Biden national security document promises to ‘compete’ with China and ‘constrain dangerous’ Russia

President Biden laid out a new national security strategy on Wednesday focused on ‘outcompeting China and restraining Russia’ while he admitted that tackling inflation is ‘at the very core of national security.’ 

In the 48-page strategy document, which every administration periodically releases to the public, Biden said that the most pressing issued facing his foreign policy was taming world powers that ‘layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy.’

The president made it clear that despite Russia’s nuclear threats, he is more concerned about China in the long-term. 

‘Russia and the PRC pose different challenges,’ Biden wrote.  ‘Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. 

‘The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.’

President Biden laid out a new national security strategy on Wednesday focused on ‘outcompeting China and restraining Russia’ while he admitted that tackling inflation is ‘at the very core of national security.’

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Chinese President Xi JInping

The president made it clear that despite Russia’s nuclear threats, he is more concerned about China in the long-term

Biden declared the post-Cold War era ‘definitively over’ and ticked off a laundry list of global issues that could trigger national security threats. 

‘People all over the world are struggling to cope with the effects of shared challenges that cross borders—whether it is climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages, or inflation. These shared challenges are not marginal issues that are secondary to geopolitics. They are at the very core of national and international security and must be treated as such,’ he wrote. 

Biden said that rising ‘geopolitical competition, nationalism and populism’ would make cooperation on such challenges increasingly difficult.  

The president drove home the need to modernize our military, using more forceful language than Democrats of years past, in a strategy of ‘integrated deterrence,’ and most especially nuclear deterrence. 

He outlined a struggle between autocracies and democracies and said investing in a combat-credible military is imperative. 

‘Our competitors and potential adversaries are investing heavily in new nuclear weapons. By the 2030s, the United States for the first time will need to deter two major nuclear powers, each of whom will field modern and diverse global and regional nuclear forces,’ Biden warned, referring to nuclear-armed Russia and China.

The document promises the U.S. will defend ‘every inch’ of NATO territory in language that calls to mind the containment era of the Cold War. 

‘The United States will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons,’ Biden wrote, without going into any detail about how exactly the U.S. would ‘not allow’ such threats even though they have already been made. 

‘Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability,’ the document says, a contrast from strategies of years past that focused on integrating Russia with the West. 

Putin sees it differently, claiming that Ukraine has always been a part of Russia, and the West’s support of Ukraine is intended to thwart his mission to restore Russian greatness. 

Still, National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said the document would be ‘a step forward toward the reduction of the role of nuclear weapons in American strategy.’

‘We are not seeking to have competition tip over into confrontation or a new Cold War,’ he added. 

But it was just last week that Biden warned the world was on the brink of ‘nuclear armageddon.’ 

On Tuesday, he told CNN’s Jake Tapper he doesn’t think Putin will follow through on nuclear threats. 

‘I don’t think he will. But I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it.’

‘He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, as if that’s a rational thing to do,’ the president told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

‘The mistakes get made…and the miscalculation could occur. No one can be sure of what would happen. And it could end in Armageddon,’ he added, doubling down on the grim warning. 

Biden on Tuesday also condemned Putin for ‘brutally’ slaying Ukrainian civilians after a barrage of Russian shellfire hit noncombatant targets across multiple cities, including downtown Kyiv for the first time this week. 

Turning to China, Biden melded domestic and foreign policy objectives and underscored the need to produce new technologies here at home that the U.S. has historically purchased from China. He touted the CHIPS Act and other measures designed to produce more semiconductor chips domestically. 

He also promised to hold Beijing accountable for its litany of abuses – enslavement of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, human rights violations in Tibet, dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy. 

Still it’s clear the president is not ready to ruffle any feathers militarily in China, as he reiterated that the U.S. does not support Taiwan’s independence. 

Biden said the U.S. remains committed to the one China policy, but said the U.S. would continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense and assist the island democracy in resisting an encroaching Beijing. 

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