US lethality not enough to counter China’s malign influence

Originally published by Pacific Forum, this article is republished with permission.

The Trump administration, particularly Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, correctly identifies the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the primary threat to regional security, especially its stated ambitions for Taiwan.

Were the PRC to seize Taiwan militarily without US intervention, Beijing could dictate the terms of trade past the island, project power farther into the Pacific and cause Washington’s allies in East Asia and emerging partners on the Indian subcontinent to question US willingness to stand up for them.

Hegseth has called for a defense budget increase, and the Pentagon is currently drafting its new national security strategy, due in August. He has also made clear that the United States would be ready to respond if Taiwan were attacked. Yet he also notes, correctly,  the need to deter such a conflict.

The effects of a war over Taiwan would be so catastrophic that neither side could win – not the United States, whose aircraft carriers would be vulnerable to Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles; not China, whose troops would be vulnerable during the initial strait crossing and whose economy might contract as much as 25%; not Taiwan, which might see its miraculous economic growth erased even if it survived as an autonomous entity.

And not the world, which is ever more dependent on the technology-fueled growth enabled by the semiconductors that Taiwan plays the leading role in fabricating.

Hegseth is signaling that the United States will prioritize countering an invasion and mobilize the necessary resources to do so, including reviving the industrial base and investing in shipyards.

He also noted that deterring conflict with the PRC is not America’s role alone, and his remarks at the Shangri-la Dialogue last month demonstrated a keen interest in working with US partners in the region in that endeavor. He called upon them to make a similar investment in their defense and combat readiness.

Hegseth has emphasized the need to prioritize the “lethality” of America’s armed forces, also using similar descriptors like “warfighting” and “readiness.” It would appear that this administration views hard power as the key to keeping the PRC from achieving its aims for the region.

Don’t forget soft power

However, do the Pentagon and its sister agencies have a plan to prevent China from winning without war?

It has been easy in recent years for the PRC’s critics to mock its political shortcomings as Beijing’s prickliness over issues it considers core strategic areas has overridden its diplomatic professionalism, leading to it alienating previously ambivalent partners.

• In 2011, China took the step of withholding rare-earth exports to Japan during a territorial dispute; within a decade, Japanese leaders would openly discuss defending Taiwan as a national security priority despite Tokyo’s pacifist constitution.
• From 2016-2022, China enjoyed warm relations with the Philippines under the Duterte administration – which considered ending their hosting of US bases – only for public outrage over Chinese aggression in the South China Sea to prompt a course change by Duterte and the election of a pro-US administration in 2022.
• South Koreans, who had long seen China as essential not only for economic growth but for a resolution to inter-Korean division, now have among the world’s most negative views of China following years of PRC enabling of North Korea plus the spread of Covid-19 and sanctions imposed on the country following THAAD deployment.
• Taiwan, which until 2016 had leadership that desired to deepen cooperation with the PRC and eventually achieve unification, now has elected three successive administrations supportive of independence, and the PRC’s response has been a series of punitive measures that have only deepened the public’s antipathy toward Beijing.

It must be stressed, again, that those “wins” for Washington were the product of PRC actions taken in defense of what Beijing considers core interests – whether concerning territorial rights, defense of the Chinese mainland or the credibility of Communist Party rule – and had little to do with US messaging or improvements to the American reputation in the region.

And political successes in these countries may not be as durable as they appear. Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party recently launched a sweeping set of measures designed to counter PRC influence, but its pro-unification opposition still finds much success in local elections and now holds the majority in the Legislative Yuan, where it has used that majority to fight the defense budget increases the Trump administration wants to see, and even civil defense-bolstering programs.

The current leadership of the Philippines has been strident in its support for the US alliance and has done the most among ASEAN nations to shine a light on the PRC’s coercive tactics in the South China Sea.

Yet the former president, who enjoyed a much friendlier relationship with China, remains a popular figure despite his recent arrest by the International Criminal Court. Duterte’s party did very well in recent Senate elections, increasing the chances that his daughter, the current vice president, will survive upcoming impeachment proceedings and run for president herself in 2028.

South Korea, after three years of close cooperation with the United States and Japan, just elected a candidate much more open to cooperation with China.

Even Japan, where the success of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party is rarely in doubt, currently labors through a period of weak governance that makes the formulation of effective defense policy difficult, especially in terms of overcoming its post-war pacifism and insularity and preparing for an operation as risky as the defense of Taiwan.

If the United States is to remain engaged in the Indo-Pacific and prevent PRC domination, it faces obstacles that cannot be solved by lethality alone. The PRC currently wages a campaign that lethality cannot counter.

As Xi Jinping continues to purge high-ranking officers, the PRC would seem to lack the capability to direct an invasion even if it has the manpower and equipment to wage one. Therefore, its assaults on these locations will remain more subtle. These will include:

• seeking to co-opt the target countries’ politicians, academics, media and social media personalities with paid trips to China,
• directing and controlling diaspora communities through the presence of overseas “police stations” that some countries are not legally equipped to counteract,
• buying up crucial assets and establishing partnerships to ensure deference from business communities, and
• spreading narratives through official and unofficial channels that the United States is unreliable, untrustworthy and unable to counter the inevitability of China’s rise.

If the United States is not engaged in countering such influence, in the next five years Taiwan could again have a pro-unification leadership – or, at least, gridlock could prevent it from adequately prepping its defenses – while Manila could turn against hosting US military bases, Seoul could vow neutrality in a Taiwan contingency and Tokyo might not have made any meaningful preparations to counter PRC ambitions in the region.

Under such circumstances, even if the defense secretary does get the most lethal US military in history, the US armed forces may be rendered helpless by politics in partner countries.

The recent departure of Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency’s founder, from the US government is an opportunity to begin rebuilding soft power organs – USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy and Labor at the State Department – that were targeted by spending cuts.

The Defense Department should be part of broader, whole-of-government efforts – including State, Commerce, Energy, Treasury and others – not just to counter the PRC, but also to erode its influence. The lethality of US forces should not merely be enhanced; partners should know the United States will use it to good ends, including their defense against unprovoked aggression.

The Trump administration need not worry about empowering political leaders who do not share its vision – political parties of the right are leading the charge against Chinese influence in Manila, Seoul, Tokyo and elsewhere and, despite its name, Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party is a big tent more committed to Taipei’s autonomy than to political progressivism.

Nor should such moves be seen as interference in the domestic affairs of partners; Washington has worked with unlikely partners in countries where politicians have campaigned on skepticism of the United States – until they, and the constituencies that elected them, saw what the alternative to the United States was.

But before the United States can convince these countries that they should arm themselves, Washington must first convince regional countries that there is a threat to prepare for and that the United States is the reliable partner it claims to be.

A trillion dollars in lethal weapons systems, by itself, will not buy that.

Rob York (rob@pacforum.org) is director for regional affairs at Pacific Forum International. He is the editor of Pacific Forum publications and spearheads Pacific Forum outreach to the Korean Peninsula and South Asia, as well as programming on countering malign influence in US partners. He earned his PhD in Korean history in December 2023.