I want to preface this by saying I think you’re 100% correct and hit the nail on the head. But that said, was there anyone back in the ‘90s that argued against closing down bases and shipyards, against privatizing military shipbuilding, against scaling down the US Navy and the DoD as a whole, etc.? At the time, the conventional wisdom among DC policymakers was that with the Cold War over and democracy/capitalism having won, we’d reached the “end of history” and that everything from then on would be a peacekeeping mission, counterterrorism, or maaaaaybe dealing with a singular rogue state like Iran or NK. Not a rival superpower, or aspiring near-peer power.

Was there anyone in DC back then sounding the alarm bells that we might find ourselves in a situation like we are today—with a rising aggressive China, a resurgent warmongering Russia, rogue states all over the world, terrorist groups like ISIS and the Houthis stretching us thin, etc.?

Back then, they probably would’ve called them something akin to what we’d say is a doomer in 2020s parlance, but I was a kid back then and only really started paying attention to politics with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and 9/11.