“Fiddle while Rome is burning.” That old idiom today catches the danger of America.
While Washington is obsessed with Ukraine and the Middle East, the Chinese Communist Party builds the most formidable military challenge that the United States have confronted in generations. Beijing adds mass, reach and perseverance by sea, air, rocket, space, cyber and AI – while our forces thinly, under -financed and do not match the threat.
The result? China prepares simultaneous dilemmas for the United States and its allies and operates economic and military gaps that we have not closed. If we don’t act, we can wake up with a world where freedom withdrew and Beijing calls the shots.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping reunification with Taiwan calls a ‘historical mission’, we must believe him. (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty images)
America’s overloaded attitude
The National Security Strategy rightly identifies China as the “Pacing Challenge”. Yet our power structure still reflects a spread of obligations from the Cold War. American troops are tied up in NATO and scare Russia. In the Middle East, the nuclear ambitions and proxy -inges of Iran require a constant American presence.
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This multifront attitude leaves our Indo-Pacific-frightening dangerous too little under shipping. While we talk about “turning” to Asia, the Pivot never happened. We are confronted with an opponent with the world’s largest navy, a rapidly growing missile power and new feet from the South Chinese Sea to the North Pole area – and we still trust overburdened strike groups of the carrier and underwent shipbuilding to scare them.
China’s growing military power
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready to take Taiwan in 2027. History suggests that Beijing will not wait for perfect readyness before he acts. Van Korea to Vietnam in 1950 in 1979, Chinese leaders launched wars despite striking military gaps – because political calculation outskirts against caution.
Nowadays, the arsenal of the PLA is amazing: precision-strike rocket forces with 300 new rocket silos, a navy of more than 370 war ships, stealth hunters, artificial islands strengthened with rocket batteries and a growing space and cyber power.
Beijing now calls itself a “near-arctic state”, implements “research” ice breakers near Alaska while investing in ports in the far north. These are not science projects, but scaffolding for future power projection.
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Salvo Economics: a mismatch that we have not solved
The greatest danger is not only the size of China – it’s asymmetry. Beijing has designed his powers to operate ‘Salvo and Ettition Economics’. An American aircraft carrier costs $ 13 billion; China can build hundreds of long-distance anti-ship missiles for a fraction thereof.
Our missile weather is excellent but limited in number; The Spurages of China are designed to overwhelm them. While America spends for decades producing a handful of hunters, Beijing makes rockets, drones and frigates on a scale.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Reviews warns that this mismatch is untenable. Unless we dramatically expand the stocks of ammunition, bases and threatening forces, we run the risk of weapons to rise in the opening weeks of a conflict.
America’s capacities
The holes are staring. Our industrial basis of shipbuilding is behind schedule for years. We cannot produce ships, submarines or rockets on the scale needed to match the Chinese output.
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Our rocket tafes in the Indo-Pacific are limited-patriot and Thaad batteries that can be overwhelmed within a few hours of a Chinese barrage. Logistical stocks and resilient supply chains are insufficient to maintain long -term conflict with high intensity in the Pacific.
And American troops remain dangerously concentrated on vulnerable bases such as Okinawa and Guam.
In 2024, Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Ranking of the Senate Committee for armed services: “Our military leaders are forced to make impossible choices. The Navy struggles to finance new ships, routine maintenance and ammunition purchase … A outdated fleet.”
That grim assessment is not a political theater – it is reality and our opponents know it.
XIs strategic playbook
Some claim that the grip of XI is weakened. Despite economic problems, he remains strong in control – without successor, no deadlines and no rivals. When XI reunification with Taiwan calls a ‘historical mission’, we must believe him.
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And he may not have to come in to succeed. The PLA is already practicing coercion under the threshold of war: Daily Air Gifts around Taiwan, fishermilities that harass neighbors, cyber attacks and ruthless political influence campaigns. Every tactic is deteriorated and avoids open confrontation.
In the meantime, Beijing is playing an ambiguous worldwide game that occurs as a peace broker in Ukraine, while supplying Russia, to deepen the ties with Iran and whispering in Washington about a “big bargain” that would effectively admit East Asia to Chinese control. That would indeed be a Faustian bargain.
Time to stop playing
Rome Brandt. China is not a distant, future threat – it is here and grows. We cannot afford to be distracted by thinking that Ukraine or Iran is the most important event. They matter, but they are supporting compared to the Pacing challenge from China.
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We have to stop fiddling and start acting: survival investments in shipbuilding and ammunition, hardening and distributing, expanding the Arctic presence and deepening alliances with Japan, Australia, India and beyond. We must treat the Indo-Pacific as the central theater of our time-no side issue.
History will not forgive a United States that wasted its benefit, while Beijing prepared to overthrow the global order. The time is late, but not too late. America has to stop fiddling and face the fire before the flames consume all of us.
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