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The U.S. National Defense Strategy Commission recently released an assessment report on the U.S. National Defense Strategy for 2022, which mentioned that the U.S. National Defense Strategy is "outdated", the military structure is unreasonable, and the defense industrial base is "seriously insufficient", claiming that this cannot deal with the "dual threats" from Russia and China at the same time. The report proposed a so-called "all elements of national power" solution and called for strengthening the U.S. military's preparations for "operating across multiple theaters." According to the information, the U.S. National Defense Strategy Commission was established in accordance with the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022. The chairman of the committee is a former senior member of the House Intelligence Committee and has administrative and research support from the Rand Corporation of the United States. Therefore, although this report is not an official document of the U.S. government, it is still of great reference significance because of its representativeness at the bipartisan level. Specifically, this report and some other words and deeds of senior U.S. officials in the past two years have exposed the following trends in the United States:

First, there is a possibility that the US military strategy will slide further from peace expectations to war expectations. After the end of the Cold War, the United States had no expectation of going to war with a major power for a long time, and only had plans to deal with two local conflicts at the same time. Based on this, the United States has built a high-tech, highly mobile military force that emphasizes global delivery and intervention capabilities rather than long-term combat capabilities. However, after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict showed a trend of protracted development, the United States has a tendency to change and adjust its previous military strategy and turn more to dealing with "great power wars."

At the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the US strategic community tended to treat China and Russia differently. The picture shows the Chinese and American flags

Second, the United States is further adjusting its attitude toward China and Russia. At the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the U.S. strategic community tended to treat China and Russia differently so as not to push China and Russia together at the strategic level. However, since the end of 2023, the trend of the U.S. strategic community to treat China and Russia as a bundle has increased. Since the beginning of this year, the former and current commanders of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have made similar remarks. On the one hand, this shows that the United States is trying to shape its image of "still strong" internally and externally by showing that it is not afraid of "fighting on two fronts"; on the other hand, it also shows that Washington has the intention of promoting unity within the West by forcibly bundling China and Russia and exaggerating the relevant "threats."

The third is to try to promote the revival of the US manufacturing industry by "expecting war". In this assessment report, the US National Defense Strategy Committee paid particular attention to the recovery and development of the defense industry. Objectively speaking, in peacetime, the defense industries of various countries are operating at a relatively low level, which is naturally incomparable to the state of "running at full capacity" to meet wartime needs. Therefore, the US National Defense Strategy Committee claimed that the US defense industry "is not enough to cope with the expectation of war between major powers", which is largely a deliberate act of pretending to be confused. No country will maintain a war-like level of armaments under the expectation of peace. Even a country like the United States, which often provokes conflicts and even wars around the world, finds it difficult to maintain the so-called "response to major power war" defense industry production level. Obviously, some people in the United States are trying to use the adjustment of military strategic goals to promote the revival of the US manufacturing industry, including promoting the return of manufacturing to the United States.

Fourth, it is used to promote domestic unity in the United States. Taking this report as the latest example, some politicians in the United States have recently increasingly emphasized the importance of cross-party and cross-class mobilization, and even used the so-called "anticipation of great power war" to promote consensus and unity in American society. Against the backdrop of the growing social division and political polarization in the United States, they think they have found a "shortcut to uniting the United States", but in fact they may be putting themselves on the fire and eventually suffering a backlash.

The United States may be reassessing the military threat from Russia. Pictured: The White House

Fifth, it shows that Washington may be reassessing the military threat from Russia. The assessment report believes that the current US defense strategy "underestimates the threat from Russia" and recommends increasing the deployment of US troops in Europe. Against the backdrop of the continued protracted conflict between Russia and Ukraine, these contents reveal that some people in the United States may be trying to promote the priority of Russia in the US national security strategy, and emphasizing the threat from Russia has also become a tool for them to build consensus on US domestic and foreign policies.

In short, this report clamors for strengthening military expectations and even war preparations against China and Russia, and proposes that the United States needs to make major changes and important investments to this end, and even "mobilize the entire nation for a possible war." It is still unknown to what extent these suggestions will be reflected in official U.S. policy, but the so-called "bipartisan" background of the report and other similar remarks by some U.S. politicians in the past two years still remind us that we need to be vigilant against such voices: on the one hand, we must be vigilant against the potential war risks contained in these U.S. remarks, and we need to have certain public opinion preparations and even strategic plans for this; on the other hand, we must maintain our composure and not fall into the discourse trap constructed by extreme anti-China factions in the United States, and not let their extreme remarks become self-fulfilling prophecies.

As the most important bilateral relationship in the world, China-US relations will not easily fall into the "new cold war" or even "hot war" that some US politicians are trying to provoke. The complexity of the relationship between the two countries and the complex and changing international environment have led to a lot of mixed voices about the relationship. What we need to do is to always be vigilant against the dangerous trends exposed by some extreme voices, such as the further shift to "great power war expectations" advocated by the report of the US National Defense Strategy Committee. At the same time, we must grasp the general trend, not be led astray by extreme remarks, and continue to shape China-US relations in a positive direction.

The voices in the United States on dealing with China-US relations remain diverse and malleable. The picture shows the Chinese and American flags.

Throughout world history, many conflicts or wars are often caused by misjudgments or miscalculations. Some people in the United States continue to clamor for tightening containment of China and try to create a certain "strategic consensus" on this, but in fact, the voices in the United States on dealing with China are still diverse and malleable. We must continue to win over those rational and progressive forces, while continuing to be vigilant and refute those extreme and radical remarks. (The author is a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University)▲

Further reading

Media: The US no longer has the ability to put pressure on China on the South China Sea and Taiwan issues

Direct News: What are your expectations for US Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to six Asian countries and meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos?

Special commentator Liu Heping:In fact, I have no expectations for Blinken's six-nation tour. They can't come up with any results. I even think that even Blinken himself and the six Asian countries he will visit don't have any expectations.

The reason behind this is that with Biden's sudden withdrawal from the election, the next US presidential election will be in extreme uncertainty. It is uncertain whether it will be Trump of the Republican Party or Harris of the Democratic Party who will enter the White House and take charge of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States. Even Blinken's personal political future will be in suspense.

So we see that, unlike the Biden administration's previous ambitious call for the "Indo-Pacific" countries to unite and jointly confront China, according to a senior US State Department official on Asian affairs, Blinken's tone of this "Indo-Pacific" six-nation visit has completely lowered. He said that Blinken will reiterate the importance of the United States' cooperation with its "Indo-Pacific" allies and partners, and assure them of the United States' support. In other words, Blinken's main task on this trip is no longer to mobilize "Indo-Pacific" allies and partners to resist China, but to repeatedly explain and assure them that "Don't worry, the United States will not change its mind, and the United States' commitment to you will not change."

But according to the law that "what is repeatedly emphasized is exactly what is missing", this reflects that the current US "Indo-Pacific" allies and partners are full of anxiety and suspicion about the United States, that is, they do not believe in all the promises made by the United States before. And this general anxiety and suspicion is precisely caused by Biden's withdrawal from the election and Trump's possible election. In a sense, Blinken's "re-explanation" and "re-assurance" to the six allies and partners in the "Indo-Pacific" region this time can just prove that in the "post-Biden era", the countries in the "Indo-Pacific" region have generally suffered from severe "Trump anxiety".

Countries in the Indo-Pacific region in the "post-Biden era" generally suffer from severe "Trump anxiety"

Direct News: Why do these countries suffer from serious "Trump anxiety" and what are the reasons behind it?

Special commentator Liu Heping:I believe that the serious "Trump anxiety" suffered by these countries is not groundless worry, but the result of being educated by cruel reality.

I have said before that the struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties in the US presidential elections over the past two decades is no longer a struggle for power between the two parties, but a struggle between two different ideologies and values, or even a struggle between two Americas and two worlds. Therefore, we have seen a very strange phenomenon of "governing the United States like flipping a pancake" in the United States over the past two decades.

The first thing Trump did on his first day in office was to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Obama had spent many years negotiating. He then scrapped the Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy, which was Obama's most proud diplomatic achievement during his tenure. Then, by messing up the relationship between the United States and its allies, he made the world order that the United States had led to establish after World War II become riddled with holes and shaky. After the election of the current President Biden, he carried out a comprehensive "re-negation" of Trump's foreign policy, that is, he rebuilt the world order that was abolished by Trump, including reshaping and rebuilding the US-Japan and US-South Korea military alliances, building the US-Japan-India-Australia Quadrilateral Security Dialogue mechanism and the US-UK-Australia military alliance in the "Indo-Pacific" region, repairing relations with the European Union on a global scale, and especially uniting allies to provide military aid to Ukraine.

However, before Trump came to power, he has already shown his "Prince's Revenge" posture, threatening to smash the world order that Biden has re-stitched. This means that if Trump is re-elected, the world order dominated by the United States will collapse along with the United States' international credibility. From this we can also see again that it is not Russia or China that truly subverts the world order dominated by the United States, but the United States itself. In this case, how can the United States' "Indo-Pacific" allies not be anxious?

Pictured: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Blinken

Direct News: According to the US State Department, Blinken will focus on the South China Sea and Taiwan issues during his talks with Wang Yi in Laos, and will exert so-called "pressure" on China. What do you think about this?

Special commentator Liu Heping:I think it is an exaggeration to say that Blinken will put pressure on China on the South China Sea and Taiwan issues. The United States no longer has the ability and capital to do so.

On the South China Sea issue between China and the Philippines, the US had previously boasted too much, saying that it would use the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty to intervene in the South China Sea sovereignty dispute between China and the Philippines, but the final result disappointed the Philippines. Recently, the Philippines took the initiative to announce that it would withdraw the US medium-range ballistic missile system deployed in the Philippines, and took the initiative to request to restart negotiations with China. These all mean that the Philippines no longer trusts the United States, and the United States has basically been eliminated from the South China Sea sovereignty dispute between China and the Philippines. At the same time, the Philippines' actions are also the result of the recurrence of "Trump anxiety disorder", because the Philippines is worried that if it does not negotiate with China and reach an agreement at this time, once Trump, who has no interest in the South China Sea sovereignty dispute between China and the Philippines, comes to power, the Philippines will have even less bargaining chips.

As for the Taiwan issue, although Lai Ching-te's coming to power has caused certain twists and turns in the situation in the Taiwan Strait, it is still within the controllable range and there is no sign of derailment.

So in this case, I think Blinken will definitely talk about the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait issues when he meets with Wang Yi. However, first, no results can be achieved and they will simply reiterate their respective principles. Second, given that the United States has entered the "post-Biden era," China and the United States will focus on controlling and maintaining the existing structure on all controversial issues. For these reasons, I even think that bringing up the South China Sea and Taiwan issues is just a smokescreen deliberately released by the United States to cover up the real issues that Blinken and Wang Yi want to discuss when they meet.

Direct News: Since it is not the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait issues, what do you think is the real focus of Blinken’s meeting with Wang Yi this time?

Special commentator Liu Heping:I think that when Blinken meets with Wang Yi in Laos this time, the focus of the discussion will most likely be the Russia-Ukraine issue, that is, how to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict through negotiations.

It should be noted that before Wang Yi went to Laos to meet with Blinken, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba had already flown to Guangzhou for talks with Wang Yi. Later, Wang Yi met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Laos. Obviously, Wang Yi met with Kuleba first and then Lavrov in order to communicate and compare the peace talks conditions offered by the Ukrainian side with the Russian side. Next, Wang Yi is likely to use the opportunity of meeting with Blinken to communicate the peace talks conditions offered by the Ukrainian side and the Russian side with the US side.

It is worth noting that Ukraine’s attitude towards China’s 12-point proposal on the Russian-Ukrainian issue, and even towards China’s role as a mediator, was not very clear. So why did Ukraine suddenly highly affirm “China’s important role” and be willing to let China act as a mediator this time? I think this is actually the result of “Trump anxiety”, because Ukraine is worried that instead of being forced by Trump to “cede territory for peace” in the future, it is better to let China act as a mediator now and take the initiative to talk to Russia, and maybe get a better negotiation result. In addition, not long ago, China also convened various Palestinian factions to negotiate in Beijing and issued a “Beijing Declaration”. Therefore, the Palestinian-Israeli issue may also be another important topic to be discussed by Blinken and Wang Yi this time.

This means that in the "post-Biden era", as the United States is caught up in internal political struggles and has no time to care about other things, and other countries have already suffered from serious "Trump anxiety", China's role in resolving regional and international hot issues has become increasingly important.