WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden released his first national security strategy plan on Wednesday, outlining how the US would “effectively compete” with China in the approaching years, “while constraining a dangerous Russia.”
The 42-page document was initially scheduled for release last December, but was delayed when it became clear that Russia was preparing for military motion in Ukraine.
Ten months later, Russia’s army and its economy have each been significantly weakened by the disastrous invasion, a recent reality that was reflected in Biden’s strategy.
“Russia and [China] pose different challenges,” wrote Biden. “Russia poses a right away threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the fundamental laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown.”
“The P.R.C., against this, is the one competitor with each the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective,” the president wrote, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Biden wrote that the US will engage in strategic competition with China, while at the identical time “moving forward on the priorities that demand that we work together,” like global health and climate change.
Every recent administration is required to release a national security strategy, however the document functions more as an aspirational expression of a president’s values than as a blueprint for military plans.
Overall, Biden wrote that his administration would prioritize three things: Boosting America’s domestic industrial and high tech sectors; strengthening global alliances and coalitions like NATO, and making investments to “modernize and strengthen our military.”
In light of America’s urgent and ongoing involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine, Biden’s strategy for countering Russia struck a realistic note.
Damage to the Russian military brought on by the protracted conflict “will likely increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning,” Biden wrote. The US “won’t allow” Russia to realize its objectives through the use or threat of nuclear weapons, the president wrote, but he didn’t say how the U.S. would do this.
Along with maintaining and increasing its current military support for Ukraine, “We’re renewing our give attention to bolstering our collective resilience against shared threats from Russia, including asymmetric threats” to U.S. infrastructure and American democracy, wrote Biden
On a worldwide level, Biden wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine had “profoundly diminished Russia’s status vis-a-vis China and other Asian powers akin to India and Japan.”
And while Russia poses a regional threat to Europe and a threat to global markets, wrote Biden, the Kremlin “lacks the across the spectrum capabilities of the PRC.”
