Biden national defense strategy sees China as top challenge

These are: defending the homeland, deterring strategic attacks against the United States and allies, deterring aggression and being prepared for conflict, and building a resilient joint force to ensure military advantages.

China poses the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security,” given the government’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences,” the document reads, whereas it identifies Russia as “an acute threat.”

BIDEN NAME-CHECKS CHINA IN LONG-AWAITED NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY

The Chinese Communist Party is seeking to “undermine U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and leverage its growing capabilities … to coerce its neighbors and threaten their interests,” and in practice, that means “destabilizes and coercive [Chinese] behavior that stretches across the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and along the Line of Actual Control.”

China’s military is expanding its “global footprint and [is] working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure,” the document said. It is also “accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear program” in addition to “rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counter-space, cyber, electronic, and informational warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare,” as it intends to “target the ability of the Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our allies in a crisis or conflict.”

China’s continued pursuit of reunification with Taiwan, the island off the mainland’s coast that is self-governing and claims independence from China, is “increasingly provocative,” and its actions “risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”

The release of DOD’s national defense strategy, which lists China as the U.S.’s “pacing challenge,” though that’s not a new phrase for the department under this administration, comes only days after Chinese leader Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as leader, with the possibility of an extended term given he got rid of the term limit restriction during his most recent term.

Xi, whose new term commenced at last week’s congress for the Communist Party, replaced some members of his cabinet, which is now filled completely with loyalists. In his speech, the Chinese leader admitted that using force against Taiwan was not out of the realm of possibilities.

“The wheels of history are rolling on toward China’s reunification and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Complete reunification of our country must be realized, and it can, without doubt, be realized,” he said. “We will continue to strive for peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and the utmost effort,” he added, “but we will never promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

The Chinese view Taiwan as a part of their country, while the island of 24 million people is self-governing and has claimed its independence. The U.S. has recognized China’s claim to Taiwan but does not support a unilateral change in its current posture.

“What happened a few years ago is that China made a decision in its own policy that that status quo was not something it wanted to live with indefinitely,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week in an interview with WPVI-TV. “And we’ve seen it use more coercive means, more putting pressure on Taiwan to try to get to reunification. And we have a concern that beyond using coercive means, they might actually at some point use force.”

Blinken also warned in recent days that Xi made a “fundamental decision” that the status quo of Taiwan’s self-governance is “no longer acceptable” and that the Chinese are “determined to pursue reunification on a much faster timeline.”

Further, Russia, as demonstrated by its war in Ukraine, is “contemptuous of its neighbors’ independence,” and President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin look “to use force to impose border changes and to impose an imperial sphere of influence.”

While the Russian military has continued its mostly unsuccessful war, its attempt to fracture the NATO alliance has also largely failed, though it continues to present risks, including “nuclear threats to the homeland and U.S. Allies and partners; long-range cruise missile threats; cyber and information operations; counterspace threats; chemical and biological weapons (CBW); undersea warfare; and extensive gray zone campaigns targeted against democracies in particular.”

DOD will rely on integrated deterrence to prevent adversarial actors from pushing ahead with measures in contrast to U.S. interest, which is the attempt to work “seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of U.S. national power, and our network of Alliances and partnership.”

The relationship between Russia and China “continues to increase in breadth” even as “diverging interests and historical mistrust may limit the depth of their political and military cooperation.”

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Earlier this month, the Biden administration released its national security strategy, which also focused on the threat China poses to U.S. national security interests, going as far as to describe the Chinese government as “the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.”

The Pentagon released the Nuclear Posture Review and the Missile Defense Review as a part of the National Defense Strategy for the first time, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on Thursday.

The Nuclear Posture Review notes that “nuclear weapons will continue to provide unique deterrence effects that no other element of U.S. military power can replace,” though “deterrence alone will not reduce nuclear dangers,” which has proven correct by Putin’s continued nuclear saber-rattling.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscores that nuclear dangers persist, and could grow, in an increasingly competitive and volatile geopolitical landscape,” it says. “The Russian Federation’s unprovoked and unlawful invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a stark reminder of nuclear risk in contemporary conflict. Russia has conducted its aggression against Ukraine under a nuclear shadow characterized by irresponsible saber-rattling, out-of-cycle nuclear exercises, and false narratives concerning the potential use of weapons of mass destruction.”