A recent article in Politico claims that the new US National Defense Strategy (NDS) currently being drafted at the War Department will downplay China as a major threat and place primary focus on homeland defense and hemispheric defense – think, Western hemisphere.
A truism, “Things are never as good as they seem, and never as bad as they seem,” is worth keeping in mind.
If earlier War Department statements are to be believed, China will get its due in the final defense strategy. And it is prudent both to defend the US homeland (which has in fact been under attack for decades) and to stop taking Western Hemisphere security for granted and pay some real attention.
But here’s the problem:
Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will continue to be recognized as a major threat, and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific as a major task, the final NDS – as a sort of tough love – will also stress that regional nations need to pull their weight, allowing the US to focus on hemispheric and homeland defense.
This resembles what the Trump Administration is doing in Europe – demanding that US allies do more to handle the Ukraine problem and Russian threats.
In theory it makes sense. The US is stretched and has plenty of problems domestically and globally. Nobody should expect regional nations that are closer to the threats to free-ride on the United States, which has carried too much of the security load for too long.
But the problem is that none of our allies or partners in the Indo-Pacific is ready to go into the deep end of the pool by itself. Not even Japan, South Korea or Australia.
And that’s in large part America’s fault. The US never did what was necessary to ensure they could. Yes, there was plenty of feel-good “engagement,” there were scripted exercises – but not the thorough nuts-and-bolts development of real military capabilities to fight a war by themselves (or even alongside the US) against an actual enemy.
There is now no individual Indo-Pacific nation or collective grouping that can take on China.
One on one, China will eat them.
There’s also a delicate psychological aspect to US commitments – an aspect that our friends and enemies carefully watch. The prospect of US backing is the glue that lets most nations in the Indo-Pacific at least think they don’t have to roll over for the PRC.
Any sign of lagging commitment – even if Washington protests otherwise, claiming “rock solid” and “iron-clad” alliances, and has the physical capacity to step in – has a corrosive effect, demoralizing friends and encouraging enemies to make a move.
The tough-love approach requires solid, long-term commitment that is also believable and able to survive domestic political expediency and short-attention spans in Washington.
The track record is poor.
Recall the Nixon Doctrine, introduced in 1969, that “the United States would assist in the defense and developments of allies and friends” but would not “undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world.” This aimed to replace on-the-ground US military activities with self-defense by capable allies backed up by US support.
By 1975, however, US support for South Vietnam had wavered owing to Congressional interference. The South Vietnamese military and government collapsed and North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon.
And more recently, there was Afghanistan in 2021. So much for US promises of commitment and tough love of our friends.
The NDS will probably look good on paper – and can be interpreted to suit the reader’s preferences.
But other rumors are floating around of US force withdrawals from Asia, and people of influence in the War Department’s policy world favor pulling back to what they consider more defensible positions closer to, or on, the US mainland.
The US military in the Indo-Pacific is already bare bones when weighed against the powerful and growing Chinese threat.
Just remove a few destroyers and a couple of fighter squadrons from Japan and see what happens. Before long, the NDS will indeed be “as bad as it seemed.”
America’s defense starts in the Western Pacific – not in San Diego. Let’s hope that the people who ultimately implement the NDS understand that.
Colonel Grant Newsham (US Marines – Ret.) is the author of When China Attacks: A Warning to America.
Beware of Chinese retaliation to the Monroe Doctrine.
China controls all the rare earths and supply chains. All the armaments in Taiwan Japan, Australia et al are dependant on these. It’s just hush hush 🤫
The author doesn’t know we are already in a new world order.
The fact of the matter is that militarily China has gained a lot of strength in the Indio-Pacific and now can push the US carrier fleets back to the Third Island China now with its hypersonic weapons, etc.
Secondly, most nations in the Indo-Pacific have good relations with China and also are quite reliant on it for trade and development.
So the situation increasingly favors China.
Perhaps the days of the US dominance as a military and economic power are over and now it is just going to have to get along and become the nice guy rather than risk being totally alienated by much of the world.
Boohoohoo. No money no love.
It’s not reasonable to place your military forces right up to someone’s coastline in the name of self-defense. How is that different from a posture of impending invasion?
Would the U.S. tolerate China claiming its defense begins in the Eastern Pacific? Don’t expect others to tolerate what you cannot tolerate yourself.
For the sake of the survival of the human species, perhaps draw the line of defense in the middle of the Pacific? And don’t underestimate South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, India, and Australia. Once they know they can no longer get free ride off the U.S., they’ll finally take their security seriously. A lot of them have managed to co-exist with China for thousands of years before the U.S. came on the scene.
Yes, that is true, and they all are doing such a lot of trade with China that there are a lot of reasons to be good friends. Can the US say the same now? Increasingly no.
It does give China the advantage of taking out an entire US fleet with its surface to sea missiles, though, should war occur. The Chinese don’t have to travel to western waters to do it, when the US ships are just sitting on its coastlines.