Pentagon to Speed Up Efforts to Counter China: WSJ

That task force was led by Ely Ratner, a former top aide to President Biden who has been named to serve as the Pentagon’s top official on Asia-Pacific affairs.

Many of the task force’s recommendations remain classified, and the Pentagon released few details about its work, which involved a four-month review by senior civilian and military officials.

The review comes as a decadeslong military buildup by Beijing gathers momentum, threatening the dominance the U.S. has held in East Asia and the Western Pacific.

“At this point, the say-do gap is the problem,” said Elbridge Colby, a former Pentagon official who played a key role in developing the national defense strategy during the Trump administration. “We have had prioritization of China for several years. But not enough has been done to translate that into reality, and the problem is alarmingly urgent.”

Pressing challenges from China include an expansion of its navy, its attempts to exert greater control over the South China Sea and ramped up threats against Taiwan, a U.S. partner. In March, the admiral in charge of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region said the accumulation of Chinese power was such that Beijing may move against the island in six years to a decade.

Under Wednesday’s directive, Mr. Austin will directly oversee the Pentagon’s China-related policies, operation and intelligence gathering efforts—an arrangement that is intended to ensure the task force’s recommendations are implemented.

Mr. Austin said in a statement that his goal was to speed the development of new warfighting strategies and technology, update plans for U.S. forces in the Pacific and make the Pentagon workforce better prepared to deal with the China challenge, including by updating its education and training.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy said that China is committed to peaceful development and urges the U.S. to “abandon the obsolete Cold War and zero-sum mentality, and look at China’s development and China-US relations in a rational light.” Doing so, the spokesman said, can “avoid undermining overall bilateral relations and cooperation in important areas.”

China and Russia were identified as the U.S.’s principal adversaries in the Trump administration’s national defense strategy issued in January 2018, a shift after nearly two decades of fighting insurgencies. The Biden administration’s decision to set up the task force led by Mr. Ratner was intended to carry that strategy forward.

The establishment of the task force followed frequent criticism from former Pentagon officials, lawmakers and think tank experts that the Defense Department hasn’t done enough to make good on its own strategy because of bureaucratic issues, past spending priorities and continual efforts to deal with lingering threats in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Last month, for example, the Pentagon decided to move its only aircraft carrier based in the Asia-Pacific region toward the Middle East to protect the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, defense officials said.

The Pentagon’s statement announcing Mr. Austin’s directive didn’t say specifically how he plans to improve Pentagon processes or streamline relations with allies to take on China. The senior defense official, briefing reporters, said unclassified steps would be made public in the weeks ahead.

“This directive from the secretary is ultimately about getting the department’s house in order and ensuring that the department lives up to the stated prioritization of China as the number one pacing challenge,” said the defense official. He said the order had “deadlines for implementation and mechanisms for oversight and accountability.”

Decisions also loom for the Pentagon on how much to spend to upgrade U.S. forces currently in the region to deter possible near-term threats and how much to allocate for the development of new technologies that are intended to make American forces more capable in the decades ahead.

The Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines have each identified China as the “pacing challenge.” But the Pentagon faces difficult decisions on how to harmonize the strategies that are being proposed by the different services and what spending priorities to set, including over weapons and personnel levels.

Directing the switch to a strategy focusing on China and Russia is a new mission for Mr. Austin. During his military career, Mr. Austin led the Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, and commanded forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon task force was given four months to carry out its review and has now disbanded. The Defense Department, however, is currently undertaking a broader review of the military posture around the world and plans to issue its own national defense strategy.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com