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“Fiddle while Rome burns.” That ancient idiom captures America’s peril today.
While Washington obsesses over Ukraine and the Middle East, the Chinese Communist Party is building the most formidable military challenge the United States has faced in generations. Beijing is adding mass, reach and persistence across sea, air, missile, space, cyber and AI – while our armed forces are stretched thin, underfunded and mismatched for the threat.
The result? China is preparing simultaneous dilemmas for the United States and its allies, exploiting economic and military gaps we have failed to close. If we don’t act, we may wake up to a world where freedom is in retreat and Beijing calls the shots.
America’s Overstretched Posture
The National Security Strategy rightly identifies China as the “pacing challenge.” Yet our force structure still reflects a Cold War-era dispersion of commitments. U.S. troops are tied down in NATO deterring Russia. In the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and proxy militias demand a constant American presence.
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This multifront posture leaves our Indo-Pacific deterrent dangerously underpowered. While we talk about “pivoting” to Asia, the pivot never happened. We face an adversary with the world’s largest navy, a rapidly expanding missile force, and new footholds from the South China Sea to the Arctic – and we still rely on overstretched carrier strike groups and underfunded shipbuilding to deter them.
China’s Expanding Military Power
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready by 2027 to take Taiwan. History suggests Beijing won’t wait for perfect readiness before acting. From Korea in 1950 to Vietnam in 1979, Chinese leaders launched wars despite glaring military gaps – because political calculation outweighed caution.
Today, the PLA’s arsenal is staggering: precision-strike rocket forces with 300 new missile silos, a navy of more than 370 warships, stealth fighters, artificial islands fortified with missile batteries, and a growing space and cyber force.
Beijing now calls itself a “near-Arctic state,” deploying “research” icebreakers near Alaska while investing in ports across the high north. These are not science projects but scaffolding for future power projection.
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Salvo Economics: A Mismatch We Haven’t Fixed
The greatest danger is not just China’s size – it’s the asymmetry. Beijing has designed its forces to exploit “salvo and attrition economics.” A U.S. aircraft carrier costs $13 billion; China can build hundreds of long-range anti-ship missiles for a fraction of that.
Our missile defenses are exquisite but limited in number; China’s barrages are designed to overwhelm them. While America spends decades producing a handful of fighters, Beijing churns out missiles, drones and frigates at scale.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments warns this mismatch is unsustainable. Unless we dramatically expand munitions stockpiles, harden bases and disperse forces, we risk running out of weapons in the opening weeks of a conflict.
America’s Capability Gaps
The gaps are glaring. Our shipbuilding industrial base is years behind schedule. We cannot produce ships, submarines or missiles at the scale required to match Chinese output.
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Our missile defenses in the Indo-Pacific are limited – Patriot and THAAD batteries that could be overwhelmed within hours of a Chinese barrage. Logistics stockpiles and resilient supply chains are insufficient to sustain prolonged, high-intensity conflict in the Pacific.
And U.S. forces remain dangerously concentrated on vulnerable bases like Okinawa and Guam.
In 2024, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned: “Our military leaders are being forced to make impossible choices. The Navy is struggling to adequately fund new ships, routine maintenance, and munition procurement… leaving an aging fleet unprepared to respond to threats.”
That stark assessment isn’t political theater – it’s reality, and our adversaries know it.
Xi’s Strategic Playbook
Some claim Xi’s grip is weakening. Yet despite economic troubles, he remains firmly in control – with no successor, no term limits and no rivals. When Xi calls reunification with Taiwan a “historical mission,” we should believe him.
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And he may not need to invade to succeed. The PLA already practices coercion below the threshold of war: daily air incursions around Taiwan, fishing militias that harass neighbors, cyberattacks, and relentless political influence campaigns. Each tactic erodes deterrence while avoiding open confrontation.
Meanwhile, Beijing plays a duplicitous global game – posing as a peace-broker in Ukraine while supplying Russia, deepening ties with Iran, and whispering in Washington about a “grand bargain” that would effectively concede East Asia to Chinese control. That would be a Faustian bargain indeed.
Time to Stop Fiddling
Rome is burning. China is not a distant, future threat – it is here and growing. We cannot afford to be distracted into thinking Ukraine or Iran is the main event. They matter, but they are sideshows compared to the pacing challenge of China.
We must stop fiddling and start acting: surge investment into shipbuilding and munitions, harden and disperse bases, expand Arctic presence, and deepen alliances with Japan, Australia, India and beyond. We need to treat the Indo-Pacific as the central theater of our time – not an afterthought.
History will not forgive a United States that squandered its advantage while Beijing prepared to overturn the global order. The time is late, but not yet too late. America must stop fiddling and face the fire before the flames consume us all.
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