The good news is that the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee recently added $25 billion to the Biden administration’s $715 billion budget request for fiscal year 2022. Included in that sum is a second Burke-class destroyer. The boost should alleviate some of the anxieties voiced by Reps. Wittman and Luria—assuming it makes it into law.

Even so, fierce debates over tradeoffs loom. As noted upfront, the Pentagon must determine how much to spend on keeping the existing force battleworthy and how much to spend on technology suited for warfare in coming decades. The present is in a zero-sum contest with the future. This tension between now and later is what the late Marine Corps colonel Art Corbett (no relation to Julian) described as the “military innovator’s dilemma,” riffing on Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma.

In martial affairs as in business, successful organizations have every incentive to invest in the present while neglecting the future. The politico-military environment—the martial counterpart to the market—seeks returns now. Today’s commitments are visible and pressing, while institutional leaders can only glimpse future commitments through a glass darkly. Incentives induce leaders to take care of today’s challenges first and gird for the future with whatever resources are leftover.

In the meantime, though, a new challenger may come along and change the character of the competition—leaving a veteran institution floundering. Netflix eclipsed Blockbuster big-box video stores around the turn of the century, first by offering DVD subscriptions through the mail and later by pioneering video streaming. Art Corbett believed that China’s military has transformed the character of great-power strategic competition in the Pacific by targeting the bases and major platforms on which U.S. maritime and military strategy depend.

If he was right, America’s competitive position has suffered. The U.S. military stands at risk of becoming the Blockbuster of armed forces. Col. Corbett insisted that the Pentagon would be foolish to devour its “seed corn”—resources necessary to prepare for future contingencies—for the sake of present-day combat readiness. This is the counterpoint to Wittman and Luria, and the crux of the military innovator’s dilemma: invest too heavily in today and unpleasantness may befall you tomorrow.

Such are the conundrums before decisionmakers in Washington. They must set and enforce priorities among today’s commitments while also trying to espy future priorities. Strategy, it seems, demands a measure of ruthlessness. No institution or nation can afford all of its goals. Decisionmakers must determine which commitments and geographic theaters are more important, and which can be downgraded on the to-do list or abandoned. And they must be time travelers, determining whether to place their bets on present or future military preparedness.

Whatever they decide, let’s keep our goals at the forefront of strategic deliberations. Decide what Americans want in world affairs and budget for it, rather than thrashing out a budget and hoping the world complies with it. Hope is not a strategy. Not a good one, anyway.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a nonresident fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.

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