Adm. Phil Davidson, the top U.S. military commander in Asia, has been spending the last several days lobbying Congress for more resources in the Pacific. Last Friday, Davidson sent a report to the armed services committees detailing his wish-list for the Indo-Pacific region he commands. It’s a whopping $27 billion package spread out over five years.
The admiral is seeking a $1.6 billion Aegis Ashore missile defense system for Guam, nearly $200 million for additional radar, $2.3 billion for a “constellation of space-based radars” to maintain awareness, and base realignments in multiple locations between 2023 and 2027 to the tune of $6.6 billion. The commander has justified his request by pointing to China’s growing military capabilities, a subject lawmakers on Capitol Hill are uniformly concerned about. The United States, Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 9, is in danger of losing its military edge to China in the immediate region. The admiral mentioned that Guam, the island hosting approximately 10,000 U.S. troops and the Anderson Air Force Base, could be an active front-line in any conflict with China. And in the admiral’s calculation, the Peoples Liberation Army is projected to complete its modernization push eight years earlier than first expected.
This all sounds scary, doesn’t it?
Well, yes and no. Rather than rubber-stamping the package, lawmakers would be wise to pause and consider the facts.
For a start, just because a top commander makes a request doesn’t mean lawmakers are duty-bound to approve it. Appropriating $27 billion to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative may not be a reach for Congress financially (at roughly $740 billion, the U.S. defense budget is the definition of unaccountable bloat), but it’s still a hefty amount of taxpayer money that should be evaluated seriously. The entire proposal needs to be scoured line-by-line with the critical question at the forefront: do we really need these weapons systems to defend U.S. security interests in East Asia?
By virtue of their positions, combatant commanders are inherently wired to ask for more, regardless of the threat environment. Usually, lawmakers are inclined to give those requests the benefit of the doubt. When defense planners and policymakers even think about reallocating resources from their commands, those very same combatant commanders fight tooth-and-nail — often with an assist from the armed services committees — to snuff those discussions out. There was a time not so long ago when the Trump administration wanted to reassign personnel out of Africa; Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of U.S. Africa Command, vocally advised against it, and the plan died a quick, unceremonious death.
Members of Congress typically treat combatant commanders as impartial professionals when what they should be doing is treating them as biased players who have a lot of skin in the annual Pentagon budget games.
The more important issue is U.S. policy in East Asia. A Cold War framework is increasingly dominating the debate about how Washington should approach China, a peer competitor and serious military power. Officials in the Biden administration, from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, emphasized tough-on-China rhetoric during their Senate confirmation hearings. When some, like Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, are critiqued as too soft on Beijing, they correct the record in order to save their nominations.
But as popular as it is to be reflexively hawkish on China, this position isn’t cost-free. Declaring an unequivocal security guarantee to Taiwan may hold more weight today than it did a year ago, but this change in policy could also push the PLA to do precisely what Washington hopes to avoid: invade and conquer the island.
Padding the Indo-Pacific with U.S. Marine installations, deploying intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and attempting to transform “the Quad” into a formal security alliance are all hot ideas. Yet each one of them, particularly if they are taken in tandem, is likely to prompt an even more aggressive Chinese posture in response. The U.S. and China, the world’s two premier powers, become trapped in the classic security dilemma, where military decisions Washington considers defensive are portrayed by Beijing as offensive. And thus due reciprocity.
America needs to take China’s rising military power seriously. But crafting a policy that balances deterrence with dialogue, the Biden administration — including the 4-star generals and admirals responsible for staffing their commands — should proceed with eyes wide open.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
