China linking with Russia, Iran and North Korea poses dangerous threat to U.S., former leaders warn

The threat posed by China and its anti-U.S. allies like Russia, Iran and North Korea is more dangerous today than ever, two former high-ranking administration leaders told Congress on Tuesday.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China‘s Communist Party leaders are linking global crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere as part of a comprehensive anti-U.S. strategy.

“It’s dangerous for the United States to allow the Chinese Communist Party to have engaged here at home in ways that undermine the very foundations of our republic,” Mr. Pompeo said in testimony to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Appearing with Mr. Pompeo, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said China is exploiting global conflicts to promote a narrative of Western geopolitical decline.

“China has taken every opportunity to undermine the United States and the West, to make us ‘pay’ for access to their markets by stealing our intellectual property, to conduct economic espionage, and to try to keep us out of the Pacific,” said Mr. Panetta, a former Democratic congressman who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Both Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Panetta also were CIA directors — Mr. Pompeo during the Trump administration and Mr. Panetta under President Obama.

China is building up its military capabilities and is increasingly willing to use economic coercion and the threat of force against Taiwan, Mr. Panetta said.

“We live in a dangerous world in which tyrants and autocrats and terrorists are challenging and attacking democracies,” he said. “And so they’re threatening our values. They’re threatening our interests and our national security.”

Mr. Panetta said he met Chinese President Xi Jinping when Mr. Xi was vice president and described the communist leader as “committed to an aggressive China.” China is growing more dangerous under Mr. Xi as he grapples with domestic economic problems, he said.

Building up American forces in the Pacific is an urgent task, he added, including additional U.S. military forces and defensive arms for Taiwan.

Mr. Pompeo said China is supporting friendly regimes in Russia, Iran and Venezuela economically through oil and gas purchases for its massive economy. North Korea also is closely aligned with Beijing. 

“China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela represent a new axis of evil regimes that is pushing a dangerous model for the world,” Mr. Pompeo said, “one where personal and religious freedoms are curtailed and controlled by the state, where neighbors can be invaded, coerced and abused, and economic colonialism is the norm.”

Deterring and defeating

China must be deterred and Chinese economic warfare against the United States must be defeated, Mr. Pompeo said. And the danger is not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but also closer to home inside the United States.

China “is inside the gates at our research labs, our government research institutions and our information space,” Mr. Pompeo said. “This cannot remain.”

Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican, noted that Mr. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “no limits” partnership days before Moscow sent troops to invade Ukraine in early 2022.

“What was once a smattering of rogue authoritarians causing trouble today looks a whole lot like an axis led by the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Gallagher said.

Criticizing the current Biden administration’s efforts to re-engage with Beijing in recent months, Mr. Pompeo said “some wonderful speech” or meetings in San Francisco and Beijing will not result in changes to China’s anti-U.S. policies.

“We need to make sure that we hold [China] at risk in the same way that they seek to put America at risk each day,” Mr. Pompeo said.

Mr. Panetta said some are suggesting relations with China are improving through talks on the military and economics.

“But make no mistake, the only way to try to avoid war with China, the only way to deal with China is from strength,” Mr. Panetta said, adding that both China and Russia grew more aggressive after sensing “weakness on the part of the U.S.”

To counter that aggression, the United States needs to take strong action to arm and train Taiwan to better defend its interests and to build up U.S. forces in the region and invest in advanced military technologies, he said.

Divided at home

Mr. Pompeo noted in his prepared statement that political divisions within the U.S. are undermining Washington’s ability to counter the challenge from China.

“The question for us remains, to paraphrase what Abraham Lincoln stated so many years ago: Will we be the author of our own destruction?” he said.

Americans are at risk of destroying things that will deliver a victory over the Chinese leadership’s dark vision of global dominance, he said.

“Narratives, like the 1619 Project, tell sinister lies about the founding and fundamental character of our nation,” he said referring to a New York Times project that put systemic racism at the heart of the founding and development of the United States.

Mr. Pompeo, a former Republican House member from Kansas before joining the Trump administration, noted that difficult economic and social problems will not be solved by “simply printing more money and handing it out to privileged political groups.”

Fundamental cultural virtues of religious faith, decency and respect for vital institutions are being demeaned in the country, he said.

“The CCP’s model will not prevail. But a nation and society intent on despising and destroying itself will not prevail, either,” Mr. Pompeo said.

Mr. Panetta also said it is critical for Republicans and Democrats to work together, asserting that dysfunction in Washington threatens American security.

Mr. Xi “is very aware of what’s happening with regards to our country just as Putin is, and when they see dysfunction, when they see that we can’t get our act together to be able to do what’s right, then they sense that that’s weakness, and it gives them the incentive to think that given the opportunity they can take advantage of that,” Mr. Panetta said.

Mr. Pompeo argued that the Biden administration failed to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine and now must do more to prevent an attack on Taiwan.

“My effort as secretary of state was to remind the world that if we don’t hold [China] at risk, if we simply play defense, economically, defense diplomatically — if we allow a spy balloon to travel over our country for five days, and then hold a press conference announcing what brilliance it was to shoot it down over South Carolina — [then] Xi Jinping gets that he’s on offense, we’re on defense and that is not a good place for the United States to be.”