Lethal force posture will keep China in check: US
WASHINGTON: Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said the US is building a more lethal force posture in the Indo-Pacific as part of efforts to make sure China doesn’t dominate the region the way it intends to.
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 told the Reagan National Defence Forum on Saturday. “So let me be clear - we’re not going to let that happen.”
Austin said the US would “sustain and sharpen our warfighting advantages” and bolster its force presence “to build a more lethal, mobile and distributed force posture”.
He cited the B21 stealth bomber, unveiled on Friday, as a key element of its deterrence strategy, and said the US is charting the best way forward for Australia to get a nuclearpowered submarine as soon as possible - a deal announced early in the Biden administration.
The speech amounts to a new warning shot to President Xi Jinping even as the US looks to establish what it calls guardrails and keep tension with China from spiraling out of control.
In its latest report on China’s military strength, released late last month, the US government said China is still intent on gaining the capability to invade by 2027 and become the world’s most powerful military by 2049.
As it looks to counter that push, Austin outlined other measures, saying the Pentagon had sharpened its focus on the Indo-Pacific as the primary theatre of operations, including by pushing to be able to mobilise troops more quickly and investing in military construction and logistics.
“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 said. “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 two nuclear power threats, China remains the greater risk, Austin said.
To meet that rise, “we’re aligning our budget as never before to the China challenge”, Austin said. “In our imperfect world, deterrence does come through strength.”
The bomber is part of a major nuclear triad overhaul underway that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $1.2 trillion through 2046.
It includes the Raider serving as the backbone of the future air leg of the triad, but it also requires modernising the nation’s silo-launched nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and its nuclear submarine fleet.
The defence department has the largest discretionary budget of all the federal agencies, and it may receive up to $847 billion in the 2023 budget if Congress passes the current funding bill before this legislative session ends.