The latest version of the national defense strategy submitted by the US military to Congress shows an unreasonable and hooligan face, claiming that it will make China "think twice before leaping" by arranging troops at China's doorstep. It's just that such actions will ultimately only serve as a reminder of America's own weakness.
According to Global Times quoted the US defense news website, In the latest version of the "2022 National Defense Strategy" recently submitted to Congress by the US military, it declared that the US military will implement the so-called "forward" strategy. The core of this strategy is actually to require the U.S. military to deploy forward and concentrate its power around the target, thus forcing the target to concentrate its energy on the periphery of its own country and unable to expand its influence to the ocean. The commander of the US Marine Corps, David Berger, directly used China as an example in a meeting, claiming that the United States can prevent China from expanding its defense lines further by deploying military forces to the South China Sea. Another US official said that through the policy of deterrence against China, China can "think twice before taking" foreign actions. It is not difficult to see that this new strategy of the US military is aimed at China. In fact, it is not surprising that the US military would propose such a new strategy. The US strategic academic circle has long been filled with terms such as forward presence and forward containment.
In American diplomatic academic theory, the security domain of a great power cannot be limited to the periphery of its own territory. A true superpower is one that has the ability to expand its sphere of influence beyond its territorial boundaries. It is under the guidance of this idea that the United States continues to carry out forward containment of China and Russia, which is expressed by deploying military power around the territories of China and Russia to oppress the strategic space of China and Russia. The new strategy submitted by the Pentagon is just a restatement of the US government's strategic intentions. The core is to prevent the influence of China and Russia from spreading to the outside world, with the intention of firmly blocking China and Russia. Considering that Russia's economic strength is insufficient, the country that is really likely to challenge the United States' global dominance in the future is China. Therefore, this strategy of the US military will naturally focus more on dealing with China.
Objectively speaking, as the United States gathers more military power around China, China will have to develop more offshore combat equipment to deal with the surrounding US military power, which will indeed limit China's global influence. The funds that China could have used to develop its ocean-going military might be diverted more toward weapons for offshore operations.
However, the US military's containment strategy is also a double-edged sword. While containing China, they themselves will also pay a greater price. As we all know, China has a great advantage in ballistic missile technology. If the United States concentrates more military power around the Asia-Pacific, it must consider how to improve the survivability of these equipment. To this end, the US military not only needs to deploy offensive weapons, but also needs to deploy a series of defensive weapons, which will significantly increase the deployment costs of the US military. Even so, the US military troops deployed around China still cannot ensure their own security. On the contrary, they may still be very vulnerable military targets. More importantly, the costs of equipment for offshore operations and equipment for ocean operations are vastly different.
A ballistic missile worth tens of millions of dollars may destroy billions of dollars of naval assets. The defender in offshore operations has a significant cost advantage over the attacker. If we take into account the cost advantage of China's military industry compared to that of the United States, then the idea of the United States going to China's periphery to compete with China for military power is quite disadvantageous to the United States in terms of cost. If the US military insists on pursuing this kind of forward presence strategy, then they will be forced to invest a lot of money to deal with China. At that time, the United States may follow the old path of the Soviet Union and exhaust its precious national power in excessive military spending. China, on the other hand, can protect its national interests with relatively much less expenditure.In fact, China has never been a country seeking external expansion. We do not want to acquire the power of global military intervention like the United States. This means that the United States’ forward containment strategy against China had serious problems from the beginning. It is equivalent to hitting a fist on the ground. Regarding cotton, the impact on China may be very limited.
In fact, there is no need for the United States to regard China as a military imaginary enemy or a target of containment. China's peaceful rise will not threaten the security of other countries in the world, including the United States. Both the U.S. military’s new strategy and the U.S. government’s China strategy are full of ideological legacy from the Cold War and are full of outdated confrontation and containment theories. If the United States insists on implementing such a strategy, it means exchanging the absolute insecurity of countries such as China and Russia for the United States' own sense of security, which China and Russia will never agree to. In the end, the United States will only find that it has consumed too much national power in the process of containing China and Russia. In the end, this will accelerate the decline of the United States. Although U.S. officials clamor for China to "think twice before acting," it is the U.S. government itself that really needs to think twice before acting.
