Biden needs to learn from Carter about standing up to our adversaries

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With news of a national security threat from possible Russian nuclear weapons in space, as well as wars in the Middle East and Europe and the prospect of another over Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific, President Joe Biden has presided over the greatest loss of U.S. deterrence since the 1970s. Absent a major strategic reversal, the Biden administration risks inviting the very military escalation Biden desperately seeks to avoid.

Forty-seven years ago, President Jimmy Carter entered the Oval Office with a view that the Cold War was over, so he set out to reduce the size and power of the military and engage in arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.

A strong advocate of détente, Carter believed that concerns over Soviet expansionism in the Third World and its military buildup were overstated. He proposed flat and declining defense budgets and rejected the outgoing Ford administration's plans to build a 600-ship navy.

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Carter’s posture alarmed his team. Unable to keep pace with the Soviet military buildup and demands in the Middle East, Carter’s chief of Naval Operations told Congress he was "trying to meet a three-ocean requirement with a one-and-a-half-ocean Navy."

While his secretary of Defense and national security advisor