As the war in Ukraine escalates and U.S. support for Ukraine continues amidst an increasingly polarized domestic political divide, U.S. defense and intelligence personnel must continue to provide unbiased military counsel and intelligence analysis. Senior U.S. leaders also must consider all the information available to them, perhaps especially information they do not want to hear. Furthermore, as the U.S. and allied militaries pursue their own modernization efforts, senior leaders would benefit from considering how strategic-level decision-making processes must evolve to maximize these modernization advances. Senior leaders must resist the temptation to only look down at how the force needs to adapt and remember to look up, as well.

Grant Bubb is an Army officer and doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His last assignment was with the United States Africa Command Intelligence Directorate where his team supported the command’s focus on great power competition with Russia in Africa. The views expressed in this commentary do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Department of Defense, the US Intelligence Community, or the US Government.

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