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

President Biden on Wednesday presented a new national security strategy aimed at “outsmarting China and restraining Russia,” while admitting that tackling inflation is “at the core of national security.”

In the 48-page strategy document, which each government periodically releases to the public, Biden said the most pressing expense facing his foreign policy has been the taming of global powers that “combine authoritarian rule with 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 and recklessly ignores the basic laws of today’s international order, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown.

“The PRC, on the other hand, is the only competitor with both the intent to reform the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to achieve that goal.”

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 “definitely over” and ticked off a laundry list of global problems that could pose national security threats.

“People around the world are grappling with the consequences of shared challenges that cross borders – be it climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages or inflation. These shared challenges are not fringe issues secondary to geopolitics. They are at the heart of national and international security and should be treated as such,” he wrote.

Biden said increasing “geopolitical competition, nationalism and populism” would make cooperation on such challenges increasingly difficult.

The president urged the need to modernize our military, using more forceful language than the Democrats of recent years, in a strategy of “integrated deterrence,” and especially nuclear deterrence.

He outlined a struggle between autocracies and democracies and said investing in a militant army is imperative.

‘Our competitors and potential opponents are investing heavily in new nuclear weapons. By 2030, for the first time, the United States will have to deter two major nuclear powers, each of which will deploy modern and diverse global and regional nuclear forces,” Biden warned, referring to nuclear-armed Russia and China.

The document promises that the US will defend “every inch” of NATO territory in language reminiscent of the Cold War containment era.

“The United States will not allow Russia, or any power for that matter, to achieve its objectives by using or threatening nuclear weapons,” Biden wrote, without going into detail about how exactly the US would “not allow such threats.” ‘, even if they’re already made.

“Russia now poses an immediate and ongoing threat to international peace and stability,” the document says, in contrast to strategies of recent years aimed at integrating Russia with the West.

Putin sees it differently, claiming that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, and the West’s support for 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 reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US strategy.”

“We don’t want to turn the competition into a confrontation or a new Cold War,” he added.

But last week, Biden warned that the world was on the brink of “nuclear Armageddon.”

On Tuesday, he told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he doesn’t think Putin will push through the nuclear threats.

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

“In fact, he can’t go on talking with impunity about using a tactical nuclear weapon as if it were rational,” the president told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“The mistakes are made… and the miscalculation can occur. No one can know for sure what would happen. And it could end in Armageddon,’ he added, repeating the grim warning.

Biden also condemned Putin on Tuesday for the “ruthless” killing of Ukrainian civilians after a barrage of Russian shellfire hit non-combatant targets in multiple cities, including central Kiev, for the first time this week.

As for China, Biden merged domestic and foreign policy goals and underlined the need to produce new technologies here at home that the US has bought from China in the past. He praised the CHIPS law and other measures to produce more semiconductor chips domestically.

He also pledged 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 is clear that the president is not ready to grope in the dark militarily in China, as he reiterated that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence.

Biden said the US remains committed to the one China policy, but said the US will continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense and help island democracy resist an encroaching Beijing.