The United States will have to act more firmly and quickly, in more tactics and in more areas.
This is the main conclusion of a circular table focused on the reaction to the Chinese threat. Titled “New Forms of War,” the occasion in Denver was organized Tuesday by the Washington Examiner and the Colorado Thirty Group. The panel included the retired Air Force lieutenant. General Bradford Shwedo and Brigadier General. David Stilwell, who now teaches at the Air Force Academy, Jamie McIntyre, senior defense editor for the Washington Examiner, and Michael Sobolik of the American Foreign Policy Council. I moderated the discussion.
One of the main problems is wanting to better combat the political war waged by the Chinese Communist Party against the United States. Sobolik, whose e-book Countering China’s Great Game highlights this concern, pointed out how the social media platform TikTok manipulates its more than 150 million US dollars. users to adopt pro-Beijing perspectives. This includes peddling antipathy toward Israel and disinterest in anti-Communist Party perspectives on issues like the Uyghur genocide and Taiwan and making an attempt to widen cultural fissures in American society. TikTok through the Harris and Trump presidential campaigns underscores how difficult this tool is to influence American opinion in favor of China. In fact, former President Donald Trump has changed his position on the app and now says that he would not ban it if he is re-elected. president. The panel also addressed the absurdity of TikTok’s suggestion that it would protect American users’ knowledge from access by the Chinese government.
The panelists also discussed China’s cyber infiltration of U. S. application networks. These intrusions are aimed at giving Chinese hackers the means to cut off civil services, such as water and electricity supplies, in the event of war. The goal would be to take advantage of those shutdowns to try to convince Americans that the costs of the war against Taiwan far outweigh the potential benefits.
The complexity of dealing with the Chinese military buildup constitutes another important detail of the debate.
The panel highlighted the very significant development of the functions of the People’s Liberation Army, especially in terms of warships and ammunition. While attention was paid to the United States’ mutual desire regarding its military posture, panelists emphasized that the United States deserves to use its own interoperability and technical capability benefits to prepare for any long-term war with China.
The panelists called for making plans and resources that allow the U. S. military to confront Chinese forces with simultaneous effects in the cyber, space, air, land, and sea domains. One image point reflected here focused on whether classic prestige military platforms, such as aircraft carriers, would be as useful in a Chinese confrontation as thousands of sensor-bearing combat drones. The U. S. military’s “Replicator” program is designed to supply precisely that drone force. The challenge with aircraft carriers is that China’s vast arsenal of long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles could consist of keeping them so far from the Chinese mainland that they would struggle to make a hit.
The challenge of confronting China in the area was also highlighted in reference to the presence of the Air Force Academy and Space Command in Colorado Springs. Shwedo said he believes Air Force cadets increasingly see the Space Force as a positive career option. This is important because China and Russia are taking competitive steps to be able to destroy U. S. command and satellites in space. This threatens not only the United States’ combat capability, but also the viability of the U. S. economy.
The panel’s consensus is that the United States faces a major challenge from China. But there is also optimism about spaces where the United States could do much more to exert its own pressure on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime.
The panel places more emphasis on global and regional tension over China’s broad territorial claims, opposed to almost all of its neighbors, for example. He rightly noted that China has very few genuine friends in the Pacific region. The United States may not be perfect, but unlike China, it values respectful diplomatic exchanges.
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The panel then argued that, in the event of an imminent war with China, the United States would offer debt relief to countries that China in the past ruled with greater debt. Beijing uses this debt burden to extract resources and political obedience from failing countries. But this strategy has sparked growing popular anger and the resulting opportunity for the United States to isolate Beijing as it moves toward conflict.
The panel can be summarized as follows: China represents a challenge to the security of the United States and to the democratic foreign order founded on the rule of law, a challenge that has not been noticed since 1945. But courageous leaders and potentially ambitious choices can turn things around. The United States sent before a Dongfeng ballistic missile sank it.