The Pentagon is considering establishing a permanent naval task force in the Pacific region as a counter to China’s growing military might, according to two people familiar with internal discussions.
The plan would also involve creating a named military operation for the Pacific that would enable the defense secretary to allocate additional dollars and resources to the China problem, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss pre-decisional plans.
Politico reports the two initiatives, which are not yet finalized, would add muscle to President Joe Biden’s tough talk on China and send a signal that the new U.S. administration is serious about cracking down on Beijing’s military buildup and aggressive behavior in the Pacific region.
The news comes as NATO leaders are increasingly aligning themselves with Washington’s confrontational stance on Beijing. Four years after former President Donald Trump made countering China a top foreign policy priority, NATO allies this week declared Beijing a security challenge and said the Chinese are working to undermine global order.
The discussions grew out of work by the Pentagon’s China Task Force, which Biden commissioned in March to examine the department’s China-related policies and processes.
The group, led by Ely Ratner, the nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s top Indo-Pacific policy official, recently completed its work and presented recommendations to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
A defense official, responding to a request for comment, stressed that none of the plans stemming from the China task force are finalized.
“We are looking at a number of proposals in the Indo-Pacific and across the Department, to better synchronize and coordinate our activities,” said the person, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss pre-decisional plans. “However, as the Secretary said, now is the time to get to work, there are many details and specifics still to be finalized.”
While the initiatives would not be a silver bullet to solve the China problem, the efforts are an encouraging sign that the Pentagon is committed to moving resources away from the Middle East and elevating the needs of the Pacific, said Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Pentagon official who is now a principal at The Marathon Initiative.
“The task force and the named operation suggest to me that they are going to elevate the oomph and the power of the Western Pacific oriented force,” Colby said, noting that if the task force “is focused on the Western Pacific, whether it’s focused on China explicitly or implicitly, it’s got bureaucratic oomph to say ‘hey, no [Central Command], just because you have a knee-jerk reaction to something happening you can’t steal our assets.”
The Pentagon has not yet briefed Capitol Hill on the plans, one of the people said.
