The United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances, and improving its nuclear weapons modernization program. This is according to a bipartisan commission appointed by Congress, reports “Reuters”.
The Strategic Posture Commission report comes amid tensions with China over Taiwan and other issues, as well as worsening friction with Russia over the war in Ukraine.
A senior official involved in the report declined to say whether the intelligence group’s briefings indicated any cooperation between China and Russia on nuclear weapons. “We’re concerned … there could be an end-to-end coordination between them somehow, which brings us to this two-war construct,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The findings would upend current US national security strategy. The new scenario could be that a country must win one conflict while deterring another. The report calls for a huge increase in defense spending with uncertain support from Congress.
“We recognize the realities of the budget, but we also believe that the nation must make these investments,” Democratic Chairwoman Madeline Creedon, a former deputy director of the agency that oversees US nuclear weapons, and Vice Pres. John Kyle, retired Republican senator.
During a briefing held to release the report, Kyle said the president and Congress must “make the case to the American people” that higher defense spending is a small price to pay “to hopefully to prevent” a possible nuclear war involving the United States, China and Russia.
The report contrasts with US President Joe Biden’s position that the current US nuclear arsenal is sufficient to deter the combined forces of Russia and China.
The stockpile “still exceeds what is necessary to have a sufficient number of enemy targets under threat to deter an enemy nuclear attack,” the Arms Control Association advocacy group said in response to the report.
“The United States and its allies must be prepared to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously,” declared the Strategic Posture Commission. “The US-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the authoritarian regimes of China and Russia.”
In 2022, Congress created a panel of six Democrats and six Republicans to assess long-term threats to the United States and recommend changes to its conventional and nuclear forces.
The panel accepted the Pentagon’s prediction that China’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal would likely give it 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, giving the United States a second major nuclear-armed rival for the first time.
The Chinese and Russian threats will become acute in the period 2027-2035, so “decisions must be made now so that the nation can be prepared,” the 145-page report said.
It also states that the 30-year US nuclear weapons modernization program, which began in 2010 and was estimated in 2017 to cost about $400 billion by 2046, must be fully funded, to to be able to modernize all warheads, delivery systems and infrastructure in time.
Other recommendations include deploying more tactical nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe, developing plans to deploy spare US nuclear warheads, and producing more B-21 stealth bombers and new Columbia-class nuclear submarines.
It also called for an increase in the “size, type and posture” of US and allied conventional forces. If no such measures are taken, the United States will “likely” have to increase its reliance on nuclear weapons, the report said.
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2023-10-13 08:50:00
#ready #simultaneous #wars #China #Russia
