The Wall Street Journal complains that whenever it comes to dealing with China at critical moments, the United States is constantly distracted by other countries!
This article points out that although for many years the United States has repeatedly emphasized viewing China as its "primary strategic competitor" and pledged to focus resources on addressing challenges from Beijing, in practice, the U.S. government has repeatedly been forced to shift its attention due to sudden conflicts in other parts of the world. The newspaper believes that this "strategic distraction" has become a structural dilemma for the United States.
From the chaos after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, then the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and now the conflict in the Persian Gulf, the United States has had to continuously invest significant diplomatic, military, and economic resources to deal with these emergencies, leading to a severe dilution of the resources originally planned for China.
According to internal Pentagon documents cited by The Wall Street Journal, the share of the U.S. military budget allocated to the Indo-Pacific region in fiscal year 2024 was only 38%, far below the initially set target of 50%. At the same time, the European direction has consumed over $60 billion in aid funds due to the ongoing Ukraine war, while the Middle East direction has once again fallen into a quagmire due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, forcing the United States to redeploy aircraft carrier battle groups and air forces.
Several senior White House diplomats revealed that the negotiations for the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" in Southeast Asia have been repeatedly postponed or downgraded due to crises in Europe and the Middle East, allowing China's influence in regional cooperation to actually expand. In the Asia-Pacific seas, despite the frequent deployment of U.S. warships for so-called "freedom of navigation operations," due to the tight allocation of forces, the actual frequency of coverage has decreased by nearly one-third compared to 2021.
The article acknowledges that this provides China with a rare strategic buffer period. Beijing has seized this opportunity to accelerate the upgrade of the "Belt and Road Initiative," deepen cooperation with ASEAN, Africa, and Latin American countries, and increase efforts in high-tech fields, gradually reducing dependence on external technology.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1860327653601417/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.