Alan W. Dowd in The American Legion Magazine of July 2024 comprehensively describes the plight of world democracies countering the expansionism and exploitation of one-man rule autocracies. I paraphrase him at times. In essence he says the free world needs "an alliance of democracies" against the autocracies of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Deterring the autocracies requires the free world to increase defense spending and collaborating in mutual programs designed to enhance the capabilities of democracies to counter the provocations of the autocracies. NATO countries in Europe are now increasing their defense spending to counter Russian expansionism. Far East countries are aligning and spending more money on armaments to confront China and North Korea. Some Middle East countries are working closely with the United States to combat Iranian aggression.

The United States, as the world bastion of democracy, has to ramp up the availability of armaments, including state of the art offensive weapons and defensive weapons like drones, hypersonic missiles and other advanced missile systems. Maybe we should look at developing drone aircraft carriers. This necessitates increasing military spending from 3% of GDP to 5% or 6%.