Military brinkmanship in Asia will not make US great again

Way back when, the Roman historian Titus Livius observed that men have an innate desire to propagate rumors or reports. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whose confirmation hearing showed he could talk the talk about "warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness" but had little grasp of the military complexities involved in walking that talk, has shown that what's true of the past is true of today.

Recent revelations from The Washington Post regarding a Pentagon internal guidance memo, bearing his signature, have once again highlighted the United States' fixation on China as its primary strategic competitor, and the lack of new thinking, flexibility and forethought in its approach.

Since the US leader's first term in office, the US has explicitly framed China as its principal long-term challenge, a stance that is reaffirmed in this latest memo, which designates China as the Pentagon's "sole pacing threat" and which, ignoring the actuality that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, posits the island as a focal point for military contingency planning.