OPINION:
On Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed that the Biden family’s overseas business schemes were not a threat to national security. If only that were true.
From what we know now, the only explanations for President Biden’s squishy-soft policy toward China are the corrupt influence of Mr. Biden’s family business interests in China, his incompetence or both. Whichever is the case, Mr. Biden’s policy toward China is sleepwalking us into what might be a nuclear war.
Over the course of several years, according to the House Oversight Committee, a web of about 20 companies run by Mr. Biden’s son Hunter and the president’s younger brother James have been paid over $10 million by Chinese and Romanian entities in what appears to be influence peddling.
There reportedly is also an FBI form recording information from a trusted informant that says Mr. Biden engaged in a $5 million bribery scheme while he was vice president.
Whatever influence Mr. Biden’s family is exerting over him, his policy toward China have been — contrary to what the media says — weakness and acquiescence in the face of aggression. The situation has grown measurably worse over the past two weeks.
On May 30, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu refused to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Singapore to reduce U.S.-Chinese tensions. It was a slap in Mr. Austin’s face.
This past Sunday, two of Mr. Biden’s senior foreign policy officials — Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Sarah Beran, the National Security Council’s senior director for China and Taiwan affairs — arrived in Beijing. That date was the 34th anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre, in which hundreds — possibly thousands — of anti-regime protesters were murdered by Chinese troops.
Their arrival, again supposedly for talks to reduce tensions between the two nations, only demonstrated Mr. Biden’s obsequiousness toward Chinese President Xi Jinping. Our allies and enemies have received that message repeatedly.
Around the same time, Chinese aircraft were “thumping” a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft — flying so closely that our plane had to fly through the Chinese aircraft’s wake — and a Chinese ship cut across the bow of a U.S. Navy ship so that the American vessel had to nearly stop in order to avoid a collision. Both incidents were on or over international waters.
This past Saturday, after the incident at sea, Mr. Li warned Western air and naval forces to stay out of the waters and skies close to China.
Mr. Xi said last November that the international community should oppose the use or threat to use nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, China, which has about 400 nuclear weapons, is reportedly increasing that number to 700 nuclear weapons by 2027 and 1,000 by 2030. Mr. Xi’s statement, to say the least, lacks credibility.
No one should doubt that China will attack Taiwan in the next few years. It could threaten to or use nuclear weapons against our defending forces.
Perhaps the strangest thing about nuclear weapons is that no nation has used one since 1945 despite many wars and provocations since then. But the fear of nuclear war may have become passe.
Some nations’ leaders — Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Mr. Xi as well as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — speak in calm, almost ghoulish terms in describing how they might resort to using nuclear weapons.
There is no precise difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. The only real difference is in the size of the explosion they are capable of producing, measured in thousands or millions of tons of TNT. The bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 caused about 110,000 Japanese deaths. Today, those bombs would be regarded as tactical nuclear weapons because of their low yield.
When the first nuclear weapon is used, a threshold will be crossed that no one may be able to retreat behind.
Mr. Putin has frequently threatened to use nuclear weapons in the “defense” of Russian territory, meaning the parts of Ukraine his army has captured. Ukrainian drone strikes on actual Russian territory outside of Ukraine could turn Mr. Putin’s threats into reality.
Our ability to deter Russia is being diminished, as is our China deterrent. Last November, Adm. Charles Richard, then-commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said, “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking.”
The same holds true of our deterrence level against Russia, Iran and North Korea, each of which has missiles that can deliver nuclear weapons against our allies and, perhaps, the United States.
Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats are crowing about the recent debt ceiling deal, which freezes defense spending at a level that doesn’t keep up with inflation. As this column has often noted, the issue is not how much defense spending is in the budget but what it is spent on.
If our forces are to succeed at deterrence, they need the tools to accomplish it, which now is not the case. Deterrence must be the top priority, whatever the cost.
Mr. Biden is oblivious to these facts. He is leading us into wars we may only win at a horrible cost.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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