Commentary
The incoming defense commissioner of the European Union says China sees the U.S. and EU responses to Russian aggression in Ukraine as weak. He’s right. Our show of weakness only invites further aggression by other rogue members of the “axis of evil,” including China, Iran, and North Korea.
As the world devolves into wars that strain U.S. and partner defense budgets—along with the borders that divide the democracies from authoritarian states such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea—“the Chinese are watching,” according to the EU’s first incoming defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius.
In the case of Europe’s response to Russia, according to a Sept. 22 report, Kubilius said, “The Chinese will make one simple conclusion: The West is quite weak.”
He said that despite economies that are 25 times that of Russia, we are not winning.
“What is the reason?” he asked. “It’s a question of political will.”
It’s also a question of risk avoidance, of course. Democracies are more risk-averse than autocracies when it comes to war. This makes sense from one perspective, as democracies care more about people—both in their own societies and those of other states—than do dictators and terrorists. It could also make sense from a strategic perspective if modern war is a “wood chipper” for attacking armies, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rightly noted in 2022 regarding Ukraine.
The axis dictators are power-hungry to the point of a willingness to kill tens of millions in pursuit of their territorial and ideological ambitions. The number of Russian and Ukrainian dead from the current war has now reached approximately 1 million, according to a Sept. 17 report. Even more have been wounded. And Vladimir Putin is raising the stakes by frequently threatening nuclear strikes that could escalate to a direct war with the United States.
Iran is following the same strategy of feeding its proxies into the wood chipper, with its pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorist proxies, such as Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah against Israel, giving just cause for a robust defense. On Sept. 22, the United States warned Israel against starting a full-scale war against that last terrorist organization after Hezbollah refused to end its cross-border rocket attacks and let tens of thousands of internally displaced Israeli refugees return to their homes in northern Israel.
U.S. and allied ammunition reserves are running so low because of these wars—for which the United States has served as the “arsenal of democracy” since World War I—that Taiwan is now searching for new sources of ammunition necessary to defend itself in a war against the People’s Liberation Army, according to a Sept. 21 report.
Perhaps that is why Beijing tacitly approved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allies with Iran in its negotiations with the United States, thus encouraging its violence against Israel and Saudi Arabia. The CCP bankrolls all of the “axis of evil” companies through energy purchases from Russia and Iran and being the biggest trade partner of North Korea. The CCP has a motive for encouraging these far-flung wars and North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling. It distracts the democracies, depletes our arsenals, and thus will make it harder to defend Taiwan if that day comes.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for a Taiwan war in 2027, and the chief of naval operations of the U.S. Navy, in turn, told her forces to be ready for a war with China by the same date. Meanwhile, the FBI continues to discover Beijing’s preparations for massive cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure that could disable us during a Taiwan war. Such preparations are destabilizing as the first to strike the other’s electricity grid and satellites, for example, will have a major advantage on the battlefield.
So the question of U.S. and European weakness that Kubilius and Beijing perceive matters. What we do to defend Ukraine matters to whether the CCP decides to launch a war against Taiwan in 2027. Defeating Russia in Ukraine by 2026 could avoid a war with China that year that blacks out the entire United States and destroys us as a global superpower, even if we win. In that case, we would not be very helpful in defending Europe.
Kubilius is one unlikely successor to former president Ronald Reagan and his doctrine of “peace through strength.” But this is his approach. He wants the EU to borrow money to massively increase defense spending. He wants to require each country in the EU to stockpile enough ammunition for a war with Russia that could come within a few years, he said. Germany, according to a report in 2022, only had enough ammunition for two days of war. That explains its general willingness to give in to Russia, China, and Iran.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likewise believes that the EU must spend far more on defense to deter war with Russia. She estimates that the EU must spend approximately $560 billion to account for low defense spending that stretches back to the wishful thinking of the 1990s when some in the United States thought we had achieved global “primacy.” In fact, the enemies of democracy were just regrouping for a future fight.
The CCP regime is indeed watching as Ukraine and Israel struggle to put down dictatorial and terrorist aggressions against them. Calls in the United States for them to moderate their responses, however popular among our voters, look weak to the CCP. Similar calls over the decades for Taiwan to moderate its response to the CCP also look weak. To keep the peace that is left in the world, we need to meet these aggressions not with fear and weakness but with strength and courage. That is the surest way to not only a lasting peace but also one with justice.
