ANALYSIS:
The Trump administration is seeking to rebuild American military power while engaging China to avoid a conflict in the near term, according to a review of strategy and policy statements by key policy leaders.
Two months into President Trump’s second term in office, signs of the administration’s approach to Beijing are coming into view: China remains the most dangerous flashpoint for war and current U.S. defenses and industrial base to support a conflict are seen by senior officials to be inadequate.
The key to a successful U.S. strategy for addressing the challenges posed by Beijing is to thwart Chinese military and diplomatic power and prevent Beijing from becoming the dominant regional power.
The administration also is working to prevent Chinese control over northeast and southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Bolstering regional alliances and allied defense capabilities also will be a key element of the strategy.
President Trump said recently he does not plan to cut defense spending. Toward China, he is seeking good relations despite tensions over both Taiwan and tariffs. On Monday, Mr. Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping could visit the United States soon for talks over rising tariffs the two governments have placed on each other’s exports in recent weeks.
Mr. Trump has already brought some changes and course adjustments to U.S.-China relations: The defense of Taiwan, once regarded as essential to maintaining freedom and democracy throughout the region, is now viewed as still strategically important but no longer the linchpin of American regional strategy.
Key elements of the administration’s new China approach were discussed by Elbridge Colby, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the key post of undersecretary of defense for policy, during a recent Senate nomination hearing.
Mr. Colby is on track to be approved by the Senate for the No. 3 Pentagon position in the coming days.
“President Trump is pursuing the right approach to Beijing, which is a combination of peace – an openness to dialogue and negotiations, cabining the rivalry rather than unnecessarily intensifying it, and … restoring and focusing our military on deterring China and strengthening our economy, including by diminishing China’s leverage over it,” Mr. Colby stated in written answers to policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
More important than the status of Taiwan in the new American strategic thinking is preventing Chinese hegemony over the larger Asia-Pacific region, replacing the U.S. as the dominant security and economic power.
Other administration officials say Mr. Trump’s conciliatory approach to Russia and outreach to President Vladimir Putin are elements of a global strategic gambit to wean Moscow away from its growing alliance with China, analogous to Henry Kissinger’s efforts to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow during the Nixon administration.
Keith Kellogg, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine war, said in Munich last month that the administration is working to “break the alliance” between Russia and China, as well as alliances with Iran and North Korea through its peace efforts seeking an end to the conflict.
Mr. Trump in an interview this week with Fox News argued that the U.S. has leverage because it boasts assets and capabilities that both Russia and China seek.
“China needs us in terms of trade very badly, but we have to straighten out the deficit,” Mr. Trump said. “And with Russia, they would like to have some of our economic power.”
Denying hegemony
China’s large nuclear programs buildup is part of a strategy of achieving hegemony over Asia, first, and ultimately to challenge the United States in seeking global dominance, Mr. Colby said.
Michael Anton, the new director of policy planning at the State Department, has stated that he favors continuing the U.S. “strategic ambiguity” policy that leaves unanswered the question of whether Washington would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.
Writing in The Federalist in 2021, Mr. Anton also stated that “there is no core American national interest that would compel us to go to war over Taiwan.”
Mr. Colby testified that the fall of Taiwan to China would be a disaster. But he also warned that the balance of military power has shifted so sharply in Beijing’s favor that defending Taiwan can no longer be considered an “existential interest” for the U.S.
Mr. Colby said that, if confirmed for the Pentagon policy post, a cardinal goal would be to ensure the success of Mr. Trump’s policy of preventing China from attacking Taiwan during his presidency.
Instead of declaring that a Chinese use of military force against Taiwan will be met with U.S. and allied force, the administration will seek to have Taipei develop its own indigenous “denial defense” against Chinese attack, he said.
“Restoring our military edge for a denial defense along the First Island Chain must be the top priority for U.S. and Asian allied conventional forces,” Mr. Colby stated.
The administration wants Taipei, a regional economic powerhouse, to sharply increase its defense spending to 10% of gross domestic product, up from the current 2.5%.
Mr. Colby stated that the United States faces what he calls a “perilous mismatch” of U.S. global goals and a shortage of resources and political will to achieve them.
The imbalance was described by the nominee as a “Lippmann Gap,” after influential 1940s columnist Walter Lippman who first warned against allowing a nation’s power and resources to fall below the level needed to support foreign policy and security goals. The imbalance creates domestic political dissension and requires redefining interests or scaling back commitments.
“Allowing this to go on is a recipe for disaster,” Mr. Colby stated. “We and our allies face the potential for multi-front conflict in the coming years, yet we are not as prepared as we should be for such an eventuality.”
War with China is “very possible,” he said, and greater defenses and an improved defense industrial base are needed to prevent it.
The problem for the Pentagon is that fixing shortfalls will take many years while the threat of war is far more immediate, Mr. Colby said.
Also, the need for countering China is being pushed back as Mr. Trump and his team have made securing both the U.S. homeland and American borders as the highest priority.
Focusing closer to home
That has translated into a renewed focus on theaters closer to home in the Western Hemisphere. Military forces also were sent to secure the southern border.
The president also has talked openly of re-taking control over the Panama Canal over concerns about Chinese influence, and annexing Greenland, a mineral-rich springboard to the increasingly strategic Arctic region, and even Canada as American territories.
China, however, remains the most serious national security danger for the administration, along with Russia, Iran, North Korea and Islamic terrorism. The four nations have increased collaboration in what is an emerging anti-U.S. entente.
Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has been outspoken on the mounting risks of a conflict with China, specifically over Taiwan. Recent large-scale Chinese military operations around the island democracy are not exercises but “rehearsals” for a potential attack, he said in a speech in February.
“Beijing’s military buildup, their gray zone operations, their military coercion against Taiwan grow concerning every day,” Adm. Paparo said. “The People’s Liberation Army’s increasingly complex, multi-domain operations demonstrate clear intent and improving capability.”
Despite the daunting challenges, the new administration will not seek international withdrawal or a new isolationism, according to Mr. Colby.
The new policy is dubbed “peace through strength, America first,” he said. For defense policy, that calls for rebuilding military capabilities and increasing readiness.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier this week that a “historic” U.S. military buildup is planned, including new weapons, despite Mr. Trump’s push to pare the Defense Department’s overall workforce. The new weapons include warships, long-range munitions, hypersonic missiles, the “Golden Dome” national missile defense and long-range drones.
“We have revived the warrior ethos inside the military, we are reestablishing deterrence, and per the president’s direction we are going to rebuild the military,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox Business Network.
Favoring ambiguity
Mr. Colby, like Mr. Anton, opposes the Biden administration policy of stating clearly that the U.S. military would respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. He believes the costs of such an explicit declaratory policy outweigh the benefits: “Such a move could inflame relations with Beijing, and even offer a pretext for military action,” he stated.
“It also risks sending a signal of approval for Taiwan’s laggardly efforts on its defense, with dire implications for our collective efforts to rapidly strengthen deterrence and reduce operational risk to U.S. forces,” he added.
Mr. Colby said instead he would provide the president and secretary of defense with military options to support deterring and, if necessary, denying a Chinese invasion “at a reasonable level of cost and risk for the American people.”
Current U.S. policy toward Taiwan defense is outlined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress after formal diplomatic recognition of Beijing and de-recognition of Taipei. The act calls for providing weapons to help Taiwan defend itself, but stops short of a U.S. defense commitment to the island democracy.
Mr. Anton said in a recent podcast interview that he does not support the Chinese communist system and opposes its repressive social credit system used for population control and its omnipresent spying. But he said he also opposes any U.S. policies that would seek to change the system in China, over fears doing so could lead to a major war.
As a result, the United States should not seek to promote democracy in China, Mr. Anton said on the Lawfare Daily podcast in November.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the America first policies toward China are focusing on countering China’s growing influence in South America and at the Panama Canal. Mr. Rubio sees China’s new power as a reality the United States must deal with.
“What we cannot have is a world where China is so powerful, we depend on them,” he said on Fox News Feb. 27. “And that’s right now where we’re headed, unfortunately. That’s going to change. That’s going to change under President Trump.”
To deal with China, the United States needs greater domestic production capabilities free from reliance on Chinese suppliers, he said.
A second priority will be continuing U.S. presence and support for allies in the Indo-Pacific, Mr. Rubio said.
On Taiwan, the secretary of state said the longstanding relations with the island state will continue: “We are against any forced, compelled, coercive change in the status of Taiwan. That’s been our position since the late 1970s, and that continues to be our position, and that’s not going to change.”
Mr. Rubio also said military capabilities are needed to respond to threats from China. Greater defense industrial capacity for making aircraft and ships are needed because China is capable of producing 10 times as many as the United States, he said.
“That’s a very serious vulnerability that cannot continue,” he said.
During his nomination hearing in January, Mr. Rubio described the ruling Chinese Communist Party as “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” But reflecting Mr. Trump’s domestic priorities, Mr. Rubio said that much of what is needed to confront China can be achieved at home.
“It’s not just abroad, it’s also here at home,” he said on Jan. 15. “We have to rebuild our domestic industrial capacity and we have to make sure that the United States is not reliant on any single other nation for any of our critical supply chains.”
Rush Doshi, a former White House official and China expert, said the Trump administration’s approach to China is a mixture of competitive and transactional impulses. He noted that the administration has talked of making a deal to permit China-owned TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S., but then imposed tough actions like tariffs and a push for America First investment policies.
“It’s good that the Trump team wants to keep the region free from hegemony,” said Mr. Doshi, a Georgetown University professor and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That’s a longstanding U.S. goal. But some seem to think that can be accomplished even if the PRC successfully invades Taiwan. I worry that’s misguided.”
Mr. Doshi said the Trump foreign policy team has challenges with allies across the Atlantic, but has done better in the Pacific.
“They’re trying to build on the Biden team’s efforts — just as the Biden team tried to build on the first Trump team’s work,” he said.
