How foreign wars are distracting the US from its biggest threat

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the attribution on a quote from Ronald Reagan Institute Director Roger Zakheim.

This article is the second in The Hill’s three-part “World at War” series this week, which also explores public sentiment around the Russia-Ukraine war and the political reckoning over Israel’s war with Hamas.

U.S. defense officials often refer to China as America’s “pacing threat” — the foreign power most likely to challenge our military might. That message hasn’t changed as wars have broken out in Ukraine and the Middle East.

But new data shows the violence in Israel and Gaza is starting to pull public attention back to the Middle East, even amid a massive military buildup in the South China Sea and simmering tensions over Taiwan. 

President Biden insists the U.S. can provide military support to both Ukraine and Israel, while remaining vigilant in the Indo-Pacific. But keeping the focus on China while embroiled in two foreign wars will test the president in a crucial election year. 

“This is the problem for our current policymaking, which is we want to prioritize China as the threat it is, but at the same time we’re also being pulled and distracted by these other acute crises like the Ukraine war and the Gaza crisis,” Yun Sun, director of the Stimson Center’s China program, told The Hill.

These major geopolitical clashes over Europe and the Middle East are currently contrasting with warming ties between the U.S. and China, illustrated by the recent meeting between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco.

“There’s a perceptible dialing down of U.S.-China tensions in terms of the public attention,” said Lily McElwee, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

But McElwee doesn’t see this as a permanent development, saying there is “pretty widespread agreement within the government, within Congress, that China is kind of the number one national security threat.” 

The National Defense Strategy (NDS), released by the Defense Department a little more than a year ago, listed China as a top threat alongside Russia — the first version of the document in decades that didn’t focus U.S. defenses on violent extremist groups in the Middle East. 

China’s navy stands as the world’s largest in terms of number of vessels, with expectations it will expand by almost 40 percent by 2040. Amid the military buildup, Beijing has also built close ties with governments in Central and Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

“The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is [China’s] coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences,” the NDS states.  

The document seemed to offer an ominous warning when, just two months later at the end of January, a Chinese surveillance balloon was discovered flying over the U.S. and was subsequently shot down. 

The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned diplomatic trip to Beijing. And in late February, Blinken voiced concerns that China was considering giving weapons to Russia in its war against Ukraine.  

Around the same time, Air Mobility Command head Gen. Mike Minihan penned a memo warning those under him to prepare for war with China in just two years — a prediction given after Xi had mandated that China’s military be capable of taking Taiwan by 2027.  

Long-simmering tensions over China’s ambition to take control of Taiwan appeared ready to boil. Beijing often holds military drills in the waters around the island, wargames that seem to pop up at any sign of overt U.S. support for Taipei, militarily or diplomatically. 

The friction between the two superpowers grew so contentious that by February, shortly after the spy balloon incident, a record-low 15 percent of Americans viewed China favorably, according to a poll by Gallup. 

The consulting company also found that favorable views on Beijing have dipped steadily since 2018, among Republicans and Democrats alike. 

The Biden administration prepared a defense budget to tackle the China issue, asking for $9.1 billion for the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative — a 40 percent increase from last year.

Washington has also responded by reinforcing alliances across the Indo-Pacific, sending additional forces and weaponry to Guam and the Philippines and strengthening defense ties with Japan and Australia. 

“We don’t want a great power war with China,” then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley told House lawmakers in March. “We want to prevent that, and the way to prevent it is a strong, powerful military with a demonstrated will to use it, if necessary.” 

More recently, Biden asked for $2 billion for Indo-Pacific efforts in his $106 billion request, released in October. 

The American public, meanwhile, still sees China as a dangerous concern, just one that is not as pressing as it was earlier this year.  

A new survey from the Ronald Reagan Institute indicated Americans now want the U.S. to focus its military efforts in the Middle East over East Asia, a month into the Israel-Hamas war, which has raised concerns of a wider conflict in the region. 

About 31 percent of responders to the Reagan National Defense Survey said the Middle East, including countries such as Iran and Syria, was the area in which Washington should focus its military forces, compared with only 11 percent who said the same a year earlier. 

Another 25 percent said the focus should be on East Asian countries, such as China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea, a drop from the 31 percent who thought the same the year prior. And 19 percent thought Europe, including Russia, should get the most attention.  

Survey takers also said the Middle East should be allocated about 19 percent of America’s military resources, forces and attention, 1 more percentage point over East Asia and 2 above Europe. 

Yet Americans still see China as the biggest danger to the country over other nations, with 51 percent of respondents pointing to Beijing as the country that poses the biggest threat to the U.S., followed by Russia at 24 percent and Iran at 5 percent.  

That was consistent with a Quinnipiac University poll, released in mid-November, that found 58 percent of voters eye Beijing as the biggest danger, followed by Russia at 22 percent, Iran at 9 percent and North Korea at 6 percent. 

“Americans are beginning to see China vying for global geopolitical influence vis-à-vis the United States rather than primarily as an economic competitor,” the report states, noting that the top concerns about Beijing are military buildup and human rights abuses. 

Another finding that may help explain the lack of urgency among Americans in countering China: an overconfidence in U.S. military superiority.  

“The American people have heard from their commander in chief on down … that America is the greatest fighting force in the world, and generally, you know, they’re talking about the people in uniform,” Ronald Reagan Institute Director Roger Zakheim told reporters ahead of the survey’s release.

“But when it comes to the overall military capability, the United States no longer has outright superiority, but the American people clearly have not internalized that.” 

About 50 percent of Americans perceive that the U.S. has military superiority over China, while only 15 percent believe Beijing has the upper hand. There is even greater belief in the Air Force, where 65 percent of Americans believe the U.S. has the advantage.

“I think they’re way too optimistic. It doesn’t line up with the data,” Kenna said. “China, of course, is pursuing an unprecedented military buildup, the United States is not. It is not keeping pace.” 

That disconnect is causing concerns among China hawks, including Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.). The chair of the China select committee, Gallagher on Nov. 19 led his six GOP colleagues on the panel in a letter to House and Senate leadership asking to secure billions more dollars for security initiatives in the Indo-Pacific to counter the growing ambitions of Beijing. 

Specifically, the Republicans pushed their colleagues to boost funding levels in the Biden administration’s supplemental request for the Indo-Pacific by $12 billion, citing Chinese aggression against the Philippines and other nations in the South China Sea, war drills over Taiwan and a massive military buildup. 

Lawmakers said Biden’s current $2 billion Indo-Pacific request in the supplemental is “wholly inadequate” to counter China. 

“The Indo-Pacific, our priority theater, must not be an afterthought,” the letter states. 

“If we fail to provide the resources necessary to deter [Chinese Communist Party] aggression tomorrow, history will not forgive our inaction nor will it spare us the consequences.” 

And regardless of how Americans see the threats from China or elsewhere, most voters are focused far more on domestic issues. 

When asked what the most important problem facing the country today was, 16 percent of respondents cited inflation, gas prices and grocery prices, while only 3 percent said national defense and 2 percent said foreign policy, according to the Reagan National Defense Survey. 

Updated at 3:08 p.m.