US Momentum Grows For Push To Start Strategic Talks With China

WASHINGTON: Just days after President Biden initiated a 90-minute call to Chinese President Xi Jingping, the Vice Chairman off the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed for broader and lower-level talks with the Peoples Liberation Army,

“I know the president — President Biden — and President Xi have talked a couple times this year. That’s important, but I hope we can broaden that conversation all the way down to the military-to-military level as well,” Gen. John Hyten said this afternoon.

His comments went further than those of a top Air Force officer last month, who also called for talks. Hyten is one of America’s top military officers and former head of Strategic Command, so his comments carry greater weight.

While he did not connect all the dots, Hyten made it clear that China’s ability to build new weapons such as long-range hypersonic missiles much more quickly than the US, combined with its recent construction of several hundred new ICBM silos, poses serious questions the US must address.

As an example, Hyten pointed to America’s program to modernize one part of its nuclear triad, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and how slowly America is moving relative to China.

“It is going to take us 10 to 15 years to modernize 400 silos that already exist. And China is basically building almost that many overnight. So the speed of difference in that threat is what really concerns me most,” the former head of US Strategic Command said. “And when you look at that nuclear capability, and you look at China’s declared no-first-use policy, and what they have nuclear weapons for, you have to ask yourself, why are they building that enormous, enormous nuclear capability faster than anybody in the world. That’s what really concerns me.”

Illustrating the balancing act that old arms control negotiators will remember all too well from their work with the Soviet Union, Hyten and other senior military commanders want to reach out and negotiate with China, America’s “pacing threat,” while simultaneously building the best and most lethal weapons possible as quickly as possible to deter China.

“We’re having strategic stability talks with Russia to make sure we understand where we are, not just in the nuclear realm, but in space as well. We need to have that conversation start with the Chinese, we really do. We need to be able to sit down, I need to be able to sit down — Secretary Austin, the political leadership, the State Department — and talk about these issues with China,” Hyten said during a talk at the Bookings Institution. “Because as different as we are, we do have a fundamental common goal, and that is to never go to war with each other.”

But until those strategic talks begin — if they do — the United States risks falling behind China’s modernization, as the Pentagon faces warhead and other limitations due to the New Start Treaty.

“It’s the almost unprecedented nuclear modernization that is now becoming public, even though, you know, at STRATCOM I certainly watched it happen, but it was, but it was in very classified channels and you couldn’t talk about it. But now you see hundreds and hundreds of fixed silos coming in, you can see the commercial imagery that came out in the press over the last few months. It seems like every couple of weeks, new pictures of more silos were coming in, and, oh by the way, there’s no limits on what China can put in those silos,” Hyten said. With China, “there’s no limit. They could put, you know 10 reentry vehicles on every one of those ICBMs if they wanted to; there’s nothing to limit that ability.”

Budgetary Choices

The vice chairman also sent a clear signal to Congress, which has rarely passed a regular defense appropriation bill in the past decade, that it must change the way it does business if it wants to limit how much the US spends on defense.

Michael O’Hanlon, the Brookings defense expert, asked Hyten if the US could afford to spend about $700 billion annually to meet the current threats America faces, instead of the 3% to 5% annual increases that the top defense leadership has told Congress is required.

Hyten’s response was clear: “Do you think anybody, any taxpayer in this country would believe that, for $700 billion a year, we can’t have a great defense? We should be able to! It’s crazy that we can’t. “We have to start doing business differently, which means that if there are capabilities that we’re operating that are no longer applicable to the fight. We have to stop paying for them.”

Of course, while the services have argued year in and year out they must retire large numbers of weapons in order to pay for new technology, Congress has rarely been willing to retire a weapon system, even if they don’t meet current threats

“Stability in the budget will create more than 5% efficiencies every year, if we had stability in the budget. Way more than 5% efficiencies, we institute billions of dollars of inefficiencies. And if you’re a taxpayer, I think that would drive you crazy. As a taxpayer, it drives me crazy,” he said.

As an example of the impact that Congress has when it does not consistently pass defense spending bills, Hyten pointed to what occurs when budget money lurches along. Defense companies create teams to build weapons. If Congress doesn’t pass the defense bill those teams keep working and the companies keep paying to keep them ready to start work once money begins to flow again.

“They’re being paid every day, whether they’re doing anything or not,” Hyten noted. “Every day we still pay for that marching army [of defense workers], even though they’re not delivering the capabilities we want them to deliver. If we could just get that stability, if we could make sure we focus our investments on what’s required for the threat, only then we can actually do it with $700 billion a year. But if we continue to the same way we are, we have to have bigger budgets. Over.”