The United States finds itself in a new Cold War with an even more dangerous adversary: communist China. But Washington is woefully unprepared to counter Beijing.
On Sept. 22, the China Aerospace Studies Institute announced that the Air Force had decided to shut down the organization. The institute will continue to publish reports already in the pipeline, but “once all the civilians eventually depart, CASI will close.”
CASI operates out of Air University and is tasked with publishing unclassified research on the air, space, and missile forces of the People’s Liberation Army. The institute has done pioneering research on the PLA’s military capabilities, perhaps most notably groundbreaking reports on the organization, structure, and leadership of the Chinese military’s rocket forces.
CASI’s goal is to “study everything that flies in China” in order to “better understand decision making, limitations, opportunities, and challenges,” as then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said in 2021.
It was to be the “premier center for the study of China and its aerospace capabilities.” And now it is meeting an ignominious end, a mere five years after it was first chartered.
Top China experts have decried the decision.
Tom Shugart, a defense analyst who has conducted extensive surveys of PLA capabilities, said it was a “terrible decision” that is “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, called it a “truly incomprehensible decision and a massive own-goal.” Charlotte Asdal of the Asdal Advisory Group noted that institutes such as CASI are “critical to assessing the Chinese Communist Party’s capabilities and intentions.”
CASI’s closing is but the latest sign that the U.S. is failing to take the threat posed by China seriously.
During the last Cold War, America invested heavily in its own defense. America and its allies had just emerged from the worst conflict in modern history, and Washington was determined to deter, and if need be, win another great-power war.
The U.S. created entirely new institutions such as the National Security Council and the CIA. Washington funded language institutes and area studies centers at universities and think tanks so it could better understand its adversary.
Presidents from Democrat Harry Truman through Republican George H.W. Bush recognized the Soviet threat and explained its dangers to the public. In the U.S., there was broad cultural recognition of the expansionist ambitions of the Soviet Union.
But America today is not taking the steps it took decades ago when it faced another aggressive communist power. Many political leaders are not being forthright with the people about the scope and scale of the threat posed by China.
America’s defense spending is a fraction of what it was during the last Cold War. Our export controls are in dire need of strengthening to reduce our dependence on our foremost foe.
And we need more research institutes devoted to China studies, not fewer. As Asdal noted, understanding the CCP’s strategic mind “starts with studying what they say about themselves to themselves,” including “their ideology, goals, and internal debates.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping openly seeks the end of the U.S.-led world order and has called for the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, an event that could make China the undisputed master of the Indo-Pacific.
China is already acting as if it is at war.
Beijing has perpetrated the largest data hack in American history and is reportedly seeking first-strike capabilities for nuclear war.
Chinese-linked biological weapons teams have been found operating on U.S. soil, and Chinese spies have brazenly targeted U.S. politicians, from members of Congress to small-town city councils in California.
The CCP is building underground hospitals, hoarding grain and fuel, hardening air bases in the Pacific, and constructing a military command facility 10 times larger than our own Pentagon.
SANCTUARY DEMOCRATS ARE PUTTING AMERICA LAST
America, by contrast, won’t even fund and support a small institution devoted to researching and tracking Chinese airpower. That bodes poorly.
An America that refuses to recognize the Chinese threat, or even make the effort to understand it, will be unable to defeat it.