There is no more pressing national security matter for President-elect Donald Trump than that of how to deal with China.
The China problem our 47th president is inheriting from the Biden administration is grave. Like the two terms of former President Barack Obama’s White House before him, President Joe Biden’s China policy has telegraphed diffidence and weakness against a backdrop of American military decline. Two years into his presidency, Biden blurted out that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, ending decades of “strategic ambiguity” with Washington’s posture vis-à-vis Taipei and Beijing. Biden then repeated this statement at least three other times, with the White House rowing back his rhetoric on each occasion.
Yet Biden never followed up his policy change with action. As a result, Beijing never took our outgoing president particularly seriously. During the embarrassing early 2023 China spy balloon incident, the Defense Department’s efforts to talk with Chinese counterparts to defuse the crisis fell apart because the Chinese military wasn’t taking our hotline calls. In his final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday, an elderly Biden was unable to project strength, while this week, an effort by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart at a security conference in Laos was rudely rebuffed. The Chinese Communists no longer hide their contempt for Team Biden.
This dynamic can and must change come noon on Jan. 20, 2025, when Trump returns to the Oval Office. Here, the new commander in chief has an opportunity to demonstrate to Beijing that he will not be publicly disrespected like Biden was. This plays to Trump’s personality and will show China that America takes the threat it poses seriously.
However, the unfortunate reality is that America’s military position against a rising China has declined precipitously even since 2020. Decades of underinvestment in our military, particularly regarding shipbuilding and Navy maintenance, means that the Pentagon can no longer look across the Pacific with confidence that China can be defeated if “the balloon goes up” over Taiwan.
This week, Adm. Samual Paparo, the Pentagon’s point officer on the China threat as the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, bluntly stated that there are no technical fixes or superweapons that can change the balance of power in the Pacific. Drones and technological prowess alone can’t save us. As Paparo sarcastically explained, “Oh let’s just quit on everything. We’ve got some drones. Alright, well [China]’s got 2,100 fighters. They’ve got three aircraft carriers. They have a battle force of 200 destroyers. Oh well, roger, we’ve got a couple drones. No problem. You know, we’ve got that Ukraine thing licked.”
Paparo continued that strong Pentagon support to Israel in its proxy struggle against Iran, plus Ukraine’s continuing defensive war against Russia, has significantly degraded U.S. high-end military readiness against China. “Now, with some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed,” he said, “it is now eating into [our] stocks … and to say otherwise would be dishonest.”
Pentagon concepts to defeat China’s dramatically growing air and naval power, which greatly outnumber U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, are grounded in the technological superiority of our precision weapons. But we are using these up rapidly in the Middle East and Ukraine. This is particularly serious because there’s no short-term fix for this depletion of Pentagon missile stocks, and our surge production capacity is limited. Meanwhile, U.S. generals and admirals take seriously the notion that Xi plans to reunite Taiwan with China by any means necessary. Xi is 71, just a year younger than Russian President Vladimir Putin, and both men know that they have perhaps a decade of political life left to change the world to their liking.
The threat of the Great Pacific War starting during Trump’s term is real and serious. Biden-era avoidance of the China threat has cost us time. Therefore, the new administration has no time to waste. It must grapple with how to avoid war with China from its first day back in the White House.
Job No. 1 is making plain to Beijing that Washington welcomes frank bilateral dialogue on all matters, including Taiwan and the South China Sea, where increasingly aggressive Chinese air and sea patrols are causing deep worry in the Pentagon. These are exercises designed to test and wear out Taiwanese resolve, and America’s too. Such triggering demonstrations of military force will continue, more or less peacefully, lulling the Pentagon and Taipei into false tranquility until, one day, the Chinese military launches an invasion, or more likely a blockade, of Taiwan, and war is upon us.
Trump must make plain to Beijing that resolving the Taiwan matter by force is not acceptable to the U.S. Moreover, that island, which constitutes the cornerstone of the First Island Chain in the Western Pacific, is vital to regional security. The Taiwan matter isn’t just about Beijing, Taipei, and Washington. There are other key stakeholders, especially Japan, that would view any Chinese move against Taiwan as an existential threat to their countries. Because Tokyo is one of our closest allies, with whom we enjoy a strong bilateral defense treaty, if Japan fights for Taiwan’s independence, the U.S. may wind up in that war whether we want to be or not.
Just as important as telegraphing strength to the Communists in Beijing is communicating frankly with Taipei that they are not doing enough in their own defense. The answer to Taiwan’s fear of the Chinese military cannot simply be: Call Washington to save us. Contrary to alarming statements about the dire threat to Taiwan emanating from the mainland, its defense spending remains laggard. Taiwan can make its island a dense hornets’ nest of missiles that the Chinese military would find difficult to crack. Yet, Taipei still doesn’t choose to take its defense seriously. Trump must bluntly inform Taipei, privately, that America cannot be expected to risk World War III for Taiwan until it gets more serious about military spending and readiness. Trump coaxed NATO countries to spend more on collective defense during his last term, and he must do the same with Taiwan now.
That said, the Trump administration needs to spend whatever it takes, as soon as possible, to fix U.S. shipbuilding to get our Navy ready for war against China. Loss of naval supremacy, under fire, in the Western Pacific would unravel American hegemony once and for all while threatening the security of our homeland. We must make China understand that there can be no easy victories against us in the Western Pacific. Right now, the odds of who wins that war can be termed even, as Congress just admitted. We need to do better than that to deter Xi’s adventurism in the South China Sea and against Taiwan.
Last, Trump must order our intelligence agencies to execute a full-court press against the China matter. Our spy agencies need far-reaching reforms anyway, and the China threat offers a test case for getting foreign espionage right. U.S. intelligence operations against China have too often been blown by shoddy security, while Beijing’s cyberwarriors pillage American companies and government agencies without consequence. Serious clandestine pushback is required, employing American spies to send China a message it cannot fail to understand. The Xi regime must be allowed no more easy pickings of the American economy and national defense secrets.
It’s not all bad news. Close analysis indicates that, while Beijing preferred a Harris victory at the polls, knowing habitual Democratic kowtowing to China, Chinese foreign policy mavens have been preparing for another Trump presidency for months. There are opportunities here as well as risks.
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If Trump chooses to engage China from a position of frankness and strength in equal measure, he may be able to fundamentally shift U.S.-China relations in a manner that reduces the threat of war.
However, this can only be achieved by confronting the China threat honestly while understanding that strength, not hope, is what deters armed conflict and a possible World War III.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.