China Could Soon Be the Dominant Military Power in Asia
Ever since the defeat of Japan in World War II nearly 80 years ago, the United States has been the preeminent military power in East Asia. Today China is on the verge of matching or even eclipsing the U.S. military’s presence in the region, having marshaled its newly acquired wealth and technological prowess to expand the scale and capabilities of its armed forces.
The military balance between the U.S. and China in Asia is “very delicate and trending in an unfavorable direction in this decade for the U.S. and its allies,” Elbridge Colby, a co-founder of the Marathon Initiative, a policy-research organization, and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, told me. “We should regard ourselves in a dead-heat race against an incredibly formidable competitor and take nothing for granted.”
The implications for American security and global influence are immense. The U.S. has not confronted a potential adversary that is so close a peer in military strength or industrial capacity since the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, and has not actually fought one since it battled the Axis powers in World War II. As China’s relationship with Russia deepens, Washington must also worry about fighting two nuclear powers simultaneously on opposite sides of the world.
A few years ago, the possibility that the U.S. and China could come to blows in the near term seemed far-fetched. That is no longer the case, as tensions have been rising over the status of Taiwan. A leaked memo recently grabbed headlines with that war with China could erupt in 2025. Hopefully, such predictions will remain hypothetical, because a war with China would be a catastrophe for both sides, win or lose.
