I believe we are experiencing a disruption in our national security landscape. If so, the U.S. military, including the Navy, must act with urgency to break out of its current conceptual-technical equilibrium, or we risk failure in a future conflict.

After working the problem, all three administrations came to the same conclusion: North Korea’s strategic weapons program is a complex and difficult issue with no simple solution. The Trump Administration appears to be headed in the same direction.

Trump’s promised defense budget boost probably won’t materialize, the former Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said today, so we can’t afford to grow a larger military. Instead of more ships and troops, retired Adm. James Winnefeld said in a rare public appearance, the military should prioritize investment in new ideas.

Our next president, like Barack Obama, will face a multitude of national security challenges, ranging from violent extremists, ambitious China, belligerent Russia, impetuous North Korea, treacherous Iran and heartbreaking human catastrophes.

This fall, the Belfer Center welcomed a number of distinguished leaders as new senior fellows and visiting scholars. Eight new arrivals come from a range of high-profile public policy backgrounds, and each brings significant and varied expertise to Harvard Kennedy School and the Belfer Center.

The Obama administration made an important statement in recently authorizing the Pentagon to order a warship, the USS Lassen, to transit close to an island constructed by China on a submerged reef in the contested South China Sea. Key US interests served include protection of the global economic system, the security of our allies in the region, and preserving the rules-based international order that has maintained peace in the Asia-Pacific region for decades.