The challenges to the US posed by China exceed those of the Cold War, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Wednesday, while a new US Navy “navigation plan” called for readiness to fight China by 2027.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has been explicit that it is not seeking a new cold war with China, but increasingly analysts and members of the US Congress have said escalating global competition between the two superpowers resembled a different, but new style of cold war.
Campbell told a US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that Washington needed to maintain a bipartisan focus on China, and step up the speed of US naval shipbuilding and the capacity of the US defense manufacturing base.
Photo: AP
“Frankly, the Cold War pales in comparison to the multifaceted challenges that China presents. It’s not just the military challenges. It’s across the board. It’s in the global south. It is in technology,” Campbell said.
Foreign crises, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict, have created distractions for Biden’s efforts to focus on China and the Indo-Pacific region.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May pledged a “new era” of partnership, and cast Washington as an aggressive cold war hegemon.
Campbell said that increasing the speed of US warship output should be of the highest priority in the next decade.
“This is a naval time,” Campbell said, calling increasing the speed with which US Navy ships are designed and built “the most important thing that we need to do over the course of the next 10 years.”
“The navy has to step up. We have to step up with them,” he said.
Campbell, who met with NATO and EU officials earlier this month to provide allies with details of China’s “substantial support” to Russia’s military industrial base, has said Russia was in return supporting Beijing with submarine and missile technology.
“The most worrisome thing is that it comes from the very top,” Campbell said, referring to senior Chinese leaders’ support for Moscow.
He added that China has been supporting Russia’s drone activity in Ukraine.
Campbell said a summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — Australia, India, Japan and the UK — that Biden is to host tomorrow would include “big announcements” showing substantial progress to help Pacific and Southeast Asian nations track illegal fishing fleets, most of which are Chinese.
He also mentioned plans for discussions on stepped-up security cooperation in the Indian Ocean involving India and other nations. He said US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo had been asked to help “fuse together our national military approach, security approach” there.
“This is the new frontier, working more closely with a partner like India in the Indian Ocean,” he said.
Meanwhile, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti in a “navigation plan” released on Wednesday called on the US Navy to be ready for a possible war with China by 2027.
The strategic guidance put forward what Franchetti called her “Project 33 targets,” which aim to “make strategically meaningful gains in the fastest possible time.”
“This Navigation Plan drives toward two strategic ends: readiness for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027 and enhancing the Navy’s long-term advantage,” she wrote in the forward.
“The chairman of the People’s Republic of China has told his forces to be ready for war by 2027 — we will be more ready,” the document says.
Branches of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army are coalescing into a “integrated warfighting ecosystem specifically designed to defeat ours, backed by a massive industrial base,” it says, adding that the US Navy must stay committed to a plan that “delivers integrated, all-domain sea control.”
Additional reporting by Kayleigh Madjar
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