U.S. faces pivotal years in countering the ‘China challenge,’ Pentagon chief warns – National | 24CA News
The U.S. is at a pivotal level with China and can want army power to make sure that American values, not Beijing’s, set international norms within the twenty first century, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mentioned Saturday.
Austin’s speech on the Reagan National Defense Forum capped every week wherein the Pentagon was squarely centered on China’s rise and what that may imply for America’s place on the earth.
On Monday it launched an annual China safety report that warned Beijing would seemingly have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, with no readability on how China would search to make use of them.
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On Friday in a dramatic nighttime rollout, Austin was available as the general public acquired its first glimpse of the army’s latest, extremely categorised nuclear stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, which is being designed to finest the rapidly rising cyber, house and nuclear capabilities of Beijing.
China “is the only country with both the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order to suit its authoritarian preferences,” Austin mentioned Saturday. “So let me be clear: We will not let that happen.”
The Pentagon can also be involved about Russia and stays dedicated to arming Ukraine whereas avoiding escalating that battle right into a U.S. conflict with Moscow, he mentioned on the discussion board, held on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“We will not be dragged into Putin’s war,” Austin mentioned.
“These next few years will set the terms of our competition with the People’s Republic of China. They will shape the future of security in Europe,” Austin mentioned. “And they will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights — or whether they face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear.”
Still, between the 2 nuclear energy threats, China stays the higher threat, Austin mentioned.
To meet that rise, “we’re aligning our budget as never before to the China challenge,” Austin mentioned. “In our imperfect world, deterrence does come through strength.”
The bomber is a part of a serious nuclear triad overhaul underway that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will price $1.2 trillion by 2046.
It consists of the Raider serving because the spine of the long run air leg of the triad, but it surely additionally requires modernizing the nation’s silo-launched nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and its nuclear submarine fleet.
The Defense Department has the biggest discretionary funds of all of the federal companies, and it might obtain as much as $847 billion within the 2023 funds if Congress passes the present funding invoice earlier than this legislative session ends.
However, protection advocates argue it’s nonetheless not sufficient to modernize and sustain with China as a result of a lot of that spending goes to army personnel. The CBO estimates that about one-quarter of the protection funds is spent on personnel prices similar to salaries, well being care and retirement accounts.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
