Anyone who thinks we are prepared for what is to come with China needs to sober up
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The Chinese Communist Party is a geopolitical cancer that will metastasize unless America can contain it with a once-in-a-generation investment in our national defense.
Already, the CCP is actively colluding with Russia, prolonging Putin’s war against Ukraine by blunting the impact of Western sanctions; it reaffirmed its support for Iran even after the deadly Oct. 7 attacks against Israel; and it has an explicit defense treaty with Kim Jung Un’s North Korean dictatorship.
To make matters even more dire, Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed his People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. (Getty Images)
As George Washington counseled Congress in the nation’s first ever inaugural address, "to be prepared for war is the most effectual means of preserving the peace." Tragically, we are less prepared than ever to meet today’s crises.
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Since 2000, defense spending slowed more than any other federal category. 2024 will mark the first year in history that we will spend more paying off interest on our debt than we do on defense.
During the Reagan administration, we built four attack subs per year. Today, we’re retiring more than we can replace. Our military is running on the fumes of investments we made 40 years ago. While America remains the world’s premiere superpower thanks to Reagan’s buildup, China is poised to overtake us without serious reinvestments.
In a farseeing report, "21st Century Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the U.S. Military," Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., provides a roadmap for returning to peace through strength.
Wicker, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, makes a compelling argument that our annual defense budget needs to grow to 5% of gross domestic product in order to meet the threat of China. Five percent is "consistent with historical defense spending during periods of great power rivalry" and "crucial to maintaining a technical edge over adversaries in multiple theaters," Wicker notes.
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While we must outspend China and our adversaries to counter their strength around the globe, mere money will not guarantee victory. Appropriations must be paired with renewed focus and reforms.
As the Wicker report notes, there are key areas that demand the attention of elected officials: "America’s military has a lack of modern equipment, a paucity of training and maintenance funding, and a massive infrastructure backlog."
And while we far short of the 355-ship fleet we need, it is not just the Navy. China is also gaining ground in their nuclear and space capacities that we cannot allow to remain unchecked.
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The "breakout pace" of the People’s Liberation Army has repeatedly astounded defense experts. We knew that the PLA was building massive fields of nuclear silos and expected that they might have 500 warheads. They’re rapidly approaching twice that.
Wicker warns that Chinese nuclear capacity will exceed our own sometime in the 2030s, while Russia’s is already "larger, more modern, and more diverse" than ours. We are the only nuclear country that is incapable of producing any more.
Revitalizing our capacity must become a priority, and we should consider recreating something like the NATO nuclear burden-sharing agreement with closely allied countries in the Pacific like Australia, Japan and South Korea.
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The breakout pace in space is also profound, top officials have warned. The U.S. chief of space operations, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, has warned that the PLA has more than 470 spy satellites undergirding "a robust sensor-shooter kill web… [an] unacceptable risk to our forward-deployed force."
As Wicker urges, our Space Force must evolve in its offensive capacities, developing the infrastructure necessary to "break the kill web of U.S. adversaries."
Recent operations in the Red Sea have highlighted the need for such focused development and innovation in our counter-drone operations. We simply cannot afford to resupply and maintain the arsenal of democracy if we continue to use $2 million missiles to take down $2,000 drones.
I have sometimes been belittled as an "eternal optimist" for my unshakeable belief that America can rise to meet the challenges before her if only we have a government as good as our people. I don’t think that’s optimism so much as an accurate sense of history.
But even still, victory is anything but assured in this existential competition. Anyone who thinks we are prepared for what is to come needs to sober up and check their clocks. It may still be "Morning in America," but the light is fading fast in Beijing.
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Mike Pence is the former vice president of the United States and founder of Advancing American Freedom.
