Beijing Is on a Wartime Footing Biden needs to rebuild America’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ or risk being unprepared.
The good news about U.S.-China relations is that last month the two countries restored military-to-military dialogue after a 16-month rupture. The bad news is that it hasn’t slowed the military buildup in Beijing, which increasingly appears to be on a wartime footing. The U.S. needs to do likewise and reassemble what President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to as the nation’s “arsenal of democracy.”
Chinese leaders have articulated a long-term national strategy to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts,” including developing a world-class military. Over the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party has ramped up defense industrial production and significantly improved its process of researching, developing and producing advanced weapons systems. As Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III recently observed, China is preparing “specifically for a war with the U.S.”
China’s defense industrial efforts have strengthened its military capabilities. The People’s Liberation Army is amassing a formidable arsenal of medium- and long-range precision missiles capable of striking U.S. and allied bases in the Indo-Pacific. The PLA is also building a web of integrated air-defense systems to challenge U.S. forces in the region. Three of the world’s 10 largest defense companies are now Chinese enterprises: Aviation Industry Corp. of China, China North Industries Group and China South Industries Group.
The main beneficiary of China’s defense industrial growth is arguably the PLA’s navy. China is now the world’s largest shipbuilder by a significant margin. Its shipbuilding capacity is more than 230 times as large as the U.S.’s, allowing it to build 23 million tons of vessels, compared with less than 100,000 tons in the U.S. One Chinese shipyard, the Jiangnan Shipyard located on Changxing Island, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined, according to U.S. Navy estimates.
Beijing’s buildup should be a blinking red light for Washington. The U.S. defense industrial base lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility and surge capability to meet the military’s needs. Part of the problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base remains on a peacetime footing, despite wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as growing tension in the Taiwan Strait and Korean Peninsula.
The U.S. faces a serious shortfall of munitions—especially long-range precision munitions—for a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific. That is owing in some part to Congress’s dragging its feet in fixing contracting problems, such as multiyear procurement. Supply-chain challenges remain serious, too, leading to an insufficient supply of solid rocket motors, ball bearings, microelectronics, and seekers for munitions. Today’s workforce is also inadequate to meet the demands of the defense industrial base.
Yet the U.S. private sector is the most innovative in the world, and it boasts a strong track record of revitalizing its defense industrial base during periods of crisis, such as during World War II and the Cold War. There is, however, a long way to go.
A good place to start is at the White House. Presidents Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan established defense production boards to provide strategic guidance, oversee U.S. defense production, fix bureaucratic problems among executive agencies, and provide a sense of urgency. A national-level body is critical to oversee such a project of revitalization.
The Defense Department and Congress should also allocate additional funding and other enticements—such as tax incentives, regulatory relief and long-term contracts—to build and maintain production capacity. This funding could be used to modernize and expand defense facilities and develop flexible production. These steps will likely require an increase in defense spending. The U.S. is spending roughly 3% of its gross domestic product on defense, compared with 14% under Truman, 11% under Eisenhower, 9% under John F. Kennedy and more than 6% under Reagan.
FDR in December 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, implored the nation to revitalize its defense industry: “We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.” We need to heed that advice again before it’s too late.
Mr. Jones is senior vice president and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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