Americans are asking all the wrong questions

Of all the crises the U.S. faces, at home and abroad, one of the most searing is the failure to ask the right questions that get to the heart of any vital issue. Questions are distorted or deflected by disinformation, misinformation and willful disregard for truth and fact that tragically now are how politics are malpracticed today.   

Until the right questions are asked, the answers will be neither relevant nor helpful. What does this mean in simple terms?

One major crisis is the Secret Service’s apparent inability to adequately protect current and former senior officials, notably presidents and vice presidents.  

The two assassination attempts against Trump in Pennsylvania and on a Palm Beach golf course came way too close to succeeding.  An inch one way or the other in Butler, and Donald Trump would likely be dead. If a Secret Service agent had not been alert enough to see a gun barrel peering out from the foliage in Palm Beach, disaster too easily could have followed.

Here, then, is the key question that was never asked. The Secret Service has another, equally important mission besides protection to investigate financial crimes against the government from counterfeiting to fraud.  Should the Secret Service concentrate on protection at the expense of investigation? Might that other mission be better placed under another agency? 

Ukraine poses an even more testing example. Since Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. has been engaged in so-called “unending” wars. Is Ukraine becoming one of these? Is it time to examine strategic options?

While the Biden administration has declared future support “for as long as it takes,” what does that mean?  Will the administration and its allies allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike deeply into Russia and risk escalation?  

Or, despite the heroic Ukrainian resistance, will Russia’s long-term advantages in size, mass and population ultimately prevail? If so, are negotiations the only way forward?

Trump, and his running mate,  Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), seem anxious to end the war without reference to the specific terms of what a successful agreement would look like to ensure future Ukrainian sovereignty. In this politically supercharged campaign, many believe that the Trump solution would be to abandon Ukraine to Russia.  

Regardless of what Trump would do, asking the right question is crucial in obtaining the most satisfactory outcome. That is not occurring.

Perhaps the most significant looming threat is the U.S. debt, now exceeding $35 trillion.  But neither Trump nor Kamala Harris has been asked how each proposes to deal with this debt. Nor has either mentioned the spending cuts that need to be made to balance the effects of tax cuts in the case of Trump or the new spending that Harris proposes.

Given that spending cuts are politically difficult to make, the alternative is economic growth through productivity advances. Yet, neither candidate has made any reference as to how productivity will be improved. Why?

While defense has rarely been pivotal in presidential elections, with team Trump asserting that “World War III” could break out under a Harris administration and that Biden-Harris have depleted U.S. forces, no one has asked what each candidate would do about its future military power.  

For 2025, the US will spend close to $900 billion. But what is the nation getting for that spending? Is the U.S. falling behind China or Russia, and if so, what are the needed remedial actions?

And, then what about China? One of the rare areas of agreement in Congress, beyond providing more money for the Secret Service, is the Chinese threat.  Members cite China’s President Xi Jinping’s order to his military “to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027” as the “clear and present danger” to be countered.  

Yet here is a telling question no one has raised: If China were to invade Taiwan with an amphibious and air assault, what size forces would be needed to overcome defenses and occupy the island?  Using history as a guide, Overlord — the June 6, 1944 invasion of France — required about 5,000 ships and small craft and 180,000 troops on its first day. The invasion of Okinawa in 1945 required an even greater force.

China will not be able to deploy forces of that size by 2027, and even beyond that. Of course, China has other options, from blockade to internal regime change. But an invasion is not one of them.

Getting the right answers means asking the right questions. Will we? Probably not.

Harlan Ullman Ph.D. is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon.