to manage retrenchment. You’re not able to choose which commitments you want to give up and do it in a responsible way over a fixed time period. You’re not able to say, “We’d really like to keep these commitments in Asia because they’re valuable to us.” You’re forced to retrench, and you’re forced to retrench in ways that are maybe not strategically ideal. They leave allies vulnerable. They force you to give up things you’d rather keep or keep you tied down in places you don’t want to be anymore.
And that, to me, is a worse place to be than choosing how you pull back. So I think in ten years we will look back and wish that retrenchment had been something we started sooner, and that we had made more consistent and conscientious choices about the commitments we gave up, and that we gave them up sooner rather than waiting until we were forced to do so by reality.


Taiwan, Semiconductors, and Economic Strategy
BW: You spoke about the rationale behind US involvement in the Middle East, and I can see how it’s a little more blurry there. But as it relates to Taiwan, I think a lot of the concern is that a good portion of our semiconductor production comes from there. For those who want to defend Taiwan because of that, what would you say to them?

JK: I agree that semiconductor production is something to take into account. And I think it’s the only one of all the arguments made for maintaining the current commitments to Taiwan that actually requires serious consideration and thinking. Most of the other ones I can counter pretty quickly and easily.
A few things. First, China is also dependent on Taiwan’s semiconductor capabilities, and that means that at least for now, it also has a reason not to attack Taiwan. Even if it would like to seize those semiconductor fabs, a war over Taiwan would almost certainly destroy them. It’s unlikely they would survive that level of bombing, and the US might destroy them. If China were to seize them peacefully, most of the intellectual property and a lot of the input parts are not housed on the island. So the US could withhold them. The factories would be there, but they wouldn’t be all that useful to China.
So this gives us a window. The US has an advantage, in my view, in that it controls the technological know-how and intellectual property required to reconstitute TSMC-type production inside the United States. And we have time, because China is, at least for now, not imminently going to attack Taiwan and does have this dependence on TSMC that should keep it, at least for now, from taking military action.
So the answer, in my view, isn’t to keep the current commitment to Taiwan, but to reshore that capability and make sure it exists in more secure locations, in the United States and in other secure places, so you have resilient capacity. That will take time. It won’t be immediate. It will require resources. But what if we took part of the money that is supposed to be allocated toward this enormous defense budget and, instead of putting it toward weapons, actually made a serious effort to continue building this capability domestically?
The resources are always there for war. But somehow they’re not there for other types of serious near-term investments. In my view, that’s the answer to this problem: not to keep the current commitment to Taiwan, but to think economically about how to reduce the dependence we have on that specific capability, and others, so we avoid this problem in the future.


Entering the Field
BW: You’ve been writing about US military strategy for quite some time. What first got you interested in the subject, and when did it happen?

JK: I started working in this area right after college. I got a job working as a research assistant at the RAND Corporation after college, and I was always interested in international security. The first events I remember are the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was eight or nine, and it captured my attention as something that was quite fascinating that I didn’t really understand, but thought was worth learning more about.
But what really got me into this line of work was that I loved research. I think research is so much fun. After college, I thought maybe I wanted to get a PhD, because then I could do research as my job. But PhDs are hard and they take a long time, and I wanted to make really sure that I liked this enough to do it as a career.
So I decided I would be a research assistant at a think tank, and I was not super picky about the topic area. I would have researched anything. But I was lucky, and I got this job at RAND. After that, I was kind of sold on it as a line of work. I found it to be so much fun. I did eventually go back and get a PhD. I stayed at RAND for a few years and then went back. So RAND is really where I learned all about the military, and I guess I’ve been doing it ever since.


Tradeoffs, Criticism, and the Washington Ecosystem
BW: What do you think has been the biggest tradeoff of your work?

JK: I feel like there are so many things I wish I had known.
I think when I first came to DC, I didn’t really understand how DC worked, and there’s a big difference between, say, working at RAND and working in a downtown DC think tank. I’ve only gained appreciation for that over time. It took me a long time to understand how the DC ecosystem works and how to be effective, how to network, and how to have your work make an impact. So that’s one thing.
I think a second thing is that, at least right now, one thing that’s hard about my job is that I make a lot of unpopular arguments. And that means it attracts negative attention as well as positive attention. So being secure enough to know that this is what I believe, and people can criticize me if they want, but I can back up my arguments and that’s really all that’s important.
And then I guess the third thing is that getting a PhD is very hard. This isn’t something I regret, but it’s something I would advise people looking to get a PhD about: make sure you know why you’re doing it. I knew why I was doing it. I wanted to go back to RAND. I had a very clear vision of my life after the PhD. So when getting a PhD was hard and I wanted to quit, I at least had this vision of, “Okay, I know why I’m doing this. It will be worth it in the end.” That kept me going through the times when I really wanted to quit.
But if you don’t have that “why,” it can just feel like a slog, because it’s long and there’s not a lot of positive feedback along the way. Especially once you enter the dissertation phase, there’s no short-term gratification. It’s all long-term, and you don’t really know where you’re heading.
And then I think the last thing is that international security in the DC space, especially on the military side, is still very male-dominated. I often find that I’m still the only woman in the room. I’m used to it now, but sometimes it can feel isolating. I’ve been happy to see more and more young women involved in this space. Hopefully they’ll have a different experience.
I know my experience is different from the women who are older than me, who definitely had a very isolating experience. But I think that field is changing really rapidly, and that’s a good thing. Having more different voices and more different perspectives matters. There are also a lot of programs now in DC to get people not just from the East Coast, but from all across the country, including the Midwest and places that haven’t traditionally been feeders into the DC ecosystem. And I think that’s also good. Having a more diverse set of voices in the think tank space is important, because if you’re going to be informing policymakers, you want to hear from everyone, and that can help produce better US policy overall.


Making Unpopular Arguments
BW: You talked about having unpopular opinions and, because of that, facing criticism. Is there ever pressure to say the less inflammatory thing simply because it might make your views more agreeable, maybe bring more readership? How do you stay true to wanting to publish what you actually believe? Where is that line for you?

JK: For me, my goal is to advance a US foreign policy that I see as being in US interests. And if I can justify and back up my argument for why what we’re doing is wrong, I’m not afraid to make the unpopular argument. At this point, there’s no insult that I haven’t heard. There’s no new thing someone can say that will hurt my feelings.
And yes, sometimes my unpopular views mean I don’t get invited to certain things. But more often I’ve found that the more strongly and clearly I make my case, even if it’s controversial, the more things I get invited to, because as long as I’m not making a nihilistic argument, people are willing to engage with different ideas even if they don’t like them. Having different voices at events provides a depth and interest they wouldn’t get otherwise.
That’s a change over time. I think that’s happening more and more. But I guess it’s just that there’s negative feedback and positive feedback to pushing against the status quo. And if I don’t get invited to all the events or all the cocktail parties, that’s okay, because I still get invited to the things that, in my view, really matter and that really change policy.


Reading for Young Students
BW: Finally, Jennifer, if there were a young student who was interested in following a career path similar to yours, what book would you recommend to them, and why?

JK: One book I would definitely recommend, if you want to follow a career path similar to mine, is Barry Posen’s Restraint. It really lays out the strategic case for a restrained US foreign policy in a very clear way. Barry Posen is an MIT political scientist, so he brings in all the necessary political theory and evidence, but he also makes it very accessible. My goal is to advance his work and bring it more into the military domain. So I would say that’s one key thing I would recommend reading.
I think the other thing is maybe not a book, but to read the articles published in, especially, the print version of Foreign Affairs. The reason I say that is because it’s a really good window into the debates happening in DC. If you read the magazine over time, the key debates are really surfaced there, because they bring in perspectives from different sides of every issue. The big debates on European security, the big debates happening in Asia, the big debates happening over US foreign policy are all surfaced in that magazine.
And no matter what you believe, I think it’s important to be able to engage with all sides, and you can’t really figure out what you believe until you’ve seen the full picture. For me, that’s been really helpful: to understand the key debates, and then decide what I agree with and what I don’t agree with.