Monday, December 23, 2024

More Threat Deflation: The Pentagon’s China Study Is the Last Gasp of Biden’s Neo-Engagement - James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

 

by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

The Pentagon’s “China’s Military Power Report” exposes Beijing’s military growth but neglects the PRC’s belligerent ambitions, leaving the U.S. unprepared.

 

U.S. government public reports, particularly by the Department of Defense, are important because they explain to other governmental actors, such as Congress, and the American people important information and developments so that they may understand issues and make better policy decisions. Few reports are as important as the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress, “China’s Military Power Report.”

The release of the Pentagon’s “China’s Military Power Report” on December 17 is notable for two major reasons. First, for what it reveals about the expansion of the military might of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and, second, how it fails in its fundamental duty to inform Congress and the American people about what matters: the belligerent intentions and capabilities of the PRC and its hyper-aggression against the American people and U.S. national security.

First, the report includes major developments in the expansion of the PRC. This includes important information regarding the tremendous growth of the military might of the PRC. The report identifies the great increase in the PRC’s nuclear and conventional military power. It also provides some insight into the PRC’s actual defense spending, which is far above what is often reported, although it is still likely below the PRC’s actual defense spending.

Alarmingly, the PRC has increased its operational nuclear warheads in the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force to 600 from 500 in one year, a 20 percent increase since mid-2023, and is expected to have 1,000 by 2030. Each leg of its nuclear triad is growing at a pace that will yield nuclear superiority over the U.S. Concomitantly, its nuclear infrastructure has also expanded to support this incredible expansion.

The PRC’s ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile capabilities are also increasing rapidly. In fact, the PRC should be considered the world’s leader in hypersonic weapons. Equally, the expansion of the PRC’s anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, such as the DF-21D and YJ-21, increasingly gives it the ability to deny access to U.S. and allied maritime forces. The capabilities documented in this public report provide a window into a future U.S. defeat.

Power projection and military exercises are also salient. The report documents the “Joint Firepower Strike Operations,” which are a series of important exercises that have prepared the PRC’s military for an invasion of Taiwan and Japan and to strike U.S. bases in Alaska, Guam, and Hawaii as well as within the U.S.

The second reason the study is critically important is because of what it reveals about the Pentagon’s and Biden administration’s assumptions about the motivations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The report states that “the PRC’s strategy entails deliberate and determined efforts to amass, improve, and harness internal and external elements of national power that will place the PRC in a ‘leading position’ in an enduring competition between systems.”

Thus, it identifies that the PRC is seeking domination over the U.S., its allies, and partners. It is, in every sense that matters, at war with the United States, its allies, and partners.

That is a truthful admission and a remarkable one, given the rest of the report, which is an effort to explain away the implications. One would expect that the rest of the report would provide an unambiguous elucidation of the facts that would support a call to action for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society response to defeat the tyrannical vision of a world dominated by the CCP.

But you would be wrong.

The report is so quixotic it might have been written by Cervantes. It states but fails to face the consequences of the belligerence of the PRC. For the report, the PRC’s efforts to defeat the U.S. will be prevented by incompetence and corruption, most significantly in the PRC’s military.

There is no doubt incompetence exists. Equally, it is a certainty that corruption exists. However, two fundamental points are in order that compel rejection of the Pollyannaish vision of the report.

First, “corruption” is a tool Communist dictator Xi Jinping uses to purge the military and CCP and bend them to his will. Thus, “corruption” only feeds the PRC’s hyper-aggression and makes Beijing a more dangerous, determined, and immediate foe.

Second, a dependence upon “corruption” in the PLA to retard the PRC’s aggression is intellectually lazy and dangerous. The issue is not how “corruption” impacts military effectiveness but whether it will have a critical impact on war and Xi’s decision-making. The PRC is corrupt, but it also has a formidable conventional and nuclear arsenal and industrial base and a hyper-aggressive leader. The great concern is that God may be on the side of the big battalions—even if they are corrupt.

In addition, an intellectual dependence upon “corruption” in the PLA to save the U.S. from the PRC is a dangerous illusion because it feeds a threat deflation mentality in Washington that has already sat by for at least two decades as the PLA has grown into a lethal threat. The mindset of threat deflation has permitted U.S. decision-makers not to undertake the necessary measures to meet the PRC threat, and this report subtly suggests that there is nothing to do because “corruption” in the PLA will stop the CCP from achieving its aims.

For the report, “corruption” assumes a magical power to explain why the U.S. does not need to do anything. As it permits the dismissal of the PRC threat, it allows Biden to continue his pernicious policy of neo-Engagement, continuing to trade and invest in the PRC and thereby aiding the military might of the PLA and sustaining the CCP’s illegitimate and tyrannical rule over the Chinese people. The report is an effort to sustain neo-Engagement, which has been almost fatally disastrous for U.S. national security, as we document in our book, Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.

Fundamentally, the report is a supremely dangerous exercise in threat deflation. While it documents important developments, it misses the etiology of the CCP’s hyper-aggression and grand strategic objectives, as well as understanding the strategic trendline of PLA military modernization and combat lethality. So, it fails in the necessary objective to inform Congress and the American people of the threat they face. It is another missed opportunity to inform them of the nature of the threat.

Fortunately, the incoming Trump administration’s nominee for Secretary of Defense has been charged by the President-elect to restore the “lethality, meritocracy, readiness, warfighting, and accountability” of the Department of Defense. Accordingly, the 2024 China Military Power Report should be read as the last gasp of the Biden regime’s efforts to sustain the failed neo-Engagement policy towards the PRC—a report that will be seen as another exercise in threat deflation and relegated to the dustbin of history. In order to reverse the mindset of threat deflation that is so pervasive within the Pentagon, a new report that reflects the accuracy, urgency, and scope of the PRC threat should be generated in short order, within the first 120 days, by Trump’s new Pentagon.

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James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.


James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/22/more-threat-deflation-the-pentagons-china-study-is-the-last-gasp-of-bidens-of-neo-engagement/

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