Follow us on social

Shutterstock_1688164231-scaled

Biden's boilerplate defense strategy: it's all about China

The NDS continues a long tradition of painting China as an aggressive nation working to weaken the US.

Analysis | Asia-Pacific

The long-awaited unclassified U.S. 2022 National Defense Strategy has finally appeared. As expected, much of it is devoted to describing how to counter the dire threats to U.S. interests posed by China’s military (the People’s Liberation Army).

While avoiding the kind of shrill, inflated rhetoric so common in Trump-era security documents, the 2022 NDS unsurprisingly continues past broad-brush characterizations of China as an aggressive nation working hard on all fronts to weaken the U.S. and refashion both the Indo-Pacific and the (undefined) international system to suit its authoritarian interests.  

There is arguably a greater emphasis in this NDS on the threats to homeland defense, thus reinforcing the existing narrative of China as a comprehensive security challenge to the United States. And this, of course, is seen to require a comprehensive, heightened effort not only to prevent Chinese aggression but to counter Chinese influence virtually everywhere.

As usual in U.S (and Chinese) security and strategy documents, the NDS provides no hint that Chinese threats might involve responses to Washington's actions and statements, as part of an increasingly hostile, interactive dynamic to which both Washington and Beijing contribute. But that is probably too much to expect from a DoD perspective that defines deterrence solely in terms of military countermeasures against active and potential aggression, with little attention paid to the obvious need for credible assurances designed to set limits on one’s own threatening behavior (more on this below).

The NDS also fails to grasp the fundamental fact that 95 percent of Chinese military or gray zone aggression is directly related to disputes over PRC sovereignty claims along China’s maritime periphery.  This in no way excuses Chinese actions in these areas, but a failure to acknowledge the motivations behind the actual cases of Chinese aggression merely contributes to an undifferentiated presentation of China as “an aggressor” requiring broad counters. 

In other words, it adds to the existing high level of threat inflation we see on both sides. And it also ignores the fact that, if cases of kinetic military action qua aggression are used as a metric for measuring threats, the U.S. is arguably the most threatening nation on the planet. But I digress.

Another worrisome feature of the NDS is its stress on collaborating with allies and partners to “cement joint capability with the aid of multilateral exercises, co-development of technologies, greater intelligence and information sharing, and combined planning for shared deterrence challenges.” 

This reinforces the existing trend toward integrating (one might say corralling) Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan into a uniform, U.S. defense perimeter oriented above all else to countering Beijing. Whether Washington’s allies will go along with being a part of such an effort is far from clear. The NDS states that it respects “the sovereignty of all states” and knows that “the decisions that our Allies and partners face are rarely binary.” But this sounds like one of those rare exceptions.     

In addition, how this vision of regional defense integration relates to the U.S. One China policy regarding Taiwan is left unanswered. The NDS merely states that DoD “will support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense commensurate with the evolving PRC threat and consistent with our one China policy.” How is that supposed to work, especially if Washington is now also treating Taiwan as a vital “non-NATO ally?”  

The short answer is, it won’t work, because Beijing will see it as yet another step toward providing Taiwan with a virtual defense guarantee.  And it will respond accordingly, thereby ratcheting up the confrontation even further, risking a potentially devastating armed conflict.   

The NDS is not all bad news. It states that conflict with the PRC is undesirable. It supports “broader whole-of-government efforts to develop terms of interaction with the PRC that are favorable to our interests and values, while managing strategic competition and enabling the pursuit of cooperation on common challenges.” 

But, as welcome as this is, it is largely boilerplate, repeated endlessly by the administration with few if any concrete indications of how competition and cooperation will relate to one another or should be bounded.  

In this regard, the NDS commendably expresses a desire to “avoid unknowingly driving competition to aggression,” and to “manage escalation risks.” And it states that DoD “will continue to prioritize maintaining open lines of communication with the PLA.” Positive words, but thus far just more boilerplate. 

Conveying messages clearly and maintaining open lines of communication have become another administration mantra uttered by every official. It conveys a politically correct stance of passivity toward Beijing, a sort of message that “sure we’ll talk if they want to talk,” that deflects the obvious need for both sides to take a much more proactive effort to reach understandings involving some level of mutual compromise. 

So, all in all, the NDS is largely more of the deterrence-centered, zero-sum approach to security we have come to expect, albeit with a slightly greater awareness expressed of the danger of competition veering into conflict. It offers no concrete policies on how to avert such a risk, however, while doubling down on the effort to build a comprehensive campaign of push-back against Beijing that includes a grand anti-China coalition in the Indo-Pacific. This will not ensure American security, nor global prosperity. 


(fotogrin/shutterstock)
Analysis | Asia-Pacific
Francois Bayrou Emmanuel Macron
Top image credit: France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou arrives to hear France's President Emmanuel Macron deliver a speech to army leaders at l'Hotel de Brienne in Paris on July 13, 2025, on the eve of the annual Bastille Day Parade in the French capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe facing revolts, promising more guns with no money

Europe

If you wanted to create a classic recipe for political crisis, you could well choose a mixture of a stagnant economy, a huge and growing public debt, a perceived need radically to increase military spending, an immigration crisis, a deeply unpopular president, a government without a majority in parliament, and growing radical parties on the right and left.

In other words, France today. And France’s crisis is only one part of the growing crisis of Western Europe as a whole, with serious implications for the future of transatlantic relations.

keep readingShow less
Starmer Macron Merz
Top image credit: France's President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrive at Kyiv railway station on May 10, 2025, ahead of a gathering of European leaders in the Ukrainian capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe's snapback gamble risks killing diplomacy with Iran

Middle East

Europe appears set to move from threats to action. According to reports, the E3 — Britain, France, and Germany — will likely trigger the United Nations “snapback” process this week. Created under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), this mechanism allows any participant to restore pre-2015 U.N. sanctions if Iran is judged to be in violation of its commitments.

The mechanism contains a twist that makes it so potent. Normally, the Security Council operates on the assumption that sanctions need affirmative consensus to pass. But under snapback, the logic is reversed. Once invoked, a 30-day clock begins. Sanctions automatically return unless the Security Council votes to keep them suspended, meaning any permanent member can force their reimposition with a single veto.

keep readingShow less
Vladimir Putin
Top photo credit: President of Russia Vladimir Putin, during the World Cup Champion Trophy Award Ceremony in 2018 (shutterstock/A.RICARDO)

Why Putin is winning

Europe

After a furious week of diplomacy in Alaska and Washington D.C., U.S. President Donald Trump signaled on Friday that he would be pausing his intensive push to end war in Ukraine. His frustration was obvious. “I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. Not happy at all,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

To be sure, Trump’s high-profile engagements fell short of his own promises. But almost two weeks after Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and European leaders in Washington, it is clear that there were real winners and losers from Trump’s back-to-back summits, and while neither meeting resolved the conflict, they offered important insights into where things may be headed in the months ahead.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.