Mara Rudman, a former official in the Obama and Clinton administration who sits on a congressionally appointed panel to review the U.S. defense posture, warned that the U.S. is perilously close to a multi-front global conflict.

“You have… a variety of different conflicts happening all over the world that are not isolated from one another,” Rudman told Jewish Insider on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum last month. “In so many ways, we could be on the cusp of fighting what’s effectively a global war because of the number of different conflicts in different places and the ways they’re interacting with one another.”

Rudman is a member of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, a congressionally convened independent body to assess the administration’s National Defense Strategy. The commission issued a report last month warning that the U.S. is closer to a major war than it has been in generations and that it is not prepared for that fight. 

The report said the U.S. military is significantly underfunded, congressional dysfunction is hampering military effectiveness, the U.S. is failing to innovate, the public is blind or apathetic to current threats and recruitment struggles are continuing.

“We are not positioned anywhere near as effectively as we should be as a country to deal with the place we are in the world right now,” Rudman told JI, “which is that we are almost undoubtedly being in a position, whether it’s ‘gray zone’ conflict or direct kinetic conflict, of fighting on multiple fronts at the same time.”

Rudman served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, including as the deputy special envoy for Middle East peace at the State Department.

Rudman said many in the U.S. don’t fully appreciate the scope and nature of the current global environment, and how close it is to a multifront war, highlighting ties between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea that could prompt broader wars in Europe, the Middle East and the IndoPacific. 

“If there are multiple conflicts, we are going to go in. We will be engaged. That’s what we, the U.S. military, does,” Rudman said. “[I’m] pretty concerned about our ability to prevail.”

She said that finalizing a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and a connected U.S.-Saudi defensive agreement, is a critical step to preparing in the Middle East for that potential war.

“It involves putting together coalitions of strength in key areas,” Rudman said. “The United States needs to be in a position of maximizing its work, not only with allies — I use the world partners — of finding ways to bring groups together, countries together to strengthen the issues and the concerns and the interests that we have, to be able to describe why they also serve the interests of those countries.”

Rudman said having Israel, Saudi Arabia and other major Arab partners “aligned directly serves the U.S. interest.” She said that dynamic — along with a pathway to a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians that the Saudis have demanded as part of the agreement — should be sufficient to mobilize sufficient votes in Congress to approve such a deal.

Rudman linked the potential Saudi deal to negotiations to reach a cease-fire and postwar reconstruction in Gaza and to de-escalate the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. She praised the administration’s shuttle diplomacy throughout the region.

The former State Department and National Security Council official said she’s worried about how the outcome of the upcoming November election — particularly a victory by former President Donald Trump — could impact the U.S.’ global position and its preparedness for a major conflict. 

Rudman said she’s “pretty concerned about extremes in both parties that are very isolationist and are not upfront about that.”

“That is not what is going to most effectively secure the safety and stability and security of Americans over the years ahead,” Rudman said. “It is figuring out how to work better in the world… If you’re the United States, you literally cannot build walls high enough to somehow separate yourself from the rest of the world.”

She said that the U.S. needs to remain strongly engaged around the world to match the efforts of Russia and China and prevent them from exploiting gaps left by the U.S.’ absence.

“We have to be covering 360 degrees and four or five dimensions at the same time,” Rudman said. “And it’s a tall order, but the Middle East is within that, it’s not apart from that. I think it’s important for folks in the Middle East to understand that, for a lot of folks in our own government as well. It’s all of a [piece].”

The commission’s report called for an “integrated deterrence” approach — using a multiagency strategy to deter adversaries beyond only military means. That’s something the administration says it’s already doing, but the commission found its execution to be lacking.

Rudman said that the U.S. needs a “cultural shift” at the Pentagon and other national security agencies “to think and prepare and operate differently,” ensuring that officials at many levels and at many agencies are aware of how their work fits into a broader interagency integrated deterrence strategy.