China is the Bigger Challenge

President Joe Biden released his first national security strategy October 12th, Wednesday. He called Russia an ‘imminent threat’ that requires ‘constraining’ but identified China as the longer-term threat to the US, by naming China ‘America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge’.

 A 48-page document that pointed to Russia and China posing different challenges was released.

 The statement concluded that Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown, contrasting that China is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.

 Biden said the US will defend ‘every inch’ of Nato territory from Russia and other opponents, preventing them from achieving its objectives through using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons.

 National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US should quickly pinpoint the challenges that China presents because we cannot make up the decade that we lose, by recognizing the significance of the decade, which is critical for identifying the competition advantage, especially with China and for staying ahead of the contest. Sullivan urged at the same time not to regard the strategy the authority conducted as viewing the world ‘solely through the prism of strategic competition’ or as seeking competition to tip over into confrontation or a new cold war.