China is America's "Pacing" Challenge

So let's dive into the Definitions Section, shall we?

While America needs a sense of urgency to rebuild its naval power in the face of China’s rising power, I don’t think we need to abandon the rest of the world on the assumption that war with China is imminent. People mistakenly interpret China’s status as America’s “pacing challenge” as meaning China is the most imminent threat.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy defines how America views People’s Republic of China (PRC) behavior and military power like this:

The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences. The PRC seeks to undermine U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and leverage its growing capabilities, including its economic influence and the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing strength and military footprint, to coerce its neighbors and threaten their interests. … The PRC has expanded and modernized nearly every aspect of the PLA, with a focus on offsetting U.S. military advantages. The PRC is therefore the pacing challenge for the Department. [emphasis added]

While there are many other threats (Russia, North Korea, Iran, terrorists), China is the most potent in capabilities and therefore the enemy against which we measure our capabilities.

This does not mean China is considered an imminent threat notwithstanding the chance China could attack a neighbor in the near term. The Davidson Window is not policy. And I don’t assume it is an accurate prediction. We do need to prepare to prepare to fight China by urgently rebuilding our naval power. But if 2027 passes without China attacking, that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear and can declare the end of urgency.

China may not be an imminent or inevitable threat, but China’s potential to be a serious threat is the biggest military challenge America faces. One theory that seems to be popular is that China will be aggressive while it can because of reasons like this:

Since it takes twenty years for an infant to become a productive worker and begin family creation, and China presently has proportionately so few females of child-bearing age, let alone the inclination to have even one child, China’s population and GDP collapse in the next 30-40 years is certain. China is only temporarily a great power. South Korea, Europe, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey face similar demographic crashes.

I doubt that inevitable decline is a trigger even if the CCP believes it can’t mandate the correlation of forces to get better for China. Would China really want to go to war with trading partners to gain territory that won’t make up for the hostility China creates? Isn’t this the real lesson China could and should learn from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine?

Assuming we don’t bribe Russia into pausing its invasion and then pretend all is well.

But I digress.

And if China strikes—perhaps with limited goals given the trends—in the belief it is now or never, won’t China’s slightly delayed decline inspire those new enemies to begin a long march back to reclaim what China took while it had an advantage?

Or even worse, will China’s leaders initiate a more ambitious war to lock in gains now because of an advantage their leadership wrongly believes they have? I’ve long questioned whether China’s shiny new weapons were as effective as their new car smell advertises given problems from China’s corruption like this:

The 2023 discovery that the Chinese military was so corrupt that it failed to produce enough spare parts for its existing military aircraft, rockets, missiles and warships to operate for even a few days in an invasion of Taiwan indicates that estimates of Chinese military capability are speculative.

And consider that the enemies that China has are too weak to invade, defeat, and plunder China’s heartland. I know people talk about the Thucydides Trap that says a country will go to war to maintain a power advantage it sees as fading or fleeting, but that relies on examples of geographically close overland enemies and competitors. China does not face that. Japan is overseas, Russia’s base of power is far away in Europe. America is far away across a vast ocean. And India has the Himalayan Mountains in the way. I think a Thucydides Escape Valve weakens the worry about power transitions between America and China. It probably applies to the others around China.

China might consider it far more prudent to preserve what they’ve built up over the last four decades and hope to outlast other powers with similar demographic problems.

America should definitely measure its capabilities against China’s military numbers and technology. If we are able to defeat that threat, any other conventional enemy is toast, rather like our Cold War military smashing Iraq in 1991 after preparing for the Red Army in West Germany. But don’t treat war with China as inevitable. Keep our powder dry and double the guards because the PLA might be good enough to win in battle—or even only in its primary objective of preserving the Chinese Communist Party monopoly on power. Nor can we rule out that China gets a big case of The Stupids based on a sense of Han superiority about its ability to defeat a small, presumed isolated target.

And if China still decides it must go to war because it doesn’t want to risk the trends over the long run of peace, Russia’s self-immolation in Ukraine may make Russia a far better target for China than risking war with America and Japan.

For a final thought, I know a lot of people say it was a tremendous mistake for America to have welcomed China into the world on the mistaken belief that economic growth would lead to democracy in China. That certainly hasn’t happened. The 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre was a brutal reminder China’s communist rulers wouldn’t fade away without a fight. But—and I’m not the first to say this—all we can really say is that result hasn’t happened yet. China’s aggression and level of threat means we should no longer help China’s economic rise—and should actively undermine its military potential—but time may yet heal this wound.

NOTE: I made the image with Substack’s capability.