Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said if he’s elected president, he’ll push for an expansion of the Navy to help combat the nation’s biggest threat: China.
Pledging to develop a “four oceans Navy,” Mr. DeSantis said the fleet will grow to 385 ships from 298 ships over his two terms as president, putting the nation on “a pathway for 600 ships within the next 20 years.”
“That will be hard power that will make a difference,” he said in a speech Friday at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “That will be hard power that will protect the peace.”
Mr. DeSantis said the fleet expansion is part of a broader plan to move away from President Biden’s “rudderless” and “weak” foreign policy and toward an agenda centered on pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party and its “dystopian” vision for the world.
“We are in an age in which we now have a peer competitor, and that competitor is the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “It is something we have to face, and we have to have a policy that is going to be able to protect the American people from the looming China threat.”
Mr. DeSantis added: “China has grand ambitions. They seek to be the dominant power in the entire world. This is a formidable threat, and it requires a whole-of-society approach.”
He said China is the “key player behind” the conflicts between Israel and Hamas and Ukraine and Russia. He started that the Chinese are keeping Iran, which backs Hamas, and Russia “afloat financially.”
To counter the threat, he said, the U.S. must modernize and strengthen its military, overhaul the nation’s defense industrial base, and make it easier for Taiwan to buy advanced weapons and ammunition.
The governor said America must open up domestic energy sources to strengthen the economy, dominate the tech race and ban China from purchasing land.
He emphasized that the nation must seal off the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent immigrants, including Chinese nationals, and fentanyl from entering the country illegally.
“The United States has to treat the threat posed by the CCP the same way we treated the threat posed by the Soviet Union,” he said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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