Biden national security strategy warns China is ‘most consequential’ challenge for US in a ‘decisive decade’

The Biden administration rolled out its new national security strategy Wednesday to address what officials describe as a “decisive decade,” warning how “seriously dangerous” Russia is as an adversary and how China remains the United States’ “most consequential geopolitical challenge.”

The new national security strategy, the first since March 2021, outlines how the United States, under President Biden’s leadership, plans to advance its vital interests and pursue a “free, open, prosperous, and secure world.”

Officials said the U.S. plans to leverage all elements of U.S. national power to “outcompete” strategic competitors, tackle shared challenges and shape the “rules of the road.”

“The world is at an inflection point and the choices we make today will set the terms on how we are set up to deal with significant challenges and the significant opportunities we face in the years ahead,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday. “That’s really what this national security strategy is all about.”

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Sullivan said the United States has entered “a decisive decade,” and faces two “fundamental” strategic challenges. Sullivan said the first focuses on competition between major powers to “shape the future of the international order,” while the second focuses on addressing “transnational challenges” that affect people all around the world, from “climate change to food insecurity to communicable diseases to terrorism, to the energy transition, to inflation.” 

The Biden administration’s strategy focuses on investing in the “underlying sources and tools of American power and influence;” in building the “strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence to shape the global strategic environment and to solve shared challenges;” and in modernizing and strengthening the United States military so that it is “equipped for the era of strategic competition.” 

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Officials said that the most “pressing” strategic challenge facing the U.S. are from powers that “layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy.” 

The Biden administration warned that the People’s Republic of China is “the only competition with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.”

“We recognize that in the geopolitical space, the PRC represents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge, and while that will play out in the IndoPacific to a significant extent, there are global dimensions to the challenge as well,” Sullivan warned Wednesday, adding that the new strategy “makes clear that we avoid seeing the world sloped solely through the prism of strategic competition—and we will not try to divide the world into rigid blocks.”

Sullivan added: “We’re not seeking to have competition tip over into confrontation or a new Cold War, and we are not engaging each country as simply a proxy battleground.”

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As for Russia, Sullivan said that the Kremlin’s recent nuclear threats and “saber-rattling” amid its unprovoked months-long war on Ukraine “reminds us just what a significant and seriously dangerous adversary Russia is—not just to the United States, but to a world that is seeking peace and stability.”

Sullivan said Russia has “flagrantly disrupted” that by invading Ukraine— a war that Sullivan said “presents in living color the key elements of our approach, the emphasis on allies, the importance of strengthening the hand, the democratic world, and standing up for our fellow democracies and for democratic values.”

The strategy stresses that Russia poses an “immediate and ongoing thereat” to the regional security order in Europe, and warns that it is a source of “disruption and instability globally,” but “lacks across the spectrum capabilities of the PRC.”

The strategy also recognizes that “smaller autocratic powers” are also acting in “aggressive and destabilizing ways,” pointing to Iran. The strategy acknowledges Iran’s interference in internal affairs of its neighbors, its proliferation of missiles and drones through its proxies, its plots to harm Americans, including former officials, and its advancement of its nuclear program, which officials say is “beyond any credible civilian need.”

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The strategy also points to North Korea, saying it continues to “expand its illicit nuclear weapons and missile programs.”

Sullivan said a key tenet to the U.S. national security strategy is to build “the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence, both to shape the global strategic environment and to address these transnational threats that require cooperation to succeed.”

“We have put alliances at the core of this strategy,” Sullivan said, noting the U.S. alliances in Europe, with NATO and in the IndoPacific with treaty allies. Sullivan also pointed to the G7, saying it has been “revitalized as an organization that had lost some of its clarity of purpose in recent years and has now been restored as a sort of steering committee for the free world on critical issues.”

Sullivan stressed that the Biden admin is prepared to work with any nation that will stand behind “principles and the terms of the UN Charter, including principles relative to sovereignty and territorial integrity, to freedom of navigation and overflight.”

“And we will work with non-democracies in service of defending these principles,” Sullivan said.

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Sullivan added that the U.S. needs to “set the rules fo the road for the 21st century in critical areas from emerging technologies and cyberspace to trade, economics, investment and more.”

“Both so that the international order continues to reflect our values and our interests and so that the international order is better designed to be able to take on the challenges ahead,” Sullivan said.

“We’re going to engage countries on their own terms and pursue an affirmative agenda to advance common interests and to promote stability and prosperity,” he said, noting that there needs to be a “dual-track approach” to address competition.

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“On one track, we will cooperate with any country, including our geopolitical rivals, that is willing to work constructively on shared challenges,” he explained. “And then, on the other track, we’re going to deepen and sharpen our cooperation with like-minded democracies.”

He added: “We believe we can accomplish both of these as we move forward.”