Considering China as a Threat, Pentagon Prepares for World War III

US National Defense Strategy-2022

In China, the 20th National Congress, which guaranteed Xi's third term as president and, according to some commentators, even paved the way for him to declare himself president for life, made it clear that the United States would be the biggest military rival of the Chinese in the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea and later in the Indo-Pacific geography, and that economic and military restructuring would go hand in hand for China's security. As if in response to this, the Pentagon, in its newly published strategy document, declared yesterday that it considers China to be the number one threat to itself and its allies. 

On October 27, 2022, the Pentagon released its version of the "National Defense Strategy-2022", which lays out America's defense strategy for the next decade. The strategy also includes Nuclear and Missile Defense Assessments.

In his introduction to the strategy, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin states that the strategy will help protect the American people over the next decade, promote global security, enable American society to seize new strategic opportunities, and serve the realization of American-led democratic values.

The United States believes that its vision and global leadership are fundamental to international peace and prosperity. The strategy recognizes the US military as a pillar of US leadership, particularly in the face of challenges arising from geopolitical, technological, economic and environmental change. The Department of Defense states that the military is prepared to fulfill this mission and will focus on protecting and advancing vital US national interests.

The strategy's core tasks are defined as:

- Protect the security of the American people;

- Expand economic prosperity and opportunity;

- Enact, and where necessary defend, the values at the heart of the American way of life.

The strategy sets out how the US military will protect vital US national security interests and respond to threats that destabilize the international system in which the US is dominant or hegemonic. The strategy identifies the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the threat country of primary concern to provide, maintain and strengthen deterrence for this US military. In a sense, the Pentagon ignores Putin's Russia, which indirectly challenges the United States today in Ukraine, and sees it necessary to focus on China under Xi.

The strategy prioritizes four tasks for the Pentagon: 

- Defending the homeland,

- Deter potential strategic attacks against the United States, its allies and partners,

- If deterrence fails, if war is a necessity, being ready to fight to win the war,

- Maintaining American technological superiority, continuing to develop the defense ecosystem.

The Concept of Integrated Deterrence

In particular, the Pentagon emphasizes the concept of integrated deterrence. The Pentagon strategy emphasizes that integrated deterrence requires an effective nuclear deterrent to support the combat power of combat-ready, highly capable conventional forces.

The key elements of integrated deterrence are defined as an integrated defense ecosystem. In this context, four elements are emphasized: 

- The Pentagon (Ministry of Defense), 

- Defense industry production base, 

- Private sector production mechanism and 

- The academic environment complementing the defense ecosystem. 

The strategy sees the Pentagon as responsible for orchestrating these four elements in the context of building integrated deterrence. Innovation and modernization are emphasized. The strategy states that manpower will be in line with technological superiority, and that special emphasis will be placed on education.

Although the strategy is an open document that focuses the US government on building the defense ecosystem and sheds light on the future, it is ultimately based on certain assumptions and future projections. It either glosses over or ignores some areas. The most obvious example in this context is the perspective on China and Russia.

The Pentagon's Perspective on China and Russia

The Defense Strategy Paper-2022 underestimates Russia, saying that it considers it a secondary threat. In a sense, it suggests that it is not a primary threat to the United States. This perspective, according to the document published in 2018, puts China at the forefront of the threat spectrum. Unlike the NATO Strategic Concept-2030, which sees Russia as the primary threat, the United States sees China as the primary threat. This is the first time in American history that the Pentagon has adopted a primary threat assessment of China. The Russian threat is included in the document as a foreseeable, clear threat. Russia is seen as an acute disease. In this sense, Russia is seen as a threat that the US can easily overcome with its capacity, and available capabilities. On the other hand, it is emphasized that China's military capabilities and capacities are developing very rapidly and deserve to be the focal point of American integrated deterrence.

It is hardly understandable for the US to ignore Putin's Russia, which is the triggering country of the global chaos and instability that has emerged almost to this day. Especially today, when Russia threatens the whole world with the use of nuclear weapons if necessary, it is thought-provoking that the emphasis on American deterrence to stop Russia has started to weaken. In this document, the Pentagon clearly ignores all the existing negative assessments of Russia, such as Russia's pushing Europeans into energy bottlenecks, threatening to withhold energy supplies, disrupting the global food supply chain, and attempting to invade Ukraine in violation of international law. Moreover, while Russia's biggest supporters are, as the Pentagon points out, China, North Korea and Iran, it is not right to include Russia, which is still a clear threat to the Western world, as a secondary threat compared to 2018.

However, the Pentagon, which embraces the concept of integrated deterrence, based on the logic of integrating American deterrence against increasingly complex global threats, sees China as an emerging threat and only downgrades Russia to the level of an "acute threat" at this point. This emphasis brings an important perspective for outsiders like me who read the Strategy Paper-2022 from the outside. Personally, from the statements in the document, I think that the authors of the Pentagon's strategy document see Russia as a "foreseeable threat" and China as a "hard-to-predict threat." If this is the case, I find the concept of integrated deterrence, which the Pentagon promises to develop together with other ministries for China, which is certain to become a country that is rising in every aspect and will challenge the US with its technological know-how in many areas, to be a very understandable and appropriate expression.

China Seen as a Primary Threat to the United States

The document contains harsh rhetoric against China, which it does not really deserve. Such statements, which portray China as the primary threat, will inevitably provoke a reaction from Beijing. Will this document serve as a deterrent for China? Or will it encourage it to accelerate its already massive military and technological transformation? The answer to such questions is interpreted as a mystery. 

While China and Russia are mentioned as specific threats in the document, I believe that the efforts to realize new alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, where the US is trying to exist with its allies, are concealed, probably deliberately. However, activities such as multinational exercises, port visits, training opportunities, reconnaissance-surveillance-intelligence flights, etc. carried out with US allies in the Indo-Pacific region under the leadership of the US Navy are no longer routine. If the US continues with its old rhetoric (describing Taiwan as a "key non-NATO ally"), it will also be expressing that it is no longer afraid to be seen as a clear threat to China. 

Henceforth, any such action or activity will be read as a threat to China. This is because with this document, the US is openly declaring that it sees China as a threat. 

Meanwhile, the growing threat perception of Russia and China on the American side shows that how to manage crises that may arise in the areas of new technologies, especially in space and cyber space, where predetermined norms are lacking, and the courses of action that can be predetermined in these complex areas in the event of an escalation of crises, will be just as complex. The Strategic Document-2022 lacks a clear roadmap on how to manage potential escalation in space and cyber. For the Pentagon, this suggests that space and cyber will remain the most complex problem areas for the next decade.

Conclusion

Some in the Biden administration believe that the escalation dynamics surrounding nuclear weapons cannot be controlled. Therefore, he hopes to provide a sharp deterrent by leaving it 'unclear' how the US side might respond to the current Russian threat to use nuclear weapons and/or a nuclear attack by stating that it would have 'catastrophic consequences'. 

Even if Russia's war in eastern Europe puts the use of nuclear weapons on the agenda, it seems unlikely that a third world war will break out. However, I think that the states of the world, which are struggling to cope with global warming, will have to prepare for the negative effects of the Indo-Pacific region, which is sure to heat up considerably in the next decade, global instability and a possible third world war.