Paper Dragon: Just How Good Is China's Military?

Fact: China lost the last war it fought... in 1979. 

By Harry J. Kazianis


While America’s ideas for negating A2/AD are important, Washington must move to the next level of operational and strategic planning. 

The United States must begin to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with A2/AD, and specifically Chinese A2/AD, and move past vague and often-contradictory operational concepts. 

At the same time, considering the alliances and strategic partnerships Washington holds throughout the Asia-Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific, allies must be consulted as such a strategy is developed. While marketing slogans like a “pivot” or “rebalance” sound good on paper or in the headlines, a strategy must be adopted that continues America’s military edge in the Asia-Pacific for years to come.
China’s military is growing in terms of raw power and basic power projection. 

Many of Beijing’s defense investments over the last two decades are aimed at limiting Washington’s ability to intervene in areas that China describes as being of “core interest.” 

But just how much should Washington worry about it? 

A good question, for sure. 

The answer, however, is as not as black and white as many might want it to be. 

And just how much should America prepare to duel with such anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) forces in the future?
Let’s start with the obvious: While various A2/AD combat scenarios can paint a decidedly bleak picture for America and its allies in Asia in the event of a conflict with China, there are a number of reasons such a war will never come to pass in the first place. 

While large trade flows have not stopped conflicts in the past, with U.S.-Chinese bilateral trade now valued at over $550 billion and growing, this vital statistic would likely be an important factor in both sides’ strategic calculus on a path towards some sort of large-scale kinetic conflict. 

However, as history has shown us, the rise of a new regional great power with the potential to wield hegemonic dominance can spark a security competition, even war. 

This is one of the key reasons nations in the Asia-Pacific have looked to Washington to provide a hedge or a “buffer” against a rapidly rising China.
One must also consider the simple fact that there have been many so-called “revolutions” in military affairs dating back to the beginning of human history. 

While China’s version of the A2/AD strategy boasts weapons that have headline-grabbing names, like “carrier-killer,” and are certainly cause for concern, one must look back to the past at how other nations have worked to negate potential changes in how wars are conducted and how new technologies impact modern warfare. 

One example is China’s DF-21D, the “carrier-killer” itself. 

The U.S. Navy has faced challenges to its dominance of the global commons at various times in the past. 

How will America deal with such a challenge this time around? 

In analyzing the DF-21D, what many consider the most potent A2/AD challenge facing U.S. and allied forces today, such tests have been met before, according to one source, and will be addressed yet again :
While a major advance in military capability, it is not the first “game changing” weapon system mitigated or countered by the U.S. Navy. 

The naval mine, the self-propelled torpedo, the submarine, the airplane and the cruise missile all presented the same potentially lethal threat to surface warships. 

While naval leaders should respect the power of this weapon system, there is no reason to endow it with supernatural abilities or allow it to unilaterally limit operational thinking. 

As in the past, the inevitable march of technology will find an effective countermeasure or mitigating technique for this system and the DF-21D will just be another threat in a constellation of dangers inherent in the pursuit of war at sea.
To expand this line of thinking to the whole of A2/AD (and specifically Chinese A2/AD), the ideas inherent in such a strategy—limiting the ability of your enemy’s freedom of movement or, in an even broader sense, looking for weaknesses—are certainly rooted in past strategic and military thought. 

In fact, many other nations have used anti-access or area-denial–type strategies—the USSR and Imperial Japan are two often-cited examples. 

Strategic thinkers from competing nations are constantly looking for ways to negate and minimize the impact of new technologies, strategies and weapons systems. 

A2/AD, at its core, is part of a long line of past and present potentially disruptive military strategies that planners from around the world will now seek to improve on, mimic and defeat.
All in all, Washington must take a balanced approach towards China’s A2/AD challenge—not overhyping the threat, but certainly not underappreciating the challenge, either. 

In the very near future (some would argue even today), American strategists must now factor in the challenges presented by an increasingly robust Chinese military that holds growing capabilities to effectively deny large sections of the Pacific Ocean to U.S. forces. 

American defense experts are already at work recognizing the challenge and are developing the tools to negate such a scenario. 

Washington clearly realizes A2/AD weapons and strategies are diffusing around the globe, putting American and allied forces in danger, unless they evolve or adapt. 

This is why work towards the Third Offset strategy and the successor to ASB, JAM-GC, are of vital importance.
While America’s ideas for negating A2/AD are important, Washington must move to the next level of operational and strategic planning. 

The United States must begin to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with A2/AD, and specifically Chinese A2/AD, and move past vague and often-contradictory operational concepts. 

At the same time, considering the alliances and strategic partnerships Washington holds throughout the Asia-Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific, allies must be consulted as such a strategy is developed. While marketing slogans like a “pivot” or “rebalance” sound good on paper or in the headlines, a strategy must be adopted that continues America’s military edge in the Asia-Pacific for years to come.

"More missiles were needed to counter China's strategy"

McCain proposes $7.5 billion of new U.S. military funding for Asia-Pacific
By David Brunnstrom

Committee chairman U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivers an opening statement as retired U.S. Marine Corps General James Mattis sits before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to serve as defense secretary in Washington, U.S. January 12, 2017.

WASHINGTON -- The head of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, John McCain, has proposed $7.5 billion of new military funding for U.S. forces and their allies in the Asia-Pacific, where tensions have been rising over China's territorial ambitions.
The funds, $1.5 billion a year for five years to 2022, could be used to boost U.S. munitions stocks in the region, build new military infrastructure, such as runways, and to help allies and partner countries increase their capabilities, an aide to McCain and a U.S. military official said.
The funding proposal was contained in a White Paper issued by McCain last week entitled "Restoring American Power." 

His committee is expected to discuss it at a budget hearing on Tuesday.
“Senator McCain believes the United States must sustain its enduring commitment to the security and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region," a spokesman for McCain, Dustin Walker, said.
"The Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative ... would ... make U.S. regional posture more forward-learning, flexible, resilient, and formidable," he said. 

"These funds would boost operational military construction, increase munitions procurement, enhance capacity building with allies and partners, and expand military exercises and other training activities.”
An official in the administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office on Friday, said he believed McCain's proposal was "very much in general alignment with the administration's goals in the region."
Trump has vowed to take a tougher line with China and to build up the U.S. military, although it is unclear whether he will succeed in lifting caps on defense spending that have been part of "sequestration" legislation.
A U.S. military official, who did not want to be identified, said the funds could go to construct new military runways in countries such as Australia and the Philippines and to make up a shortfall of munitions that the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, complained of last year.
"There's a shortfall in the total number of munitions and also a quality gap," the official said, adding that more sophisticated missiles were needed in the region to counter China's "anti-access, area-denial" strategy.
On Monday, the new U.S. administration vowed to prevent Beijing from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea, something Chinese state media has warned would require Washington to "wage war."

Sina Delenda Est

Donald Trump’s New Asia Strategy
By Harry J. Kazianis

To be honest, it was quite amusing to watch the American and in many respects, international media, go into total meltdown when US President Donald Trump took a simple phone call from the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen.
Vice President Mike Pence, using the word’s “President of Taiwan,” stating obvious reality, and creating another uproar in the process, gets to the heart of a foolish game of make-believe that the new administration could be itching to end.
Indeed, for many of us foreign policy professionals here in Washington who have bitterly commented on the Obama administration’s poorly resourced so-called “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific, this seemingly simple act was a clear sign of things to come — and was no surprise at all.
What President Trump must do now is offer up a much more expansive vision for America in the larger Indo-Pacific region while making the case to the American people why they must support such a vision.
When he does, another so-called “shocker” will reverberate the world over but will be something many China watchers have been begging for: a tougher line against Chinese aggression.

Long Overdue Shift:
A shift in policy toward Taiwan, and indeed the whole Asia-Pacific and larger Indo-Pacific region, has been something discussed in US foreign policy circles for almost a decade — even longer depending on what you base as your starting point.
The reason for such a shift is obvious.
To start, Beijing flipped from foe to friend thanks to Richard Nixon — a welcomed ally against the Soviet Union.
Furthermore, since the late 1970s, a largely bipartisan group of foreign policy intellectuals has pushed the idea of welcoming a "peacefully" rising China into the international community under the guise of what Robert Zellick famously termed becoming a “responsible stakeholder.”
The idea was to ensure China did not turn into an adversary by giving it an important place in the current international order, to prosper from it, and in many respects, help defend that prosperity for generations to come.
Beijing, it was thought at the time, if given a prominent place in the status-quo, would have little reason to fight against it.
And such a policy worked, for a time.
One can make a credible argument that Beijing did not challenge the international system, a system created largely by the United States and Western powers, for decades.
China’s economy integrated into the world financial system and Beijing became rich in the process. China now sports the second largest economy by measure of GDP (Number one if PPP is used), it has lifted hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty and its borders, for the most part, across all domains, are largely secure.
However, since the fall of the Soviet Union and accelerating over the last decade or so, the People’s Republic has grown weary of an international system it was not strong enough to shape at the end of World War II.
Chinese leaders, quick to cite a century of humiliation at the hands of western powers, now want to amend that system to have a greater say in Asia’s affairs, and indeed, become the dominant power, its traditional place in the Asia pecking order for centuries, before its humiliation.
As one famous Chinese academic, based in Beijing, told me recently: “You Americans actually thought we would continue to support an international system that we never had any input in creating? Especially in a time when you are in decline?”
And events in recent years only go to show the great lengths China will push to change Asia’s order to its liking. 
For example, Beijing’s actions over the last several years in the South China Sea — through which 80% of the natural resources it needs to power its economy passes — have sparked heated debate in America that China not only may have dangerous ambitions, but seeks to push America out of the Asia-Pacific entirely.
Such actions include: declaring a ‘nine-dash-line’ which acts like sovereign borders over the richest ocean-based trade route on the planet, building fake islands that are now being transformed into military bases and creatively using nonmilitary maritime assets to push outlandish territorial claims all the way to far away Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

What Will Such a Shift Look Like?
So what will a Donald Trump policy for Asia look like?
If Trump takes the advice of his most experienced Asia hands, people like Peter Navarro, Michael Pillsbury, Randy Forbes and Forbes’ former deputy Alex Gray, Beijing will be in for a rough ride indeed.
As Executive Editor of The National Interest as well as Editor of The Diplomat, I have had what can be considered a front-row seat to what such thinkers have been saying for years.
First, the most obvious component to such a Trump strategy, as gleaned from the various writings of this distinguished group of Asia experts, is a greater emphasis on hard power and using such power to deter aggressive Chinese actions in the future.
Specifically, higher numbers and more sophisticated pieces of US military hardware would be transferred to the region.
Allowing this to happen would be an increase in US defense spending, with the end of sequestration.
Special focus would be on deploying assets that negate China’s fearsome anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy along with the much delayed public release of the Pentagon’s formal plans to push back against A2/AD, what was known in the past as Air-Sea Battle, now called JAM-GC.
Diplomacy would also be a big part of what has to be seen as a much more robust “pivot” under Trump.
Taiwan would be a big part of such a strategy, with relations being upgraded just under the level of full diplomatic recognition, an important sign of growing ties, but not enough to anger Beijing where kinetic conflict could be possible.
Vietnam should also see ties strengthened under the Trump administration, with possible US naval deployments to Cam Ranh Bay.
Economics, especially if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead and buried, must play a big part in a newly crafted Trump Asia policy.
Bilateral trade deals must be cemented with all members of the TPP, with special emphasis on Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and Australia.
A Congressional source, who agreed to speak on background, said he already saw hints that the new administration was working up plans for bilateral trade deals throughout Asia.
He explained: “The new administration realizes there is a certain cost to be paid in the Asia-Pacific now that TPP won’t happen. The goal now is to work with partners and allies in Asia to ensure trade links are expanded. There is already talk on Capitol Hill on how to move forward — and quickly after Trump takes the oath.”

The Biggest Challenge:
But such a strategy, a plan I would fully support, will always suffer from one big challenge that must be considered if such an action were to be implemented and be successful: will the American people support it?
If President Trump wants to push back on China, he must explain and sell his strategy, using important political capital along the way. 
He would need to demonstrate why this is a top national priority, any why ultimately Americans might be called to sacrifice their lives for it.
As one retired Chinese naval officer said to me quite recently: “Are you willing to die for your place in Asia? Are your sons and daughters willing to give their lives for Taiwan? Or rocks in the South China Sea? We are.”
There is also the issue of possibly going too far in pushing back against China — appearing too hawkish and creating tensions that could lead to conflict.
If such a strategy is not managed properly, or were to become too belligerent against Beijing, and considering the fact that both nations have large arsenals of nuclear weapons, the consequences could be profound.
Ultimately, the issues raised by China’s challenging the status-quo in Asia are a timeless problem: when a rising power seeks to undo the international system and perks of an established power and its allies and partners.
However, there is much more at stake than the simple primacy of the US in Asia.
If Beijing is simply allowed to tear asunder important norms like the concept of the global commons truly being borderless as well as continue to bully allies and partners throughout the region a dangerous precedent will be set that other nations will surely follow. 
And that is something no nation can allow to occur.

Sina Delenda Est

4 Ways America Can Push Back Against China

By Harry J. Kazianis

On the day President Donald J. Trump first steps foot in the oval office the weight of the world’s problems will be squarely on his shoulders. 

The Islamic State, tensions with Russia and an out of control Syrian Civil War will loom large, ready to test the resolve of the new administration almost immediately.
Moreover, while all of the above could fully occupy the new President’s attention for years to come, a greater, multi-decade dilemma with truly global ramifications awaits—the growing challenge presented by the People’s Republic of China.

No Bigger Challenge:
While many experts and scholars can readily recite a laundry list of reasons for growing tensions in the U.S.-Sino relationship, there is only one that counts: Beijing has determined that it no longer needs to bide its time or hide its capabilities, evidenced by China’s opposition to a U.S. led international system in the Asia-Pacific. 

In fact, Beijing has every intention to push America out of Asia and dominate what is clearly the world’s fastest growing economic region today.
And among all of the China-related problems Trump will need to deal with, growing economic competition, a rising military, increasing pressure on Japan in the East China Sea, tensions with what Beijing describes as the “renegade province” of Taiwan and so on, there is one, to be specific, a certain body of water that will test the skills of his new diplomats and strategists more than anything else: the South China Sea.

Why The South China Sea Matters:
It’s no wonder world-renowned journalist and geostrategic thinker Robert Kaplan proclaimed this treacherous sea “Asia’s Cauldron.” 

With over $5 trillion dollars of seaborne trade passing through ($1.2 trillion of which is U.S. goods, by the way) along with vital natural resources that power economic juggernauts like Japan, South Korea as well as China, whoever dominates the South China Sea dominates Asia. 

Because of this, Beijing is working hard to build what are essentially new islands in the area along with military bases and rotating in various military platforms to cement its claims and change facts on the water to ensure future dominance—all without firing a shot.
So why hasn’t the current administration worked harder to push back against Beijing in the South China Sea? 

While declaring a pivot to Asia back in 2011, the Obama administration’s much hoped foreign policy achievement suffered from problems nearly right from the start. 

Domestic challenges in the form of bruising budget battles that led to sequestration plus crisis after crisis abroad sapped the resources and political capital needed to turn the pivot into a reality.

A Plan of Action to Preserve the Status-Quo:
The incoming Trump Administration clearly has an opportunity to reset expectations and make sure China knows that it will not be able to achieve its goals in the South China Sea.
I would offer the following four key points as part of a new South China Sea strategy that could be easily implemented by the new administration with the goal of deterring China from dominating the area for the foreseeable future:

One: Don’t Be Afraid to State the Facts

The incoming administration must be willing to admit and make clear the realization that China is committed to changing the status-quo. 

Trump’s new team must be willing to call Beijing out when it acts aggressively and readily state the obvious— that China is a great-power competitor to the United States.
While this might seem obvious, the Obama administration’s attempts to play nice and hold their collective tongues exudes weakness. 

While we don’t need to declare China the “evil empire”, we do need to make sure we are honest in our assessment of what Beijing is trying to do in the South China Sea and beyond.

Two: Assemble the Best Team 

Whom Trump picks for various positions in his administration will signal to America’s allies and partners in Asia that we either mean business or that the Asia-Pacific will be a backwater of our foreign policy planning for years to come.
While the floated pick of Congressman Randy Forbes as Secretary of the Navy is a good first step, Trump will need to make strong picks in even bigger positions in the very near future. 

Selecting former Senator Jim Talent, someone who has requisite experience on China issues, would be an exceptional choice. 

Picking former Governor Mitt Romney would signal Trump can work with even the most bitter of rivals and that he has the temperament and judgment that world leaders will be looking for in our new Commander-In-Chief, especially in Asia.

Three: Don’t Make Promises You Cannot Keep (or Won’t)

Obama rattled Asian leaders when he declared a “red line” in Syria over chemical weapons and broke what was an implied promise to act if crossed. 

And to be clear, they are not angry that Assad got away with attacking his people with chemical weapons nor are they upset that a seemingly inviolable international norm was broken. 

No, they were upset over the idea of what it meant for them, the fear that America would not come to their aid over bigger challenges, such as if China attacked Taiwan or if Beijing decided to land troops on disputed islands in the East China Sea. 

One Taiwanese diplomat last year said to me bluntly: “We don’t trust you after you broke your word in Syria.” 

Trump’s new Asia hands—and indeed his whole foreign policy team—must remember never to make promises you cannot keep.

Four: Be Prepared for a Long Struggle
China’s attempt to dominate the South China Sea—and eventually all of Asia—will be a multi-administration challenge. 

Chinese scholars, government officials, and active military personnel I have spoken to through the years have always echoed the same basic thought that America does not have the will, the patience or the strategic mindset to compete for dominance in Asia. 

Xi Jinping and company feel they can wait us out, and that time is on their side. 

The new administration, if they are to put forward a successful strategy, must know that this will not be one or two-year challenge, but will extend through the entire Trump tenure in office, and beyond.

China Threat

Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific
By Alexander Gray, Peter Navarro

In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced with great fanfare in Foreign Policy that the United States would begin a military “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. 

This beating of the American chest was done against the backdrop of China’s increasing assertiveness in the region and the sense among many longtime American allies that the United States had lost sight of Asia’s strategic importance during 10 years of Middle Eastern wars.
President Barack Obama’s administration was right to signal reassurance to our Asian allies and partners. 

However, this pivot (and later “rebalance”) failed to capture the reality that the United States, particularly in the military sphere, had remained deeply committed to the region. 

This pivot has also turned out to be an imprudent case of talking loudly but carrying a small stick, one that has led to more, not less, aggression and instability in the region.
Initially, Clinton’s pivot and the Obama administration’s stated interest in countering China’s rising clout were met with general bipartisan agreement in Congress. 

Inside the Beltway, the analyst community also appeared to share a similar consensus that the global financial crisis had emboldened China. 

As one of Washington’s leading experts on Chinese foreign and security policy, Bonnie Glaser, told one of the authors in an on-camera interview: “The Chinese saw the United States as weakened by the financial crisis; and it created opportunities for China to test the United States and to try and promote its interests in its periphery in the hopes that the United States would not respond forcefully.”
With China’s multi-decade military modernization program bearing fruit — fueled ironically by the fruits of its large trade surplus with the United States — Beijing was in a prime position to flex its muscles. 

Washington’s pivot seemed to be an appropriate and timely response.
It did not take long, however, for the pivot to falter. 

Initially, it would mostly feature token gestures of American diplomatic and military support, for example, sending littoral combat ships to Singapore and 2,500 Marines to Darwin, Australia. 

However, over time, the administration would drastically cut the U.S. military — particularly by shrinking a U.S. Navy expected to be the tip of the pivot spear. 

Upon doing the pivot math, U.S. Naval War College professor Toshi Yoshihara soberly concluded in an interview that a “shrinking fleet” would “nullify our attempts to pivot to Asia.” 

His colleague and co-author James Holmes would more bluntly say in a separate interview that the pivot was “bush league.”
Curiously, the one aspect of the rebalance that seemed to most energize the administration was an economic rather than military gambit. 

This was pushing for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade mega-deal involving 12 Pacific Rim countries accounting for “nearly 40 percent of global GDP.” 

Clinton herself called it the “gold standard” of trade deals. 

Against the backdrop of the pivot, the TPP deal was sold to the American public not as a way to increase urgently needed economic growth. (Voters have become increasingly immune to that failed siren song as millions of American jobs have been shipped overseas.) 

Rather, Obama and Clinton billed the TPP as a national security measure to help contain a rising China. 

As Ash Carter, Obama’s current defense secretary, asserted, passing TPP is as “important to me as another aircraft carrier.”
Of course, none of this — neither the shrinking “small stick” U.S. Navy nor a new “talk loudly” pivot — was lost on a rapidly militarizing China. 

While the United States continues to endure both a shrunken force and a readiness crisis brought about by sequestration, Beijing has created some 3,000 acres of artificial islands in the South China Sea with very limited American response. 

Beijing has also unilaterally declared an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea, expanded its illegitimate territorial claims everywhere from India to Indonesia, and further worsened its already loathsome human rights record.
It’s not just that Secretary Clinton’s weak pivot follow-through has invited Chinese aggression in the East and South China Seas. 

She also faithfully executed the Obama administration’s failed policy of “strategic patience” with North Korea — a foreign-policy doctrine that has produced nothing but heightened instability and increased danger.
Indeed, since Obama took office, the North has conducted four nuclear tests and sunk a South Korean navy vessel. 

It has also pursued a vigorous ballistic missile program that has put Pyongyang on the path to both miniaturizing a warhead and developing a missile capable of reaching America’s West Coast. 

Today, despite repeated American warnings and U.S. entreaties to China to bring its wild child under control, the Kim regime remains firmly in power, the North Korean people remain oppressed and poverty-stricken, and the danger to America and its allies is more acute. 

So much for patience.
The Philippines’s recent high-profile rejection of American leadership, and open courtship with China, is a further setback in Asia for the Obama-Clinton foreign policy. 

This setback may be traced directly back to Hillary Clinton. 

Few in Washington remember that the Obama administration pointedly refused to intervene in 2012 when China blatantly violated a diplomatic agreement brokered by Secretary Clinton’s right-hand man in the region, Kurt Campbell; Beijing shredded that agreement by brazenly seizing Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines after agreeing to stand down. 

Washington’s utter failure to uphold its obligations to a longtime, pivotal ally during one of its most humiliating crises has no doubt contributed to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s low opinion of American security guarantees — and his recent move toward a China alliance.
Obama’s infamous “red line” pronouncement in Syria likewise was perceived throughout the Asia-Pacific region as an open invitation for aggression against U.S. allies and partners. 

Obama’s cowardice cast doubt on Washington’s willingness to enforce long-standing security commitments in the face of Chinese or North Korean aggression.

This disastrous mistake has been further compounded by a string of failures in our bilateral relations with key countries since 2009. 

Indeed, the litany of allies and partners mistreated under this administration is distressingly long, and the cumulative effect has been a clear diminution in U.S. regional clout relative to China.
For example, Thailand, a key U.S. treaty ally with a chaotic and unstable domestic political situation, was unceremoniously booted from Washington’s embrace following a military coup. 

It is now aligning itself more closely with Beijing, even in security matters.
The Obama administration’s treatment of Taiwan has been equally egregious. 

This beacon of democracy in Asia is perhaps the most militarily vulnerable U.S. partner anywhere in the world. 

As far back as 2010, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that the balance of power in the skies above the Taiwan Strait was shifting toward Beijing. 

Yet Taiwan has been repeatedly denied the type of comprehensive arms deal it needs to deter China’s covetous gaze, despite the fact that such assistance is guaranteed by the legally binding Taiwan Relations Act.
This is due mainly to China’s own miscalculations and the overplaying of its hand.
Almost in spite of the Obama administration’s repellant policies, U.S. partners like Japan, South Korea, India, and even Myanmar and Vietnam continue to seek closer ties with Washington across the spectrum. 

They view Beijing as a bully and potential aggressor that must be balanced against. 

The next administration will be well-placed to seize these strategic opportunities — if it has the will and vision to do so.
To turn this situation around, the White House will require a leader who understands the challenges we face while boldly seizing openings to further our interests. 

If past is prologue, Hillary Clinton’s position overseeing the failed pivot has revealed that she is wholly unsuited to rebuild an Asia policy that she has already helped severely wound.
Donald Trump has been clear and concise on his approach to U.S. foreign policy. 

It begins with a clear-eyed appraisal of U.S. national interests and a willingness to work with any country that shares our goals of stability, prosperity, and security.
Trump’s approach is two-pronged. 

First, Trump will never again sacrifice the U.S. economy on the altar of foreign policy by entering into bad trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, allowing China into the World Trade Organization, and passing the proposed TPP. 

These deals only weaken our manufacturing base and ability to defend ourselves and our allies.
Second, Trump will steadfastly pursue a strategy of peace through strength, an axiom of Ronald Reagan that was abandoned under the Obama administration. 

He knows, however, that this will be a difficult task. 

As former Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne has warned:
Under the Obama administration, the Navy has shrunk to its smallest size since World War I. 

The Army is the smallest it has been since before World War II. 

The Air Force is the smallest in its history, and its aircraft are the oldest. 

Readiness levels across the services are the worst in a generation, with pilots facing significantly reduced cockpit time and deferring critical maintenance, Navy ships and crews deploying as long as 10 months, and Army units are deferring critical training before deployments. 

The horror story of naval aviators taking spare aircraft parts from museums to keep their planes flying is simply unacceptable for those who wear our nation’s uniform.
He has laid out the most detailed plan for rebuilding our military of any recent presidential nominee. This is in stark contrast to Clinton’s near total silence on the issue.
Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary founder of Singapore, was candid about what the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific meant for security. 

Noting that the stability provided by the U.S. defense presence benefited the entire region, including China, Lee once said the U.S. military presence is “very necessary” and essential for liberal values like freedom of the seas to prevail.
Trump will rebuild the U.S. Navy, now at 274 ships. 

His goal is 350 ships, a fleet in line with the up to 346 ships endorsed by the bipartisan National Defense Panel.
The U.S. Navy is perhaps the greatest source of regional stability in Asia. 

It currently protects $5 trillion of annual trade across the South China Sea and acts as an albeit faltering check on China’s growing ambitions. 

With the Chinese already outnumbering the U.S. Navy in Pacific-based submarines and projected to have 415 warships and nearly 100 submarines by 2030, the mere initiation of the Trump naval program will reassure our allies that the United States remains committed in the long term to its traditional role as guarantor of the liberal order in Asia.
Much has been made of Trump’s suggestion that U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea contribute their fair share to the cost of sustaining a U.S. presence in their countries. 

Japan is the world’s third-largest economy, with a GDP of more than $4 trillion. 

South Korea is the world’s 11th-largest economy, with a GDP of more than $1.3 trillion. 

The U.S. taxpayer not only rebuilt both countries after devastating wars, but American money and blood has allowed these allies the space to grow into mature democracies and advanced economies over the last half-century. 

It’s only fair — and long past time — for each country to step up to the full cost-sharing plate.
There is no question of Trump’s commitment to America’s Asian alliances as bedrocks of stability in the region. 

Trump will simply, pragmatically, and respectfully discuss with Tokyo and Seoul additional ways for those governments to support a presence all involved agree is vital — the same discussions will occur in Europe to bolster the critical NATO alliance.
Trump has demonstrated during his candidacy for the presidency a clear understanding of the building blocks for a successful foreign policy in Asia and globally. 

A cornerstone is undiminished American strength in support of U.S. national interests, where words have meaning and allies and competitors alike can be confident that the U.S. president stands by what he says. 

In a Donald Trump administration, these qualities will contribute to a far more stable Asia-Pacific — one that fully and peacefully serves the interests of America and its allies and partners.