Sleepwalking Into Danger

How strategic drift and global fragmentation are exposing America to new existential risks

At a moment demanding clarity, competence, and global leadership, America is instead choosing fragmentation, retreat, and strategic blindness.

The global power perspective over the next several years promises to be more fragmented and therefore less predictable. There are several more power centers now, fewer strong alliances to inhibit errant behavior of individual nations, and new trade blocs like BRICS are emerging. Looking over the next four to five years, the state of the national security of the United States can reasonably be considered perilous, perhaps more foreboding than at any time since 1940.

Not since the advent of WWII have legitimate existential threats reached out for the American throat. At the outset of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US was ill-prepared for a major war, but against the background of darkening European skies in the late 1930s, we had made significant progress in strengthening our defensive capability. Large and small wars in the ensuing post-WWII war years, such as Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan, among others, based on our perception at the time of worrisome and unacceptable external situations that upset the world order. But none posed a direct threat to the nation’s territorial integrity.

War on Iran falls into that category. An ongoing and unresolved conflict, it is true that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and long-range missile delivery is indeed a threat. But it is mid- to long-term and one that our intelligence apparatus and that of our erstwhile allies are in a position to monitor and take more preventative military action if needed. Iran is still under the control of an evil and cruel regime, an open sore for the Gulf and the Middle East at large, but it presents no immediate threat to the safety of the US. I, for one, do not lose sleep at night because of Iran.

On the subject of sleep, it is the mental decline and moral deficit of the President and the tribe of praetorians who surround him, not to mention the absence of strong, principled wise men and women to be found anywhere in his orbit, that are the cause of my sleepless nights. That, and growing concerns that there might well be existential threats awaiting a poorly prepared and withdrawing United States.

President Trump’s December 2025 National Security Strategy makes plain his ill-concealed animosity toward Europe and NATO. Beyond that, there is a striking indifference emerging post-Iran war for the eternally volatile Middle East, a very troubling disregard for Eurasia (think Russia and Ukraine), a near total abandonment of Africa, and a deference to China as the uncontested hegemon of that vast, economic, military, and strategic powerhouse of Asia. The Cold War is behind us, but multiple cultural and political conflicts are still alive, and new tactical and strategic groupings are emerging. They will constitute new tensions for a new era.

Russia may win or ultimately lose its battle for Ukraine, but it will not go silently into the night. It will continue to be a strategic challenge and meddle in the irrepressible irredentism that has been its signature one way or another since 1917. China is carefully calibrated by its government, familiar with long-term planning and values stability. It is perhaps nominally less of a threat compared to Russia, which can be volatile and difficult to predict. Both are and must remain key intelligence targets.

Only a fool, though, would write off China and the festering, always angry, nuclear-armed North Korea as long-term strategic threats to the US. They could pose threats to friendly nations with whom we have important security and key economic technology agreements, like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and several Southeast Asian countries.

Few scenarios offer the terrors of another land war in Asia. This administration’s dismissal of thousands of hard-working and dedicated professional men and women who have traditionally collected, sorted, analyzed, and prioritized foreign events is damning. Our skilled diplomatic pursuit and broad understanding of Chinese policies and motivations, and other countries around the world, are badly weakened. We suffer a massive hole now where knowledge, experience and soft power once built a series of critically important, quietly effective, and under-appreciated national defenses.

To intentionally, willfully, turn away from the benefits of what used to be richly informed and sound policy formulation, predicated much of the time on the hard realities of China and Russia, for a short-sighted recasting of global dangers, is the functional equivalent of self-blinding.

In a world that grows more dangerous, such failure could be costly, not just to the former American balancing and leadership role in the world but to a great nation that today seems to be flirting with irrelevance and is every day on edge.

Had the hi-tech weaponry spent in Iran gone instead to Ukraine, it could have spelled the difference between Ukraine’s struggle for survival and victory; Russia has been beset with heavy losses for years now, its economy scraping by. It is not doing well in Ukraine. The failure of the Trump administration to predict a resurgence of lucrative Russian oil movements that would breathe new life into Moscow’s lone and finite fossil fuel economy was apparently not factored into its war plans, strengthening this troublesome player when that is one of the last things we want.

Had there been no Iran, even with renewed help for Ukraine, we would have saved for unknowable future needs a great number of those very expensive offensive and defensive weapons that take years and billions to build. Were we to be confronted with an existential threat from, say, the most likely quarter, a China/Taiwan conflict, or an unlikely but not to be ruled out suddenly resurgent Russian militarism, the United States would be less prepared than at any point in recent history.

Following his service in CIA Mr. Piekney was the DCI’s representative to the Secretary of State’s Accountability Review Board investigating a terrorist attack on a U.S. installation in Saudi Arabia; was appointed as the Director of Studies at a CIA then DNI sponsored think tank during which he lead several highly classified Intelligence Community-wide studies involving nuclear weapons in the subcontinent and countering terrorism in the United States; he headed the Human Intelligence section of the George W. Bush Presidential Commission on The Intelligence Capabilities of The United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD Commission); and consulted for international clients on defense and national security issues. Mr. Piekney received the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medal, and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award. He was also awarded the rank of Distinguished Officer of the Senior Intelligence Services. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.