America’s defense begins in the Western Pacific, not in San Diego

A recent article in Politico claims that the new US National Defense Strategy (NDS) currently being drafted at the War Department will downplay China as a major threat and place primary focus on homeland defense and hemispheric defense – think, Western hemisphere.

A truism, “Things are never as good as they seem, and never as bad as they seem,” is worth keeping in mind.

If earlier War Department statements are to be believed, China will get its due in the final defense strategy. And it is prudent both to defend the US homeland (which has in fact been under attack for decades) and to stop taking Western Hemisphere security for granted and pay some real attention.

But here’s the problem:

Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will continue to be recognized as a major threat, and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific as a major task, the final NDS – as a sort of tough love – will also stress that regional nations need to pull their weight, allowing the US to focus on hemispheric and homeland defense.

This resembles what the Trump Administration is doing in Europe – demanding that US allies do more to handle the Ukraine problem and Russian threats.

In theory it makes sense. The US is stretched and has plenty of problems domestically and globally. Nobody should expect regional nations that are closer to the threats to free-ride on the United States, which has carried too much of the security load for too long.

But the problem is that none of our allies or partners in the Indo-Pacific is ready to go into the deep end of the pool by itself. Not even Japan, South Korea or Australia.

And that’s in large part America’s fault. The US never did what was necessary to ensure they could.  Yes, there was plenty of feel-good “engagement,” there were scripted exercises – but not the thorough nuts-and-bolts development of real military capabilities to fight a war by themselves (or even alongside the US) against an actual enemy.

Read more HERE.