The Power to Deter Beijing
By Alan W. Dowd, ASCF Senior Fellow
June 2025 - This is the second in a two-part series exploring how China’s neighbors are responding to China’s aggressive actions.
Pacific Power
Let’s begin with something that’s obvious to everyone except Xi Jinping: As a nation bordering the Pacific, with territories sprinkled throughout the Pacific, America is a Pacific power—not an outsider. So, it is altogether appropriate for America to be engaged in this region.
While the threat of North Korea crossing the 38th Parallel is ever-present, Washington’s priority concern in the Indo-Pacific is deterring a PRC assault on Taiwan. Toward that end, INDOPACOM Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo revealed plans in 2024 to “turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape” if the PRC were to lunge at Taiwan. The plan calls for “using a number of classified capabilities, so that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo said, emphasizing for his PRC counterparts that his plan and the capabilities needed to execute it are “real” and “deliverable.”
To further signal Beijing, the U.S. has deployed A-10s in the Philippines; based B-52s in Australia; refurbished bases on Tinian, Wake Island and Peleliu; and even dispatched military trainers to Taiwan.
The Pentagon also is making high-profile deployments of nimble Army and Marine Corps units armed with land-based sea-denial systems (such as the NMESIS, HIMARS and Typhon platforms) on Palau, the Philippines and elsewhere in the region. From April into June, a Marine Corps NMESIS unit and Army HIMARS unit deployed to the northernmost islands of the Philippines—“the closest to the Chinese mainland that U.S. land-based cruise missiles have been deployed,” as a military-operations website reports. The Marines already have six NMESIS batteries, with dozens more to be delivered between now and 2026. Defense analysts are calling Army systems such the Precision Strike Missile (which is being developed specifically for Indo-Pacific defense) and the Typhon “China’s nightmare.” (Allied militaries are supporting and enabling U.S. forces in this effort to deploy missile systems capable of holding PRC assets at risk.)
The Air Force is basing 36 F-15EXs and 48 F-35As on Okinawa. The Pentagon is mulling permanent basing of U.S. F-35s in South Korea. In 2024 and 2025, the Air Force deployed B-2s to Australia; F-22s to Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines; and B-1s to South Korea and Japan. Just last month, U.S. B-1s conducted exercises with Japanese F-35s.
The Navy is continuing sail-throughs of the Taiwan Strait to ensure freedom of navigation. U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines are making routine deployments to South Korea. March and April saw U.S. warships operating in the Malacca Strait, docking in Singapore, and cruising off India’s eastern coast.
Regarding America’s lethal and usually invisible submarine fleet: The Navy doesn’t often publicize the movement of its submarines. But U.S. subs have surfaced—and the Pentagon has let the world know about it—off the Australian coast and in Guam in 2025, in the Western Pacific and Sea of Japan in 2024, off the Korean Peninsula in 2023 and 2024, and in the Indian Ocean in 2022. Four Virginia class submarines will soon be forward-deployed in western Australia. According to the Navy, those submarines are designed “to seek and destroy enemy submarines and surface ships” and “project power ashore with Tomahawk cruise missiles”—the ideal tool for deterring and, if necessary, answering a PRC attack.
Combined
Even with all that America’s military is doing to deter Xi and contain his behemoth military; America cannot succeed in this mission alone. In the Indo-Pacific—as in the Euro-Atlantic—America needs those helping hands described in the previous issue to deter our common enemies, especially an enemy as powerful as the PRC.
Xi’s China, it pays to recall, is a country of 1.3 billion. Its GDP is $18 trillion. Its military expenditures are growing annually and are triple what Xi claims (eclipsing $710 billion and approaching the size of the U.S. defense budget). Its navy numbers more than 350 ships (larger than America’s). Its missile arsenal is mushrooming. It is employing vast cyber, economic, trade and industrial capabilities to intimidate, threaten and target its enemies. And Xi has a laser focus on absorbing or pacifying his neighbors.
The U.S., by contrast, has a billion fewer people than China, a 295-ship Navy, a defense budget that is shrinking as a share of federal outlays, and security commitments that are spread around the world.
However, the combined strength of the U.S. and allies in the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Americas enfolds some 2.8 billion people, 71 percent of global GDP, 65 percent of global defense spending, and what former JCS Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen calls “a thousand-ship navy.”
Working together, the Free World can contain the PRC, deter Xi and prevent war. Working alone, America cannot achieve those aims.
Partners
It is important to remember that two key factors must hold for deterrence to work.
First, the adversary must be rational. As Churchill observed, “The deterrent does not cover the case of lunatics.”
The PRC, thankfully, is not ruled by a death-wish dictator or by mass-murderers masquerading as holy men. Unlike the former, Xi wants to reap the rewards of his spadework. What Churchill said of the Soviets is true of Xi and his henchmen: “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.” Unlike the latter, Xi and his lieutenants recognize that they have everything to lose—and do not view martyrdom as a doorway to heaven. As good atheist-communists, they surely believe this material world is all that matters.
A second factor for effective deterrence: The consequences of aggression must be clear, credible, and convincing. Recall that deterrence comes from the Latin dēterreō: “to frighten off.”
The Free World’s deterrent was credible for much of Cold War I—but not the early phases when Moscow tried to seize West Berlin and gave a greenlight to the invasion of South Korea. Worryingly, we may be facing a similar situation today vis-à-vis China and Taiwan. That’s because a) PRC military power is surging, while America’s is plateauing, and b) Washington continues to embrace a policy of strategic ambiguity in Taiwan.
Consider these snapshots of U.S. naval power: At the height of the Reagan rebuild, America’s Navy boasted 594 ships. Today, America’s Navy has just 295 deployed ships—and those are dispersed around the world, while China’s 350+ warships are concentrated in its neighborhood.
That is the bad news. The worse news is that growing the U.S. fleet and building up more deterrent assets will be difficult amidst fiscal limitations, inflationary pressures, and collateral damage from trade wars and supply-chain constraints.
The good news is all those helping hands discussed in the previous issue. America’s Indo-Pacific security partners—both in and beyond the region—are growing stronger by the day. But America must treat them as partners.
If Americans think it is expensive to deter Beijing today—with our transatlantic and transpacific alliances intact—wait until those alliances are gone. And if Americans think deterrence is expensive, wait until deterrence fails.
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